
Only successful people can afford a CV of failure - programLyrique
http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2016/may/01/only-successful-people-can-afford-cv-of-failure
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blue_dinner
"I’ve had much luck in my life: being born into a middle-class family and
having any natural ability nurtured by my parents and then by the education
system"

This might be lucky on the part of the individual, but parents that sacrifice
their own time, money, and life for their child's future definitely isn't
luck. It's a choice. If more people saw it this way, we might have parents
that actually cared about their child's education and less people in abject
poverty.

..and 'nurtured by the education system' is kind of a joke in the US. The K-12
education system is terrible for everyone.

"Yet there is a dearth of thinking about how we can make these jobs more
fulfilling, better paid and more respected"

The problem is that low-skilled jobs will always be low-paid in a capitalist
system because pretty much anyone can do them. The only way to counter this is
to artificially limit the amount of people that can actually do the job by
limiting the supply or create some sort of union to force higher wages. Both
bad ideas for the long-term.

"and to increase the relationship between effort and success."

Effort has never equaled success. You might put all the effort in the world
into something and it you will still fail. You can always learn from your
failures. I failed job interviews, businesses, and many other things before I
succeeded. We should be stressing to our youth that you aren't entitled to
success. You need to earn it.

"it is not uncommon to find graduates working in a bar on a zero hours
contract"

What was their major? STEM majors have little problems finding work. Liberal
arts? many can't find a job. We should be encouraging students to pick a major
that at least has chance of being able to get a job that pays well enough to
pay off their debt. Otherwise, it's just a gamble. They might as well start
their own business and skip college altogether.

We should be talking about the trades. I know people that are carpenters and
electricians and they can't get enough young people even interested enough to
apply for the job.

Mostly because they don't want to start out from the bottom and work their way
up. Many feel like they should be making $100K right away.

