The Other McCain

"One should either write ruthlessly what one believes to be the truth, or else shut up." — Arthur Koestler

Majoring in Minimum Wage

Posted on | May 1, 2014 | 28 Comments

You may not remember “Hard Times for Gender Studies Major,” a post last August featuring the lament of @Andria_XX, who had an “Honors BA in Social Justice and Peace Studies” and was pursuing a Master’s degree in Gender Studies:

“I have a honors BA and I’m defending my MA thesis in two weeks. I am also apply[ing] for jobs and I can only find stuff in the service industry. I applied for a Hotel Front Desk Clerk job today. My degrees mean NOTHING. I am at the end of my rope.”

That was absolutely one of the most popular posts in the six-year history of the blog. Her advanced degrees in trendy “studies” are worthless? Gosh, maybe she should have asked somebody. That came to mind when I saw this post today at Money Runner:

The Wall Street Journal has an article bemoaning the well educated barista economy. Of course they don’t put it quite that way in their article, the subhead if which is: A new study offers an unsettling explanation of why young adults have been hit so hard.
But in the spirit of those who hailed the benefits of losing your job. Not only can you get a chance to do your own thing, but according to Nancy Pelosi, those unemployment benefits you get create more jobs.  And if you lost your job becaue of ObamaCare, it’s really not a loss, but an “escape.”
With that view in mind, I want to explain why college educated baristas are a net plus for the American people.
Let’s face it, modern college graduates have just left the greatest brainwashing system since the Communists invented the “re-education centers” to set their enemies right. Do you really want those budding neo-Marxists to get on the first rung of the ladder of success?

Indeed. Let them be oppressed among the toiling masses. Let them live in squalor, eating Ramen noodles and trying to figure out how they’re going to pay the electric bill and the rent and their student loans. Let them go bankrupt and suffer nervous breakdowns and, when they get out of the looney bin, let them stand beside the highway intersection holding up crudely lettered cardboard signs:

GENDER STUDIES MAJOR
Will Criticize Patriarchy for Food!

Because, hey, who says the free market isn’t efficient?

 

Category: Economics, Education

Comments

28 Responses to “Majoring in Minimum Wage”

  1. Bob Belvedere
    May 1st, 2014 @ 7:32 pm

    Goddamn brilliant!

  2. Kirby McCain
    May 1st, 2014 @ 7:36 pm

    Of course, women and minorities are hit the hardest.

  3. Kirby McCain
    May 1st, 2014 @ 7:38 pm

    Or should that have been, Women’s studies and African American studies hit hardest?

  4. Thatch
    May 1st, 2014 @ 8:02 pm

    Andrea should take heart. Her degree is not worthless. It actually has negative value — that is to say she is more ignorant and less employable for having attained it. We won’t even mention the out of pocket expense.

    My father ran a small business for 50 years and I ran one of my own for 15 before the ACA came along and made it impractical to take on the risk of meeting payroll. If she had tried to gain employment in my business, or in many others like it, her degree would have disqualified her from the get go. She might as well have tattooed “Idiot and Troublemaker” on her forehead. It would have had the same effect.

    I bet her professors didn’t share that little nugget of wisdom with her when they were separating her from her cash. Con men never let the mark in on the game.

    Hell, for what she paid for her education she could have started her own small business and really learned something.

  5. Bob Belvedere
    May 1st, 2014 @ 8:14 pm

    Sure, but their goal was always to make her into a ‘Julia’.

  6. RS
    May 1st, 2014 @ 8:37 pm

    The truly sad thing is, none of these people will learn the correct lesson. No matter what, they will blame anything other than those who lured them into spending years and thousands of dollars on snake oil. Not only did their Fill-In-The-Blank Studies degrees make them unemployable, they destroyed their ability to reason from evidence in front of them to the proper conclusions.

  7. M. Thompson
    May 1st, 2014 @ 8:59 pm

    I don’t always talk to “Studies” majors, but when I do, it’s because they’re waitstaff.

  8. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 1st, 2014 @ 8:59 pm

    If you have noticed, the latest effort of the left is trying to raise the minimum wage. Ironic that raising minimum wages will result in jobs with limited benefits having no benefits. Lose Lose!

    You’ve come a long way baby!

  9. G Joubert
    May 1st, 2014 @ 9:08 pm

    BS in Rainbow Studies
    MS in Unicorn Farts
    Career field: Barista

  10. You’ve come a long way baby: Barista Rule 5 | Batshit Crazy News
    May 1st, 2014 @ 10:29 pm

    […] TOM’s Majoring in Minimum Wage prompted this Rule 5. Because nothing says success like a college degree, student loan payments that cannot be discharged short of death, and a job as a barista! […]

  11. maniakmedic
    May 1st, 2014 @ 11:01 pm

    I personally enjoy the blank look on a liberal’s face when you point out that raising the minimum wage will mean everything just costs more money to make up for the inflated wages so they’ll still be poor. Of course then they start blaming Bush or lamenting the evils of capitalism, but that moment when their brain is desperately trying not to explode is priceless.

