What’s changed since then?

• My political stances have evolved from neo-con to become far more libertarian in nature — though basic principles such as right to life have not changed
• I went from a custom-built, cheap looking HTML site (you can observe the incompetent hilarity here) to the clean, dynamic one you see today (I didn’t design this one)
• In Washington, we’ve gone from Republicans running things to an overwhelming Democratic majority. I hope it wasn’t me
• Personally, I’ve gone from college student with senioritis to unemployed, to gainfully employed, to unemployed again, to self-employed – and am very pleased with the results

One thing you might have noticed, though, through the years, is that the site is called “BipolarNation.com.” In other words, I expected it to be a site about political debate, with the two sides pitting against each other – I didn’t expect to be the sole blogger. As it turns out, starting a community like that from scratch is hard. Most of the participation on the forums was between friends, with the occasional stranger popping in to say hello.

I’m not interested in hosting that kind of site anymore, nor do I want to keep the scope of my online blogging/writing limited to politics. So instead of writing at BipolarNation.com, I will be moving to DanKenitz.com within a few weeks or so.

There, I’ll be writing a weekly column – sometimes about politics, but I’m guessing most of the time, not. My passion is for writing, not politics, and I want to construct a site full of longer content rather than shorter, more frequent posts because that’s the kind of site I’d want to visit.

What will become of BipolarNation.com, after spending four years on it? I’ll retain ownership of the site and forward it to the new one – I’ve learned enough about SEO to know not to ditch a four-year-old domain name.

I know this isn’t the biggest site in the world but it has generated a pretty loyal following. So if you want to follow me over to the new blog, don’t worry – it will be incredibly easy to find the site, and I’ll set up a new feed so you can subscribe to the posts there, as well.

In essence, this is me seeking out a new brand and taking a different approach to blogging. But I just wanted to keep you, loyal readers, in the loop.

The truth is, teachers are like many – not all – union workers in the United States: overpaid and spoiled.

If you don’t believe me, keep reading. Let’s look at the arguments they make.

Argument #1: Teachers don’t earn as much as other professions!

If you recall “former state agency budget and policy director” Thomas K. Smith writing in the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, he said

Wisconsin ranked 30th in the nation for beginning teacher salaries at $31,588. By comparison, the median salary for a school bus driver is $30,911.

Nevermind that Smith was comparing beginning teacher salaries to median salaries for school bus drivers. The complaint is that teachers don’t make much compared to other professions.

But this study says:

• On nationwide average, public school teachers are paid about 61% more per hour than private school teachers despite working less than them
• Editors/reporters, architects, psychologists, chemists, mechanical engineers, and economists all earn less than public school teachers
• Teachers earn about 36% more per hour than the average “non-sales white-collar worker”

Argument #2: Public school teachers work really hard/year-round!

It’s hard to trace working hard as a statistic, but we do know from the above that public school teachers work less hours than private school teachers for more pay.

We also know that teachers have summers off while earning an annual salary that puts them above year-round work like psychology and architecture. If you work something around 184 days and earn the same as someone who works some 230 days out of the year, guess who’s being paid better. Many teachers pick up summer jobs to boost their income. Bob the magazine editor can’t do that.

It’s not just a yearly thing. Many public school teachers find themselves the beneficiaries of generous pensions that allow them to retire well before their sunset years. In fact, their pensions are outpacing those in the private sector:

Here in Wisconsin, many public teachers can retire at age 55, potentially younger. Some teachers may be hardworking, sure. But as a profession, public school teachers work less every year and throughout their lives than a lot of other people.

Some will make the argument that teachers need the summers off to create lesson plans for the rest of the year. But if all of this time was needed for planning, you wouldn’t see teachers take side jobs during the summer. Also, other professions get along just fine without taking three months off to plan the other nine months.

Argument #3: But teachers are more important.

Yes, the self-righteousness makes its most apparent appearance when public school teachers portray themselves as too important to be underpaid.

Education is important, but the public school teachers assume that their salary (and public education spending in general) is synonymous with high-quality education. In fact, as you’ll see, there doesn’t seem to be a relationship between how much we spend on education and reading/math scores:

If education the way public teachers do it is really so valuable, teachers should have no problems in offering their services on a private market. They’d blow away the competition, right?

Argument #4: Public school teachers have to – gasp – spend some of their own money sometimes!

