A few items in the Oregonian’s editorial pages have caught my eye in regards to “signs” of the Great Unraveling of the Sociological Economy.  Item number one was one of those “Annoying Unsigned Editorials” the Oregonian publishes which tend to say nothing so much as state that an issue exists, the topic seemed rather randomly generated. I can only suspect that perhaps the author of this unsigned piece may be dealiing with it personally. “Boomerang Children”. The only thing I will say is that I suspect if one were to go through Lexis Nexus (Nexus Lexis?) and chart news mentions of “Boomerang Children” the peaks of the mentions would correspond to Recessionary Periods.

Item #2 and Item #3 sort of came together to me and were in the same eidition of the Oregonian, namely Sunday’s. Item #2 is an editorial by a DEBRA GWARTNEY touching on the evergreen subject of those kids’ damnable work ethic, as from a jarring false lesson to a young one from a moment in the movie “Kung Fu Panda.”   Apparently the problem is that the Kung Fu Panda has to sort of shift through his entry-level job unsatisfactorily en route to when that shift ends and he can partake in his real passion of ,um, Kung Fu Pandaing. Her compalaint on this score puzzles me somewhat, and here I refer to the “Major American Poet” Loverboy, probably if you click on your classic rock station right this second you will hear it, and I quote “Everybody’s Working for the Weekend.” There are a number of points of departure from this essay, but I will stick to this line:

The truth is, with the waning clout of a college education, the squeezing of student loans and a shortage of ladder-climbing professional positions, a huge number of young people will spend their entire careers in the service industry: selling bluejeans at J.Crew or hot dogs at NFL games. They’ll wait on a public they’ll quickly learn to treat as a nuisance, and, more critically, they’ll fail to understand that if they want to grow into a better job, a more satisfying work life, then they must treat the one they have with at least some measure of respect.

The post – boldened lines suggests the level of compartmentalization to shoo away their job to get to the task of Kung Fu Pandaing, and the boldened part suggests one item: degraded job prospects (and for that matter, as per falling purchasing power) equally degraded job pride.

(My other point of departure is an interesting item of Attitude comparison, which is that in large numbers of service industries — the grocery store for instance, I puzzle over people’s strong attachment to facets of Customer Service.  I prefer Speed over Friendliness and could care less if the server cracks a smile, indeed prefer that they don’t — but maybe I just identify with the “meh”.  Perhaps things change in the case of a, say, a sit-down restaurant, but I’d have to quantify that a little bit.) 

Anyway, for the Employer the problem is easily solvable from the matter of Item #3, which I would link to if only the Oregonian’s website were user-friendly and I’d be able to find it on a dime.  See, the Three Legged Stool of Retirement — Savings, Pension, Social Security, now has a fourth Stool. RE-EMPLOYMENT!!! This is kind of interesting because as I recall back in the 1990s there was a bit of a crisis mongering causes over the specter of the encouragement and incentivizing of Early Retirement. Wait for the economic up-swing and perhaps we’ll get back to that.  Or maybe the sort of reshuffling of professionals into Wall-mart Greeters is just a part of the permanent Economic Order.  I don’t know.

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