Two-thirds of kids today are denied a working knowledge of any of that. There is mystery and magic in the process but also a tremendous amount of toil, risk, hard work, and adventure. They have to be produced in extended production structures that begin with raw materials and end in a consumption good, with a thousand steps in between. ![]() People of a certain age don’t seem to understand that things don’t just land at our front doors as if by magic. The missing element here of real-world experience has profound consequences. Even more than that, the culture has taught people that working is a waste of their time and that earning school credentials is all that matters for a good life. While you can get many jobs now at 16 years old, that’s when kids are already involved in everything else from social activities to sports to dating and so on, so there’s much less interest in working at all. It’s sad to read those accounts because most of what they did was made completely illegal by 1937. They tell of the toil, the challenges, the mixing of classes, the strange dangers, the way they were taught the workings of the production side of economic life, as well as how the early years of work shaped their outlook and character, and created a foundation for a lifetime of achievement. Tucker)The autobiographies of the great men and women of the Gilded Age nearly all begin the story with their jobs from when they were young. (Data: Federal Reserve Economic Data, St. ![]() In general, prime-age worker/population ratios have risen over time but the credit for that belongs almost entirely to women. It has risen slightly since then to 31 percent, but that’s very low by any historical standard. The problem of low teenage employment intensified after 2000, when it became somehow unfashionable among the middle class. In the space of those decades, teen work slipped to 25 percent of kids from 50 percent. The postwar high point of teen work came in 1952, and the low point in 2010. It isn’t clear that many even understand what that means. More crucially, we have a whole generation that has come to believe that income is earned by credentials, not by actual value added. Everything becomes a grievance, and the HR department serves as the corporate equivalent of a middle-school principal’s office. Among the most kvetching and litigious class of workers today are those who have never felt a stress in life that Adderall can’t fix. This is a real tragedy, and we are paying the price now. They enter the labor force without experience in working on teams, managing money, dealing with a boss, serving customers, grappling with workplace stress, forgoing the comforts of the sofa for the pains of late-night closing hours, and all the other formative experiences of generations. Fewer than a third of teens aged 16 to 19 are employed in anything other than desk sitting, presumably preparing for some great career. What was your first job? Most people over the age of 60 have a compelling story that begins in their teen years or younger. I’ve thought back often on that experience and what the disappointing answer to my question means for generations of people. I did my job anyway, but I also learned my lesson. That’s simply because the kids had no point of reference. I couldn’t elaborate on the consumer–producer relationship, the role of marketing, the place of accounting, and the functioning of markets. Nothing I said that day would really connect because it would be entirely abstract. My heart sank and I was stunned into silence. From the entire auditorium full of kids, only a few hands went up in scattered places. ![]() “How many of you have jobs apart from school that pay money?” I asked. So, I decided to draw on their personal experiences. ![]() Otherwise, for these kids trapped in desks for 12 to 16 years, my words would be just another lecture. From my experience, there’s no better teacher than experience itself. A few years ago, I was tasked with giving a 45-minute introduction on business and economics to several hundred high school students.
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