Of course, they don’t have to, but we do hear stories like the one Thomas K. Smith offers:

she went to her local hardware/building supply store and purchased (with her own money) the paint needed to make this classroom a pleasing place to learn; no stimulus funds here. Then she, with some assistance from me, spent a hot humid Saturday (there is no air conditioning on a weekend), one of her last free Saturdays of Wisconsin’s fleeting summer, painting the entire classroom.

Her own money, her time, her energy, her efforts, simply to provide a better learning environment for her students. She also spends her own money on school supplies, right down to the dispensers of hand sanitizer she purchased for her classroom.

Yes, because a fresh coat of paint is so key to providing a solid education.

Teachers don’t have a monopoly on investing money into their jobs. If you’re in sales and have to make frequent trips in your car, you might be fronting some gas money on a regular basis. If you’re self-employed, all of your business expenses come from your money.

Anecdotes about teachers who have to invest personally into their jobs are funny, because one wonders what’s so special about these anecdotes – shouldn’t teachers be investing into educating their students on a regular basis, even if it’s not always in the form of money?

Saying that teachers work so hard because they took one of their many off summer days to paint a classroom at their own expense misses the point in at least two ways:

1. Painting a classroom is nice and all that, but not totally necessary to do a good job
2. Working one day in an otherwise free summer hardly qualifies as extreme dedication to one’s job

Argument #5: But I do a good job!

Now, public school teachers, you’re making progress. Start wondering about the job you’re doing and worrying about how you can provide more value to your kids. Perhaps you’re not overpaid. But public school teachers, as a group, are.

If you’re like many people, the answer is no. Some people study Business Administration and end up working in retail. Some people study Pre-Med and end up working in fast food. Some people study Theatre and end up in California waiting tables. Or worse, they end up in Iowa waiting tables. There’s a strong disconnect with the world of public school and the real world. I’m sure many public school teachers may have some wisdom to impart on finding a job, but forgive me if the last place I look for advice on job-hunting is a tenure-toting taxpayer-taxing public school teacher.

Of course, maybe you think twenty-something bloggers aren’t so smart about it either. If so, I encourage you to click somewhere else rather than whine. If not, I might as well remind you that the advice here is best taken with a glass of water and a grain of salt. Glass of water optional.

With that in mind, let’s move on to Lesson #2 of my free education plan: learning how to grab and keep a job.

The Most Important Factor for Landing a Job is “Relevant Experience”

This is my opinion based on experience both as a frequent job interviewee and as someone who’s had to hire people to do things for him: Relevant experience is the most important factor for landing a job you want.

Why not just say “experience”? Because experience doesn’t mean much if it’s not the right kind. You might be a world-renowned computer programmer, but that hardly makes you qualified to fix my car.

If relevant experience is the most important variable on your resume, then you need to treat it that way. Be willing to do free work just to build up relevant experience – heck, many of you are going to be poor during your college days anyway.

As Seth Godin wrote on his blog,

Isn’t it odd that we’re willing to spend $300,000 to buy an accredited but ultimately useless academic line on our resume, but we hesitate to do a month of hard work to create a chunk of experience that’s priceless?

Oh, and in order for you to gain the right kind of relevant experience, you’ll have to actually know what you want to do for money throughout your life. You do know that, right?

The Job Search Should be Treated Like a Job

When you work full time, you put in eight hours a day for your paycheck. So if you’re unemployed and in desperate need of income, does it really make sense to work less hard for it?

Maybe you don’t have the self-discipline to work for eight hours when you have slacking off to do, but what I’m trying to communicate is this: the job search is serious business and will have major ramifications on your life. It deserves a lot of time, attention, and dedication.

What’s that, you want me to hold your hand? Man, those public schools have really given you a case of the old “learned helplessness”, haven’t they? Okay, fine:

• Keep tabs on newspaper ads and sign up to free sites like Monster.com
• Build a simple, effective resume – and maybe a few different resumes to highlight different aspects of your experience
• Make sure you highlight your relevant experience in this resume
• Keep a spreadsheet with all job leads, contact information, and the latest updates from these leads in order to keep tabs on all of the flowing information
• Constantly search for new job leads and keep track of all new ones in your spreadsheet

Oh, and if you’re going to be treating the job search like a job, you should be ready to handle each lead individually, like a “client.” When you have a job interview, do your homework and be ready to ask your own questions. Build a written plan that explains what you do and how you could bring value to their company.

And, like a salesman, follow up on these leads. Give them phone calls. Err on the side of assertiveness.

Forget Many of the Myths of Job Acquisition

If you haven’t tried to land a serious job before, then it’s possible that you subscribe to a few myths:

• Myth: Once I have a college degree I’ll be fine.

