God Bless Gavin McInnes and Taki's Magazine!

By Gavin McInness...

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It’s a cliché to bitch about how hard it was when you were their age, but Jesus Christ, do the kids today even know what sweat is?

I had a relative send me his resume recently and there wasn’t one real job on it. He was totally over-educated and massively under-worked.

* AND ACTUALLY... MY BET IS THAT THE NEPHEW WASN'T SO MUCH "OVER-EDUCATED" AS HE'S "OVER-CREDENTIALED" - MISLEADINGLY CREDENTIALED IN TERMS OF WHAT HIS ACTUAL SKILLS ARE AFTER K-12 AND THEN COLLEGE.

In the Curmudgeon’s Guide to Getting Ahead, Charles Murray talks about CEOs who avoid these kinds of graduates because they can’t relate to someone who’s never had a job.

* OR PERHAPS MORE ACCURATELY... NEVER WORKED UP A SWEAT... NEVER REALLY BUSTED HIS OR HER ASS.

Today’s youth are sitting on the couch in the basement because they can’t find work in their field. “Gender and Film” is a degree that cost them $60k to get but nobody cares if Star Wars is sexist. They avoid blue-collar work because their parents always hired illegals for those tasks and it instilled within them a kind of 18th-century classism.

(*NOD*)

Menial labor isn’t beneath anyone.

* GOD DAMN RIGHT! AMEN! HALLELUJAH! LET THE TRUTH SHINE OUT!

It builds character, gets you in shape, and makes you a successful entrepreneur.

* WELL... AT LEAST THE FIRST TWO... (*GRIN*)

“No matter how hard things get, I think, ‘Oh well, at least bugs aren’t crawling up my ass.’”

* I LOVE THIS GUY, MCINNES!

I’ve been working my ass off since it was legal to work. I pumped gas, stocked shelves, cleaned pools, licked envelopes, washed dishes, bussed tables, delivered records, painted houses, and mowed lawns. Minimum wage back then was less than $5/hr and we survived because we didn’t have families to raise.

I don’t know what Obama’s talking about. You’re not supposed to be a dad and work at McDonald’s.

* YES...! YES...! (*STANDING FRIGGIN' OVATION*)

That’s a kid’s job.

* AND AT WORST A NEW START FOR SOMEONE WHO HAS LOST HIS OR HER WAY... (THE KEY WORD BEING "START" - AS IN THE FIRST OF MANY UPWARDS TRANSITIONAL MOVES!)

You’re not supposed to hire illegals for menial labor.

* NOPE!

That’s a kid’s job too.

* YEP...!!!

In Canada it’s the teenagers who do the landscaping and pick the fruit. I hated doing both but it was better than playing Xbox in the basement all night.

* AMEN!

I think the worst job I ever had was being a bike messenger in Montreal in the winter. I’d have to get up at 5:30 in the morning when it was still dark out. My French girlfriend was on welfare (not uncommon for able-bodied frogs) and leaving her warm body to get on a fucking bicycle in the snow seemed a cruel and unusual punishment. Montreal is not only colder than Moscow but it’s named after a mountain, which means you’re climbing a 45-degree hill in negative 100-degree weather. The streets get plowed as much as humanly possible but it snows non-stop there so every ride was like wrestling porridge. You made just above minimum wage in February because nobody else would do it, but in the summer, you’d be lucky to clear $100 a week. To add insult to injury, the employer was French, which meant les maudits anglais were the last on the list. There were many days in July where I wouldn’t earn a dime.

(*PURSED LIPS*)

“Gaston! It’s been four hours. How can there be no calls?” we’d yell.

“I dunno what do dell you, guy. I’m sidding here grapping my balls too,” he’d reply in his tortured English. I hated that fucker but he taught me a valuable lesson: People can be fuckers.

* NOW THIS GUY MCGINNES KNOWS HOW TO CURSE! APPROPRIATELY! (I LOVE THIS GUY!)

Actually, that wasn’t the worst job I ever had. Planting trees in Northern Ontario was the worst. Every spring for five years we would get in a bus and truck out 20 hours north of Montreal to live in the unfriendliest terrain North America has to offer. Most don’t think there is a civilization that far North and they’re kind of right. It’s just Indians, Frenchmen, and hunters. Spring up there combines their horrific winters with their incredibly brief, scalding hot summers.

When you wake up at 4 AM, your tent is completely covered in snow. You don’t need to get dressed because you already are, ski mask and mittens included. By noon, the sun is oppressively intense and you can’t wear much more than your underwear and boots (some go nude). This is dangerous because the blackflies and mosquitoes are so dense, they look like clouds of smoke. The amount of DDT you’d need to keep them off would give you cancer, so, after a base tan, most planters just smother themselves in vegetable oil. The bugs stick to your skin and drown in such high numbers you look like you’re wearing full-body fishnet stockings. If you take a shit, they cover your ass and scrotum and the itching from being bit in such unusual places drives you insane. When you eat a sandwich, it’s half bugs. After a while, you don’t even notice them and will casually eat blackflies off the windscreen if you’re lucky enough to ride in the foreman’s truck (one in three taste like raspberries, the others just taste like potatoes). To this day, a millipede can crawl over my foot and I’ll just stare at it like it’s a casual friend on his way to work. I am immune to creepy crawlies.

While suffering, I saw how my boss’s business worked.

He promoted me to foreman and we bid on contracts together.

I learned how incompetent the government is as the Ministry of Natural Resources would consistently give us just over whatever rating we needed to not get fired.

(*SNORT*)

I barely made enough to stay alive as a bike messenger, and tree planting went from $1,500 my first season to about $7,000 my last. The lessons I learned from all these jobs, however, were invaluable. I was taught the basics: Starting a new business means you are broke for two years. You have to take out the garbage and do your own taxes. Entrepreneurs aren’t awarded a team on day one. "You" are the team! You have to spend all night sitting at your desk working on a proposal that most likely won’t happen. (I have no problem doing this because most offices are climate controlled. No matter how hard things get, I think, “Oh well, at least bugs aren’t crawling up my ass.”)

(*GRIN*)

This is why it is so crucial that young people work. It provides them the economic libido they need to survive in the real world.

We have evolved to derive pleasure from our accomplishments, no matter how small. The ones who don’t have this trait are extinct. By usurping this natural joy from our children we are denying them self-worth and that’s a form of child abuse.

The only thing crueler than saddling a kid with debt and a useless degree is teaching him he’s too good for a shitty job.