White House tells 18M unemployed workers to ‘Find Something New’ | Hacker News Reader

White House tells 18M unemployed workers to ‘Find Something New’

washingtonpost.com

As an outside observer most of American news reporting seems totally ridiculous. If the German government announced a retraining / job initiative there would be a factual article in serious print media. Any criticism included would most likely be a citation of an opposing party representative, labor or business interest. Opinions by the paper on the issue would be kept separate.

This article in contrast mixes opinion and negative rhetoric with facts. It reads like they want to make sure I will have a negative opinion of the program, while I typically don’t read the paper to be convinced of one thing or another.

I think part[1] of the issue here (as with the "cancel culture" debate[2]) is that said labour representative probably doesn't even exist in the same way as in Germany. Is there any equivalent to Mitbestimmung[3]?

[1] Kurzarbeit or lack of it might be another part.

[2] for which my gordian-knot-cutting would be "why is firing people without cause even legal?", but I guess if at-will employment is a third rail in the US, then at least findsomethingnew.org would be a useful link to send people who feel they have been unfairly cancelled for expressing conservative viewpoints yet have little faith that the free market will provide an alternate job.

https://www.iamexpat.de/career/working-in-germany/workplace-...

[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Codetermination_in_Germany

even worse, no universal health insurance in the States, so often no job means no insurance:

https://www.faz.net/aktuell/politik/trumps-praesidentschaft/...

People who are unemployed through no fault of their own in Germany are not in danger of starvation and homelessness. That's a key difference.

Part of the pushback with this is that one of the faces of the program is the President’s daughter. Something rubs people the wrong way to have a person, who is worth hundreds of millions of dollars and was gifted a government role, telling the unemployed what their problems are and what they need to be doing to support themselves.

Something about it comes across as totally oblivious to the real issues faced by everyday Americans and is bound to be received poorly.

Some people would say its "tone deaf".

I idly clicked through the findsomethingnew.org website and got routed to the apprenticeships section.

On the page about apprenticeships, I clicked IBM, the second result from the top.

On the IBM site, I clicked the big blue button labeled "see apprenticeship openings and apply."

Clicking that button took me to a page with the following text: "Unfortunately we don’t have any opportunities matching your search criteria at the moment."

Thanks, Obama!

I remember going to an apprenticeship site from the federal government and searching out of curiosity. A lot of what I saw listed on there, weren't even really apprenticeships, but entry level jobs requiring advanced education, etc.

Could we tell the WH the same thing?

Yes, in November.

Perhaps what is needed is a way for all these 18 million unemployed people to find one another so they can start businesses?

There are many types of business that can start in just a few weeks with nearly no capital.

For example, a 2nd hand mower and a borrowed truck is plenty to start a garden maintenance company. I'm sure plenty of those 18 million people already have those things, yet are instead staying home watching Netflix and hoping for 'better' job offers to arrive...

People are already doing that. I have at least two inquiries per week from people wanting to either mow my lawn or clean my house.

Detail/wash cars. Paint the house.

There are a lot of lawn mowing businesses... including high school kids this summer.

That's an interesting suggestion, but wholly impractical. I can "start" a business this afternoon, but that doesn't mean it's going to make me money or be able to support me.

Paywall bypass: http://archive.is/tgANJ

They could have stated the obvious ... "FU".

Surprised at the push back in here. Telling people they should consider getting a trade skill rather than a 4 year college degree that is semi-useless isn't that controversial on HN typically. Could it be because it's coming from the current administration and everything they do is 'bad' ?

It's because people who were forced out of work by COVID-19 need to support themselves right now, not go back to school. It's not because "orange man bad."

45 and his cronies are simply not qualified to do the job.

Yeah, well, I agree. I never actually said orange man wasn't bad.

The pushback is because the message is asinine. It implies that people lost their jobs because of a skills deficit, not because there's a mismanaged pandemic ravaging large swaths of the country.

After nearly four years of nepotism, greed, and incompetence, it's reasonable to assume that what the current administration is doing is bad. Not to say everything they will ever do is bad, just that assuming a mixture of malice and incompetence is a reasonable heuristic.

when people are saying things like expanding trade skills most people mean in that in an abstract sense, as in, let's teach more young people skills they need to succeed in the labour market.

Not let's tell 18 million people who might be struggling to put food on the table right now to go fuck themselves and magically learn a four year trade

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