I took today off from work in an effort to save what's left of my sanity, so I'll have a blowout of what's been floating around my cerebellum.
Here's what I don't get; perhaps someone here can explain it to me.
My dad went to a vocational high school where he got a welding certificate. At 26 he started working at an aircraft manufacturing plant on the assembly line. As far as I know he always made $40,000 a year, and just before he retired he could brush six figures by working overtime. He got two weeks of paid vacation, a week of "sick days," and the plant always closed for a week in Christmas, so he potentially had a full month off every year.
About the time he was my age he was buying an all-brick, two-car-garage ranch house with a full basement. My parents were frugal and only bought five-year-old used cars, but they were always Lincolns and Cadillacs. We were the first family I knew of to have HBO (though they quickly got rid of it) and a VCR. I got $20 allowance as a teenager and never had an obstacle going to the big rock shows and getting a T-shirt.
My dad's brother welded for the Tennessee Valley Authority and was far looser financially than my parents were. Also only armed with only a high school diploma, he never failed to have a new truck, a big-screen TV, one of the large `80's satellite dishes in his back yard, a new stereo, a few trailers he rented, you name it.
Within this comfortable mileu my dad would always...scream...that I had to do well in school and make the most of my brains so I could avoid working on an assembly line like he did. "Otherwise you might wind up having to join the Army!," he would say, and I would admonish him for insulting the many bright people who filled the ranks of our armed services. As a former Army man himself he told me I was full of shit, most people were there because they were desperate for work and/or not very bright*. Number one priority was going to college, any college, because, "...once you have that degree the jobs will come looking for you!"
So I grew up figuring if you could live our life on a high school diploma, certainly someone like me who was touted as a bright light, who not only got a degree but had a propensity for running around town saying, "Look at me! Look at me!," well...forget it! Things would most certainly be a cakewalk.
So I'm mystified why I have a degree, little awards for this and that and I'm nowhere near where my high school diploma dad was at the same point. And it would be more embarassing if I didn't run into others with college diplomas, even Master's degrees, former electrical engineers, etc., who are also up shit creek.
I've developed a theory that my dad and uncle's generation came around as the country was cresting it's peak. They were born in the 1930's in a neighborhood where most people didn't have cars and rode the city bus everywhere. My parents have told me what it was like to use a outhouse and how they had to heat their bath water on coal-burning stoves. Then the 1950's came along and everybody got indoor plumbing, at least a few people got brand-new cars with giant tailfins, and TV's began lighting up living rooms at night. My mom and her brother Gene both got college degrees. All around post-World War II America was booming.
And so from the 1960's to the 1990's America was the preeminent world industrial and military power, and my parents saw a period where you could live the "high life" on a high school education, and if you had a college degree? Well, forget it! My uncle Gene was pointed to as a hallmark of that achievement -- you'd be a vice president at Shell!
But now...outsourcing, illegal immigrants, Indians taking IT jobs at 1/3 the price of Americans, and now we have people with Master's degrees working in call centers for $12 an hour. The hill has been crested and we're now on the other side.
Be back later, I've got to put my bath water on the cook stove.
* A little current events humor/sarcasm for you.
The economy has shifted from manufacturing to service. We don't want any pollution, so America manufactures very little.
The economic model your father worked under is not sustainable. Ask Delta or General Motors. As the life span enlarges, people still want to retire at 60 to 65, yet now they're going to live 12 years instead of 2. GM has 1 employee for every 5 retirees they're paying a pension and providing health insurance to the retiree and his(her) family. These numbers cannot work.
Immigrants have driven down the pay scale.
Women have entered the workforce at a rising rate since 1970, also depressing wages. The labor pool growth outstripped demand.
WWII thinned out the potential labor pool with the large number of young men killed. Those who survived, or didn't serve, could always find a job.
More people go to college. Therefore, the value of the degree is eroded.
There are a lot of reasons why our economic situation is different from that of our parents. Economies evolve.
I'm not sure if by economic model you mean union, but a Delta employee told me their problem was that due to 9/11 fewer people were flying while prices for gas rose. In General Motors and Ford's case the cars I grew up in needed constant, expensive servicing. My Toyota has had one belt replaced in four years.
The last statistic I read said still only about 20%-25% of the population ever enters college, and less than half of that graduates, so surely a degree carries some value.
On the other hand I just returned from Best Buy where there were rows and rows of $3,500 TVs for sale. Somebody, somewhere is making some money. Somebody has to make those TVs and someone has to make the cash to buy them for so many superstores to exist, so the banana must still have some yellow.
Maybe your dad poured his energy into something useful instead of designing a purty little page like this one and whining on it all the time about how unfair life was. Jeez, if you like to write so much, write a book at least. Make your tragic-white-guy tales into something FUNNY, maybe. You seem to have plenty of material.
Write a book, write a short story, make something meaningful out of your horrid little existence.
P.S. I do want to congratulate you on the popularity of your "White & Nerdy" song. You look hot in the video too.