  12. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 12:24 am

    Or Starbuck’s CEO saying he “supports” raising the minimum wage (so as trying not to embarrass Democrats he supports) but who then says Starbucks won’t raise prices for its customers so they will likely cut benefits. So many Democrat capitalists play lip service to their party and then act in ways conservatives/libertarians such as the Koch Brothers would not do.

  13. Evi L. Bloggerlady
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 12:26 am

    Mission Accomplished!

  14. K-Bob
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 12:57 am

    They laugh at the “rising tide lifts all boats” concept, while firmly believing that they don’t even need no steenking boat.

    Then they double down and demand the government make the tide rise moar!

    When the result is that they have to struggle even harder to stay afloat, they blame the boat owners.

  15. Adjoran
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 3:09 am

    If we could defund the academy, we could turn this whole thing around in a generation.

    I’m an optimist. I think those young people will eventually, like the generations before them, finally figure out that the idealistic leftist vision of Utopia is only an illusion used to repress and control. Churchill’s famous observation is quite applicable in most cases. While there are those who never learn (mostly those with state or federal jobs), most pay attention to the hard lessons of real life.

    It is soooo sad the Wymyn’s/Ethnic Studies majors end up as baristas and hotel clerks. Did they expect an ever-expanding demand for classes to create thousands of new faculty positions?

    Strip clubs and Hooters pay more, but they tend not to hire ugly chicks. It’s the danged Patriarchy.

  16. ???
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 8:51 am

    Should have gotten it in theoretical physics.

  17. Dana
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 9:54 am

    Hey, I like Ramen Noodles! My biggest complaint is that they did away with the Cajun chicken flavor.

    http://4.bp.blogspot.com/_VXfAg7LlWM0/Sj_N01eb0gI/AAAAAAAAAXM/sYJdDKKeY04/s400/01315+Ramen+Cajun+Chicken+3oz+2.jpg

  18. Dana
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 9:55 am

    And PhD in . . . ?

  19. Dana
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 9:56 am

    Worked for me!

    http://static.comicvine.com/uploads/original/11111/111117590/3201210-sheldon.jpg

  20. Dana
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 10:28 am

    I have noodles down to an art form. Large, heavy bowl, break up one package of noodles, add to bowl, then add flavor packet, and repeat with a second package of noodles. This just fits in the bowl. Add boiling water, and I have just enough time to get the bowl upstairs to he computer desk before the bowl gets too hot to carry. Go back downstairs, and bring up one ice-cold can of Mountain Dew. By this time the noodles have absorbed the water, and can be stirred to mix in the flavor packets, and I’m ready to log on to The Other McCain and dribble noodles on the keyboard!

  21. Dana
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 11:03 am

    There is a Chili flavor, but the local stores don’t carry it. My daughter will bring me some from the commissary at Ft Dix when she goes there, but that’s only once every few months.

  22. Dana
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 11:04 am

    Of course, I take more care not to dribble noodles on the keyboard if I’m viewing Patterico’s Pontifications.

  23. Dana
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 12:26 pm

    Thatch made hay:

    I bet her professors didn’t share that little nugget of wisdom with her when they were separating her from her cash. Con men never let the mark in on the game.

    The only job in the field of Women’s and Gender Studies is as a Professor of Women’s and Gender Studies, so if the professors have more than one student in the field, they are creating an excess number of walking discrimination lawsuits. But if they don’t have more than one student, then they wind up having their jobs cut.

  24. Dana
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 12:28 pm

    Adjoran wrote:

    Strip clubs and Hooters pay more, but they tend not to hire ugly chicks.

    Business idea! We’ll start a lesbian strip club, with naked dykes for the customers! Winning!

  25. cmdr358
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 7:05 pm

    I wonder if any of these scholars just so happen to be Democrats in favor of raising the minimum wage by 30+% and think that being a barista or a sandwich artist is worth $15 per hour.

    Food for thought? Let them eat cake.

  26. Daniel O'Brien
    May 2nd, 2014 @ 7:52 pm

    Piled Higher and Deeper

  27. Jeanette Victoria
    May 3rd, 2014 @ 12:18 pm

    Dump the rubber Ramen stuff and get the real thing Mama Tom Yum Instant Noodles

  28. Economics 101: If you are not trained for a real world job, you shouldn’t be surprised if you can’t find a job in the real world | The First Street Journal.
    May 4th, 2014 @ 4:04 pm

    […] Majoring in Minimum Wage Posted on | May 1, 2014 | […]