This Bruce Hornsby earwig was presented by Newt dissing the Occupiers-
The movement "starts with the premise that we all owe them everything," said Gingrich. And the movement's sense of entitlement is a "symptom how much the left has collapsed as a moral system in this country, and why you need to reassert something as simple as saying, 'Go get a job right after you take a bath,'" the former speaker of the House concluded.
With unemployment up around 9% and underemployment close to twice that, that's easier said than done; I'm in the latter category, holding down a nice part time job but wanting more. It's a nice line that goes over well in a Republican primary, but it sounds a bit too much like Hornsby's silk-suited one-percenter from The Way it Is, taunting the folks at the unemployment office.
However, Newt has a very good point slightly overplayed. A lot of college grads have the assumption that a good job is waiting for them once they graduate; the archetypal Occupier is the guy who can't find work with his master's degree in puppetry. Many less comic people with more marketable degrees are still on the outside looking in; everybody in the education system gave them the assumption that they had a career automatically waiting for them when they graduated, and the harsh reality doesn't match, making them bitter since their entitlement wasn't cashed in.
Part of that is the more disorganized US economy. In a more European system, more structured economies will feed college grads into standardized positions, but that structure doesn't help create a dynamic economy, disenfranchising folks who can't get a foot in the door.
In a US system, an over-emphasis on education as a door-opener creates a bit of systematic unemployment as people with liberal arts degrees and some specialist degrees chasing a declining number of jobs looking for their skills, with elementary ed degree folks working at a day-care center and Master of Library Arts grads clerking at Barnes and Noble... or PhD's in finance tutoring part time on-line.
Glenn Reynolds has been blogging on a pending higher ed bubble as of late; many of the Occupiers bought into the bubble and are grousing about their busted can of Jooky.
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