What is Occupy Wallstreet?

[kandrathe]

No, you are still deflecting. Your above comments is a perfect deflection. What you've illustrated is not equality of opportunity, you've described no opportunity. There has to be an opportunity there to even check to see if there is an equality of opportunity, what you've described above is a complete and utter lack of opportunity, something completely different.

I don't see it that way. An open job position is an opportunity for someone, being accepted into college is an opportunity, having a good idea and the means to start a new business venture is an opportunity. Disagreeing with you is not deflecting.

An example of equality of opportunity is you have a position and five people apply for said position. The position requires either a degree or 5 years experience. Now, let's setup the five people.

Applicant one has a degree in the area you're looking for, some experience in another area (re-educated trying to try a new career), happens to be latino, and has excellent references.

Applicant two has a degree, 5 years experience in the area, happens to female, and has so-so references.

Applicant three has no degree, has 10 years experience, happens to be a white male, with good references.

Applicant four has no degree, has 5 years experience, happens to be asian, and a friend of your boss (their only real reference).

Applicant five has a degree, 2 years experience, has mediocre references, and happens to be a close friend.

Now, in an equality of opportunity, all of the applicants fit the minimum for the position. You interview all of them and your final choice is based on who interviewed best and had the best references.

But the way things work now, applicant four and applicant five would be chosen over the others because of connections with the company (#4 due to being a friend of the boss and #5 due to being a friend of you the interviewer). This is more typical that most people realize as a large majority of jobs are handled by word of mouth than by putting out an advertisement (this was an interesting statistic given to me by someone that helps with job placement when I was looking for work last year). If a large number of positions are going through the word of mouth method, that right there tells you that equality of opportunity does not exist.

Well, yes, in your hypothetical example, hypothetical bad things happened. I'll dig up some real world data first, then respond.

Reports by the EEOC on hiring statistics

Ok, looking at most of the reports, I see the results are more participation by minorities and women across the spectrum. Is it perfect, no, far from it. The report on the financial industry, a bastion of white male power, is moving more slowly than others. Are we moving in the right direction? Yes, I think we are. Could we do better? Yes, we could.

Now, examining what is right, and wrong with your hypothetical situation. As a hypothetical hiring manager, I would be interested in interviewing the women and minorities first, because our company does business with state, and federal agencies which require us to have representative equality in our workforce or we lose our contracts with them. So, I'd be interested in hiring them first, and if one of them fits the need, I'd hire them. I actually faced this when I worked at a railroad. I had to buy my computers from a minority business enterprise (at higher prices), or the railroad would lose federal contracts. But, more to the point, it is the correct moral position to both do what fair for society, and to look out for the interests (increase the profitability) of the company for which you work. You are right though, that some people don't get it.

However, your intimation that inside relationships help is correct in one way, and that is in being able, as a potential candidate, to take your inside contacts out for coffee and pump them for information which would better help you to get the position. This works, even if the inside contact is a friend of a friend, of a friend... hence, why a web site like Linkedin.com is very useful, and successful. But, if you always just help your friends, and those of the boss, you will find yourself slapped with many, many deserved lawsuits. That is if the HR department, if they had any shred of credibility, didn't stop you first. A part of their job is to shield the company from EEOC violations.

But, I've hired thousands of people in my life. I see their resume first, and on that I look at their job history first. If they've been employed in the industry for > 5 years I don't even care about their educational history. Mostly I look at what they've accomplished, and secondly, how many new things they've done. I find less value in someone who does the very same thing for 30 years, than in someone who's moved around every 3-5 years and learned multiple industries. Based on what I see as qualifications in the resume, I'd select 5 to 10 for interviews with HR first. Based on their feedback, I'd choose the top 5 to interview with a member of my technical team first, and then with me. If the position is managerial, I might also have them interview with my boss, because they just might be taking my job some day. Gender and ethnicity don't come into it. Except that, for me, I've tried very hard to find every reason to increase the number of women and minorities in my field because it is white male dominated.

I'll tackle more of your response later... I need to go make the dessert Giftas for a party tonight...

Err...what? How can you say that people are better off right now than they were a decade ago when the job situation was much better then than it is now? And I would really like to see these young people saying they'll do better than their parents. Every thing I've seen says exactly the opposite, that young people are realizing they will not do as well as their parents unless their parents are truly destitute and they can maybe claw their way up a little. Right now, the situation is far worse for young people then it has ever been in the past century, possibly history of the US. How you could possibly think that they would be better off than their parents is just astounding to me.

The way that the Occupy Wallstreeters see it is thus;

[attachment=99]

They point to the fact that wages have fallen as a portion of GDP from 50% to 43% since 1947. What they don't acknowledge is that Real GDP per capita has gone from less than $10,000 to more than $50,000 over that same period. Would you rather have 43% of the 50K/p pie, or 50% of the 10K/p pie?

The great recession has caused a big disruption, and I'm not even sure how much we can bounce back from it, but we will bounce back some in the short term(3-5 years), and more in the longer term (5-10 years). It's natural to be pessimistic when you've just been beaten up and thrown in the ditch. But, we will get up, clean ourselves up, and slog on.