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Interesting article about useless youth.

H

Hay hay hay

Well-known Member
Just read an article about how the young people of this nation will not be able to carry on the great traditions of hard work, thrift, drive for learning and ethical living. It stated that the latest trends in music, culture, dress, and constant focus on the media screen was undermining the decency of our culture and the America of tomorrow was at risk.

It was dated 1960...and they were talking about you and me. Sound familiar?
 
Yes sir. Some things never change.
Remember, Elvis' music was the spawn of the devil.
Not allowed on the Ed Sullivan show above the waist.
As much as things have changed, many have remained the same.
 
Edd,

It sounds to me like they were right. America has been, and continues to be, on a downslide, morally, fiscally, militarily, culturally, educationally, and about ever other kind of "ally" one can think of.

Unfortunately, the leftists are prevailing.

Tom in TN
 
and speaking of Elvis and changing times, can you imagine the uproar there would be today over his #1 hit "In The Ghetto" ?? Sharpton and his bunch would have puckered up sphynkters over that wouldn't they. Probably even generate a presidential "that could have been me" speach. and am sure no stations would play it for fear of retribution. Truth hurts sometimes but someone recognize it and propagate it we are doomed. Oh , and so this doesn,t get poofed, Elvis did have a tractor.
 
You hit the nail on the head.
One last point that I will make.......15.8 % of the entire US population is on food stamps.......WTF ? That is over 45 million people.

Yes-- as a nation we are a wreck.
 
Edd, I'm a bit younger than you and when I was 18 or so, yes your generation was obviously a problem lol. The more things change the more they stay the same.
 
“Our youth now love luxury. They have bad manners, contempt for authority; they show disrespect for their elders and love chatter in place of exercise; they no longer rise when elders enter the room; they contradict their parents, chatter before company; gobble up their food and tyrannize their teachers.”
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Socrates
 
Only speaking from personal experience but I worked for a large aluminum plant for 32 years. I worked all the overtime that I could get--when I was a young man--and NEVER "laid out" simply because I didn't want to work. This was also true for the vast majority of the employees.
I have been retired since 2005 and I don't know if things have changed but the company was lucky to have a young man that worked 40 hours a week in the last few years I worked. The majority of young employees didn't want to work overtime!
A person in management told me this, but I already knew it.
 
Well, many of you know that I am only 15, but many also say that I don"t exactly "fit in" with my group of kids. I honestly don"t know one my age that would rather go run a tractor, do some forestry, ride a 4 wheeler, or anything else OUTSIDE, instead of playing the newest and coolest video game. I personally have always hated them, and feel that they are a waste of time, but thats just me. Just goes to show ya, it takes all kinds to make the world go around... Bryce
 
and yet it is allright for Kanye West and his ilk to spew their garbage because of their right to free speach
 
(quoted from post at 02:00:00 01/12/14) Well, many of you know that I am only 15, but many also say that I don"t exactly "fit in" with my group of kids. I honestly don"t know one my age that would rather go run a tractor, do some forestry, ride a 4 wheeler, or anything else OUTSIDE, instead of playing the newest and coolest video game. I personally have always hated them, and feel that they are a waste of time, but thats just me. Just goes to show ya, it takes all kinds to make the world go around... Bryce
Click to expand...
You sound like me when I was in my teens. I wasn't very athletic, so while most others my age were playing ball or watching tv, I would be working on small engines.
 
You're probably right B-, and that brings up another thing
that never seems to change. Cover tunes in music.
Elvis had a big hit with that Mac Davis tune! LOL
 
Well that article pretty well hit it on the head. The baby boomer generation pretty well has wrecked this country. I am a baby boomer too so I am to blame as well.

Can you imagine your Grand Father or Great Grand father generation standing for the things this country has going on today????

A lot of today's problems can be traced back to Roosevelt's "New Deal" programs. They started the nation looking toward the Government providing/saving them rather than the people doing it themselves.

