>>Some of my buddies mowed lawns. That work has been taken by immigrants.
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>>I see plenty of teenage boys mowing lawns and shoveling snow in my neck of the woods. Fortunately, in Akorn Ohio we do not tend to get many illegal immigrants
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>>Some worked as helpers on construction sites. Almost no construction going on around here and the few sites use immigrants as helpers.
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>>I suspect that the unions would get very upset if a construction company used non-union helpers.
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>>We have 40-50 year old fathers and mothers trying to support their families by bagging groceries in the supermarkets here. That work was once done by school kids.
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>>Most of the baggers that I see in my local grocery stores are either school kids or on social security.
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>>There are no jobs for a lot complicated reasons - automation is a large factor
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>>But automation also creates (skilled) jobs. You need people to manufacture, program, repair, sell and deliver the machines. True, these jobs require more training than it takes to bag groceries, but they also provide what you call a "living wage". If one does not like his or her situation, one should take steps to change it - like getting some training. When I was 29 years old, I left my first husband. My first thought was "Here I am almost 30 and I'm still tending bar. I sure as heck don't want to be doing this when I am 50!" So I went back to school and got my degree in Computer Science while tending bar at night. I did not sit around and complain about my situation while doing nothing about it.
>
>That's the difference between the entitled mind set and the "you make your own luck mindset.". I was 32 when I bought my first compouter, an H-89 (heathkit).

Ha. I've still got two of those :-}

> I figured that little machine was the wave of the future and for the first time in my life, I wanted to be in front of the wave, not getting crushed by it. When I gout out of the military at 40, I had a bunch of experience in programming and eventually worked my way into a second profitable career. Kids today, mine included, don't want to work for 30 years to build something. They want it now.