Economy Post #1: Jobs and Working For Young People

The Problem (in a written explanation):

I have watched over the past several years as the job market for students coming straight out of college has tanked, leaving thousands upon thousands of ambitious, educated young people without meaningful work and (often times) with tremendous debt that they have no real way to start paying off.  The same is true for folks my age who happen to be interested in working in industries that don't suck your soul.

The blue line is 4 year college graduates

Now, I am not an economist, nor do I play one on TV, but I might have an insight into a systemic situation in many economies around the world that could be a partial source of this problem.  

We don’t honor age.  

This may sound like a counter-intuitive statement to make when I am going to try and explain the shortness of job opportunities for the young in many countries, but hang with me on this... there are actually a few things that go into this!

Our society is a bing-bang-boom, fast-moving, demanding machine.  We thrive on the newest, next-best, instant-gratification technology and products.  We cause rushes on the outlets that dispense these new items when they debut and thus cause noticeable movements in the stock-market.  All of this has come from a strange, but ironically evolutionary instinctual urge to have the most, the best, and the most useful things in our possession.  But more on that later.

This isn’t a novel idea.  Take a look at all of the advertisements around us, both in print and in video and you will see young, virile men and women in active poses, implying some sort of agenda... usually toward reproduction.  Very seldom do we see the wizened elder selling a product or pushing a new technology other than Obi-Wan Kenobi selling the new 3D versions of the Star Wars movies.  Old people are slow and can’t keep up.  They can’t handle the new tech so they are to be left behind and put into a home where they can stagnate and not be more of a burden than it costs to keep them there.  Then we don’t have to listen to them trying to give us advice.  Sad and maybe a little extreme, but true in some cases.  


The result: People work harder the older they get and stay in their positions of power until they just physically fall out of them because they don’t want to get left behind (or for other similar reasons).  If we respected the wealth of knowledge the aging community has and gave them an outlet for that knowledge, they might feel actualized and content in retirement and the younger generation would have some great advice to move ahead with!  

But I digress...

Shifting Gears--Your Religion Lesson for the Day:

While I have been here in India I have been teaching several different religions from several different cultures.  One of these, obviously, is Hinduism.  Now, Hinduism is a vast collection of semi-pagan traditions that have coalesced into a single religion, although it has no unifying creed or doctrine.  There are, because of this, several different paths (yogas--yoga is more than stretching here!) to the final goal of enlightenment or unity with the universe (that is a concept I will dive into later).  One of these paths is the path of karma or the cause and effect of your actions (there is more to that too, but... later).  There are innumerable things that you can do that are good and bad for your karma and that will impact your life and eventually your next life.  If you are trying to reach enlightenment via karma there are many things you are to do to eliminate your bad karma and build your good karma.  One of these has to do with age.

See, I told you it would make sense!

In Hinduism, there are 4 stages of life that you are to follow throughout your life to maximize your good karma.  They are:

1. The student (Brahmacharya)--12-24-- Where the young person learns about life, a vocation, religion, and society.  Very little is expected of these young people and in some circles they are exempt from karma during this age.
2. The Householder (Grihastha)--25-50-- Where the person starts a family, starts a home and seeks wealth (artha) and happiness (kama).  This is the period where people are to make out of themselves as much as they can.
3. The Retiree (Vanaprastha)--51-65?-- Where the person gives up their titles and positions and retreats to a forest dwelling to begin living simply and contemplating life.
4. The Wandering Monk (Sannyasa)--Elderly Years--Where the person gives up everything they have and begin wandering the world looking for the meaning of life and searching for enlightenment.  There isn’t a cut off or beginning time for this as you will just know when it is time to set out.

So, in this set-up there is a time for many things in life.  The implications that go with this are that if you spend too much time in one stage or not enough in another, that is bad for your karma.  I would like to point out a possible underlying cause, which is:  

People need to move on!  Staying in one place is bad for the soul and economy!  For instance: If you stay in school until you are 30 you will have an incredible knowledge base, but possibly little work experience and usually tremendous debt.  If you don’t spend enough time in school you will not be ready to contribute to the economy well.  If you stay in your job until you are 70 you may be getting quite wealthy, but that means that someone else can’t benefit from that job.  Also, there are a lot of people working who should have retired a long time ago because they aren't  excited to do the work anymore or they should be taking that time to be with their family or starting to think about life altogether. 

I am not saying that you shouldn’t seek higher education or that you shouldn’t work late into life.  I am saying that you should listen to your body and your mind and follow those cues so you can be happy on the inside, not just happy in the billfold. 

I am saying that I think that if everyone took a spiritual journey when they were 50 the world would likely be a much more sensible place!  

So, how do we young people create successful, profitable-enough lives that are happy and fulfilling if we are only supposed to work until we are 50?

The answer is simple...um, not converting to Hinduism... actually it is SIMPLICITY!  
(See “The Ox-Cart Lifestyle")

In future posts I will explore options for low cost housing (one of the greatest financial drains on people of all ages), and certain ways that you can live and make a living with relatively low expenses, but not at the expense of comfort and happiness.  

I hope all of this makes sense!  Please let me know what you think about all of this!