I am a history nut. It is an economic fact that FDRs "New Deal" actually made the "Great Depression" last longer than it would have if he had not done anything. He got lucky and WWII bailed him out of a great big HOLE!!

Think back to the largest DRAINS that the government has on it today. They all have been the result of hand outs growing out of control. The Social Security is a great big ponzi scheme. The welfare programs and Medicare that where created in the 1960s are now HUGE drains.

Think of how many people you personally know that are drawing SS disability checks??? Many of them are just kids that are not really that sick but will get money their whole life because supposedly have ADD or some other vague issue.

IF you make being poor not have some pain then you will have more people stay poor. My youngest son has friends that are on all the different government programs: Heat assistance, low income housing, Food stamps, etc. Their benefits have a value of around $10,000-15,000 per year. So what happens??? They just get used to living at that economic level. They say they can't work any or too much or they lose all "their" benefits. So they never try. They never will have anything. They have settled for just getting by because it is free and easy.

Yep us baby boomer's have ran a once great ship aground.
 
Bryce, the older generation has been "down" on the younger
generation forever. That's really the point of the post.

There are exceptions to every rule of course and you are one of them.

Roll with it! Just STAY OFF MY LAWN! LOL :)
 
When I was in high school, an upperclassman wrote an article in the school paper similar to what you have about our class, a whole one year behind her.
 
Edd, best thing that ever happened to me was to start working on the horse farm at 14, then working on 2 thoroughbred horse farms at 19. Lol, now I'm 39 and still at one farm. I was never big into video games, and I only like all things hard rock and heavy metal, and the music never influenced me to do anything bad, I don't ever watch the news, the media has ruined this country. As for tv, I can't believe the language on shows today, I like the older shows better, dukes of Hazzard, walker Texas ranger, rifleman, emergency, ect, ect, now with my 2 year old daughter, I have to be careful what is on these new tv shows because of the content and language. As my dad put it, I feel sorry for you daughters future!
 
WE let our children watch Freddy Disallowed type of stuff, Buy them video games and everyone knows that all grade schoolers must have a smart phone.

WE let them watch the trash TV shows and even enjoy many of them ourselves setting up a poor example for our children.

We do not teach them proper work or personal ethics to live by.

We are to blame.
NOTE: When I say we I am just talking about the majority of us not every single one of us.
 
I'm a little more than twice your age, but had the same situation when I was your age. I now have a few old tractors in my barn, have a small farm going, and a son on the way. Wouldn't change nothing.
 
In the late 1920's the young people were criticized for their jazz music, for their dancing, for the clothes the flappers wore, for breaking the law to drink alcohol, for making out in cars, etc., etc., etc. They went on to fight WW2 and now they are referred to as "the greatest generation".
 
That's been the song of the aged and decrepit since time immemorial ... stemming from their unfounded belief that they're the only ones in the history of the world that ever did anything or ever could... yet the world just seems to keep on keeping on.
I read a similar type of remark in a book the other day recounting attitudes from the 1890's... and I suspect you could pick any year in recorded history and it would be the same.

Rod
 
Jiles, sounds like me exactly. I was a total
outcast through grade school. Once in highschool they found out I
could fix their junk cars so they at least had to
tolerate me.
 
I agree, it's easier for some parents to give there kid video
games and not be bothered watching them. I take my daughter
to the barn 4 out of 7 days a week to spend time with her, and
let her be active and learn something, which she does, she'll
pick up loose hay, like 1 horse mouth full, and want me to put
it in the stall, it's really no help at all, but she sees me do it with
a few flakes of hay and has learned by it. She sees me feed the cows, chickens and cats and she always wants to help. I haven't got her to scatter the corn for the chickens, she just dumps it in a pile! Lol
 
Oh the stories my lying as have told me, or so I am told by people I have never met and am supposed to believe and follow the commands and demands of in lock step today.

