Welcome back to work

We just had an office meeting regarding a charity campaign. We're supposed to feel honored to be in a position that we can afford to allocate a small percentage of our paycheck each week to a charity to help out those less fortunate than us. Maybe I'm getting jaded in my old age, maybe it's the Republican side of me coming out, or the Libertarian side which knows that many (not all, but many) of the people you see on the street begging for change are there by choice and if they were offered a regular 9-to-5 job they'd choose living on the street any day. Maybe it's that so many people who benefit from charity programs don't need it or deserve it, or they only qualify because they have 5 or more kids (and they won't stop popping them out, again, lifestyle choice), and maybe it's because I know people who could benefit from charity programs but refuse to accept it and would rather live day-to-day, paycheck to paycheck, than accept welfare or any form of charity or handout.

So this one woman got up and talked briefly (thank heavens) about the environmental program she belongs to. And all I could think about was the story my sister told me of the Tongans (yes, from the Kingdom of Tonga) who have a tourist program that greatly benefits the economy of Tonga. Tourists come from all over the world to spend their dollars in Tonga, and they all pay a small fortune to swim alongside the whales as they migrate past the Islands. Now Greenpeace (a name almost synonymous with Ecoterrorism) decided that people swimming alongside the whales as they passed through the Tongan-owned waters off the Kingdom of Tonga was somehow harmful to the whales (despite real life encounters which showed otherwise, and included whales seeking out boats and tourists and playing with them (non-violently) for hours), and so they approached the Tongan leaders and asked them to put a stop to this activity.

The Tongans thought for a while, and decided that yes, they could afford to not allow tourists to swim with the whales, because the drop in tourism and loss of income in tourist dollars could be offset by the amount the Japanese were willing to pay the Tongans to allow them access to the whales. The Japanese, of course, didn't want to do anything as harmless as just swim with the whales and when Greenpeace were made aware of this alternative they quickly withdrew their appeal.

Similar situations occur here in the U.S. Very few people know that Hunters also pay a small fortune for their licenses and the right to hunt and take deer, and the fees they pay usually go a long way towards maintaining our national parks. But when "people with good intentions" step in and stop the hunting, there is a subsequent drop in revenue and Park maintenance suffers, because these same "people with good intentions" are also often the ones who ask why they now have to pay to access the National Park they used to visit for free, and so they stop going. And as the number of people using the park drops fees to access the park increase and less people come to the Park, until eventually the Park closes because it's not cost effective to maintain the Park just for the handful of people who still use it. Finally the Park gets sold off to developers who tear down most of the trees and subdivide the land and build shopping centers and office buildings and houses, etc. and only then does everyone complain about the loss of the National Park.

So I'm very wary of environmental groups and "people with good intentions" in general.

Then this other woman got up and talked for far too long about all the good United Way does, and again, I'm leery of charity groups because far too often all they want to do is raise money to pay for the salaries of people who sit on committees talking about how to solve some problem that they don't really want resolved because then there'd be no committee for them to get paid to sit on. And this woman talks for ages, and she asks everyone to stand up, then asks half the room to sit down, and she explains that those of us sitting down represent the kids who drops out of school in 9th & 10th grade, and how sad it is that those kids can't go on to graduate from high school, and she asks a 1/3rd of those still standing to sit down, and how sad it is that 1/3rd of high school grads don't make it into college, etc.

I decided not to burst her bubble by asking how many of the kids who dropped out did so because they got an apprenticeship somewhere. And I decided not to ask her if it was true that kids who get an apprenticeship at 15 or 16 are often financially more secure than their fellow students when they meet again at their 10-year Reunion. And I decided not to ask her "What's so great about college anyway?"

Look at it this way. I'm a college grad. I'm currently making around $30/hr in my cushy government job. To get to that level the average person needs a 4-year college degree, and then they usually need to have been employed by the City for approximately 5 to 6 years. Some do it faster, some take longer, but on average, it's 5 to 6 years to get to where you're making $30/hr. That just happens to be around about what a common Union Laborer makes, per hour. Someone who digs a ditch, pushes a broom, etc, gets around $30/hr. Now if I'd done an Apprenticeship and become a licensed Carpenter, Electrician, etc, I'd be making $40 to $50 per hour as a Journeyman (a skilled laborer). A standard length Apprenticeship is 3 to 4 years long, about the same as earning your college degree. But as a 16-year old Apprentice you'll probably have a two year head-start on your classmate who is going on to college. In 12 years time (2 more years of High School plus 10 years to the reunion) the Apprentice is pulling down $50/hour (or more), he owns his own car (or truck) and is making payments on a house. The College Grad is probably making $30/hr (unless he's lucky and actually got a job in the field appropriate to his degree) and he's living paycheck to paycheck while struggling to pay his rent and make payments on his $50,000 (or more) college loans.

Granted not everyone who drops out of high school in 9th or 10th grade has an Apprenticeship waiting for them, and many of them go on to learn such valuable skills as how to say "Would you like fries with that?" but a lot of college grads get their degrees with nothing waiting for them but the exact same minimum-wage job they've had for the last 6 years. The only thing is, that college grad is now working for the guy who dropped out in 10th grade, who was the only one willing and able to work all those odd hours which got the manager's attention and so promoted him to assistant store manager.

Back to the woman who is talking for far too long and dropping statistics like how 80,000 people in Los Angeles county are homeless (and yet our shelters which only house a few thousand often have beds free), and how a $3/paycheck donation somehow buys 3 hours of tutoring for 5 students every single week, and other typical socialist bullshit that doesn't sit well with this Republican-flavored Libertarian, so I mostly tuned out of what she had to say.

All in all it was a wasted and unproductive morning, but I'm happy to be able to rant here and also glad I was able to shoot a lot of really big guns yesterday. Pictures (and moofies) of which will be added shortly :)