Mark
 
Thanks for all the replies, I appreciate everyones viewpoints. I grew up outside Louisville, Ky and one thing has changed. Many of the guys and gals I went to highschool with went to Louisville for factory jobs, at Ford, GE, Harvestor, Dupont, The GOVT. bag plant, Jeff Boat,Speeds,Brown-Forman and many other factories. Those were good paying jobs with stability and benefits, a retirement plan, etc.
Same for the few grads that migrated north to Indy to work.

50 years later, many of those factories are now gone, plants closed. Those remaining are a shadow. GE from 20,000..now down to 5,000. It is easy for an old retiree like me to say..."Get a Job"...harder for me to say "Where". Unemployemant in the USA went from 4% to 10% in 6 short months. I don't honestly think 6% of the workforce became bums overnight. It is a very complex challenge, and I think the 20-something-kids face a very difficult, and different future than we did.

Just my opinion..and what a great country..where I am allowed to have one
 
Edd,

I think there were many more country folks in 1960.

2014, there's way more city folks. They now rule the roost.

D.
 
Bryce, there are always exceptions, and you seem to be quite exceptional! Welcome to the real world! Those your age who refuse to get their head out of a video game or such have no idea just what is "out there". So they win a game occasionally, so what have they accomplished? On the other hand, you take a derelict tractor and breath life back into it. THAT is an accomplishment! And one to be proud of!
 
Yeah, somewhere in the fifties, there was a movie, "Don't knock the Rock",about how parents viewed the evils of Rock N Roll, and how the younger generation proved them wrong. Fast forward to the sixties, here comes, "Don't Knock the Twist", same scenario. Years later, I was watching late night TV and here was this movie, I can't remember the name, about the younger generation doing all these evil dances like the Jitterbug, etc. Seems like about every ten years for several decades the same scenario was covered, yet, each generation went on to accomplish great things.
HOWEVER, I can't help but feel that the situation is degenerating. With all the potential of the world of electronics, about all that the majority does is text, talk, and play games, never wondering, "Just What makes this thing tick?" There is little incentive for a young man to buy an old clunker and learn to work on it in the back yard, because they can't afford the hundreds and even thousands of dollars that diagnostic equipment costs.
I am not saying that today's generation is failing just because I am in my 70s, I say this because I hear people of today's generation say so.
 
"Yep us baby boomer's have ran a once great ship aground."

I wish I had a good counter point. I don't.
 
When I first read the post, I was thinking about some old philosopher that said the same thing.....actually thot it was Socrates, but wasn"t sure. Yeah, I guess time marches on.......
 
(quoted from post at 19:06:01 01/11/14) In the late 1920's the young people were criticized for their jazz music, for their dancing, for the clothes the flappers wore, for breaking the law to drink alcohol, for making out in cars, etc., etc., etc. They went on to fight WW2 and now they are referred to as "the greatest generation".
Click to expand...

Whoa there Hoss. A tiny percentage of the youth if the teens and 20's were taking part in all you list. Most, like 80% of the nation, lived out in rural areas where there were no night clubs and flappers and Cotton Club type stuff. You're making an inaccurate assessment based on movies of the 20's. The fact is the "Greatest Generation" didn't win WW2 because of the Roaring 20's, but because of the Dirty 30's which taught them to buckle down and do the job or starve.

And just for the record, read up on WW2 a bit more and find out some of the garbage some of that generation did- like work slow downs and strikes on gov't contracts, like unions screwing the jobs up until they got what they wanted or profiteering by some businesses, communists working as much against the US as the Nazis, or look into the aftermath of WW2 and see what the avant garde Brain Trust of the 30's were doing post WW2, where they worked against the US. They were the Greatest Generation, yes, but they had plenty of bad apples.
 
I'll give you my 2 cents- What's changed is the advent of the entitlement mentality. Kids have been sold this line about "go tot college and you'll get a good job and be a CEO in a week" or that something like health care or high wages or access to drugs is a "human right". It's not the kids today won't work or stay long hours or sacrifice. Our troops prove they can and will. It's that they don't grasp the concept that it's NORMAL to have to get dirty and sweat outside a gym, not party every night, work lots of OT, work int he cold or wet or whatever. No one LIKES it, no ever has. The biggest thing I see is they all expect it to be over with in record time, whatever it is. "This is gonna take forever!" or "This is boring" are the words I hear most often. It's not that the ethic isn't buried deep in them, it's that they don't know how to access it.
 
I'm sure somewhere in Egypt there are some ancient hieroglyphics lamenting the irresponsibility of that generation's youth. "Why, when I was their age, we'd have added three stones to the pyramid before breakfast! And we thought nothing of walking to school in a blinding sandstorm! My kid wants his own camel and he can't be trusted with a donkey. And you should see his penmanship--I can't make out half the hieroglyphics on his papyrus."
 
gradjiated in the late 60's. Told my girlfriend at the time, The worst nightmare I can envision is these characters running the country 35 years from now. Some nightmares come true.........

And I freely admit to doing some stupid stuff along the way myself. Too soon old and too late smart.
 
(quoted from post at 20:00:00 01/11/14) Well, many of you know that I am only 15, but many also say that I don"t exactly "fit in" with my group of kids. I honestly don"t know one my age that would rather go run a tractor, do some forestry, ride a 4 wheeler, or anything else OUTSIDE, instead of playing the newest and coolest video game. I personally have always hated them, and feel that they are a waste of time, but thats just me. Just goes to show ya, it takes all kinds to make the world go around... Bryce
Click to expand...

Bryce
Go to your computer and print out what you just said and stick it in a file for your resume.
I ran a mechanical shop for years and I would have given you a job on the spot after reading this regardless of your experience.
I have no problem teaching somebody with initiative.
I always told my employees when your attitude exceeds you aptitude I will no longer have any use for you.
You clearly have the right attitude to succeed.
 
I agree - anyone can work, its a matter of motivation. When someone (gubment) says 'I will give you this', then why should you go out and work for 'this'?
 
I graduated from high school in 1969 so you know what generation I'm in. We were a revolting bunch of young people and I remember thinking "these long haired, pot smoking hippies of my generation will someday run our country". These long haired pot smoking hippies grew up into adults who developed most of the modern conveniences and conveyances we have today. It's true our parent's generation started the development of modern technology during WW2 but we, their children could have dropped the ball and not run with it. Instead, we carried it and developed it. One example we all can relate to is the cars we drive. Our parent's generation developed cars that pooped out at 100,000 miles. Our generation took that technology and refined it into cars that can go 2 1/2 times that far or more. Whether we like this expensive newfangled stuff or not, it took a lot of brains and energy to develop it, and that came from OUR generation. And cars are just a miniscule example of what we've gained.

I have a feeling our generation has dropped the ball morality-wise. We have worked overly hard trying to beat the Jonses instead of building our financial equity. Our children have become spoiled by the technologies we so proudly have built. Sophisticated machines do the work our muscles and minds used to perform leading to laziness. I'd better quit!!!! Jim
 
There's always been a sense of entitlement too. It's just that the demographics of the 'entitled' have changed somewhat...
As far as people today not wanting to go out and work and get dirty... I think most of that stems from the fact that most of us today have no desire to sacrifice our health or freeze to death working on something in a snow bank just because some moron from 40 years ago did the same thing. Particularly so when there's a considerable argument to be made that the quality of work would increase if it was done in a controlled environment. I've heard all the stories about lugging 100 pound sacks of potatoes around and all the crap that goes with those stories. I don't see a need to kill myself when a loader can do the job for me. What I get sick of is the attitude that since 'I did it', now 'you have to do it'. That doesn't teach anything but contempt.

Rod
 
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