One side effect of making college so “affordable” (government guarantees loans – unsurprisingly, college prices continue to skyrocket) is that everyone’s going to college, which means your college degree isn’t so special anymore. Diamonds aren’t so cool if they pop out of the ground all the time – and not so valuable. Subsequently, your value to a company becomes less the more the supply of college grads enters the job market. Call it Degree Inflation.

Also, as Ramit Sethi notes, your college is not a technical school. You’ll find that many jobs require that you have specific experience and credentials, and oftentimes these credentials don’t really have much to do with your degree. You’ll find many jobs that require a Bachelor’s degree at a minimum, but that’s almost like a job application license in some cases.

Job offers won’t rain down on you after college unless you have some special circumstances surrounding what college you went to and what you did there.

• Myth: Employers are here to employ people.

Well, sure, the definition of an employer is one who employs, but remember that your potential bosses aren’t running employment agencies: they need people who will help their company and make them look good for hiring you.

I get frustrated at some sectors of government cough public education cough because so many people seem to treat them like job centers. F.D.R. even called for a Second Bill of Rights that granted everyone the right to a job with a living wage.

If you feel entitled to a job just because so many people talk about jobs as such important things (and they are), then you’re in the wrong. Jobs are not “rights,” despite what F.D.R. tells you. If you want to earn money, you have to demonstrate that you are capable of trading something of equal value for it.

• My job is so secure I don’t need to worry.

Maybe yours is, but it doesn’t hurt to have contingency plans anyway. Earn a few bucks on Saturdays with a weekend business or keep making sure that your resume and portfolio are fresh. I was once lucky to work at a job where they were considerate enough to give me plenty of advanced warning as to when I was being let go – not everyone has that privilege.

Keep Your Job by Being Good At It

The business-as-employment-agency concept has another drawback: you start to feel entitled in collecting a paycheck and your work suffers for it.

If you do land a job, you’ll have to keep it, as well. I recommend being good at it. Of course, that’s much easier said than done, so here’s a simpler way to look at it: try to provide more value than you’re paid for. If your business pays you $40,000 a year for your services, try to make sure that your presence justifies that investment. To be on the safe side, make sure that your presence is even more valuable. If you’re super-ambitious, try to make it way more valuable.

This is easy to measure for a salesman working on commission, but you might be saying “but, Dan, my job isn’t so easily defined!” Okay, then, you’d better start making it that way. Look up the average salary statistics for someone at your experience level in your profession. Consider the amount of work you’ve done, the projects you’ve worked on, and the money that your work helped bring in.

In some jobs, you might not have to provide a whole lot of value in order to remain employed. I once worked at a gas station where punctuality seemed to be the most important job requirement. Even though I was once busted for playing board games at that job, I still kept it because, after all, my $7.00/hour fee was not exactly steep.

Consider it a rule on par with “don’t spend more money than you earn.” Don’t earn less money than you get paid. And if you really like your job and work hard to be good at it, you’ll probably beat out some 90% of your colleagues. When the time comes to cut costs, would you feel safer if “providing more value than you’re paid for” was your professional philosophy?

Start a Checklist

If you want to land a job, it might help to have a to-do list:

• Build a brief, professional resume that highlights your experience relevant to the type of job you want. (When you do so, make sure to consider what an employer would think looking at your resume.)
• If you don’t have relevant experience, get it. Work for free every Saturday if you must.
• Build a rock-solid portfolio. Even if your job isn’t very conducive to building a portfolio, it probably doesn’t hurt to have one. Again, the “free work” theory is great for building up a portfolio. Remember to target the kinds of jobs you’re open to and make sure that your portfolio demonstrates your relevant experience.
• Start a document with all of your job leads and track it meticulously.

If you want to keep your job, refer to the simple rule of providing more value than you than you’re paid for.

One vastly ignored skill is being able to handle money. Public schools will show you penises with warts on them as a dire warning against STDs – okay, fine – but they won’t tell you the first thing about the perils of debt. Being unable to handle money ruins many peoples’ lives.

So, with that in mind, I’m going to share with you what I’ve learned – on my own (private sector) volition about money.

Spend less than you earn.

Any qualms you had about learning money from a political blogger are probably subsiding – this stuff is so basic that it hardly bears mentioning. Right? Well, no: it bears mentioning.

You’d just think schools – charged with molding children into citizens and given approximately 12 years in which to do it – would at least mention one of the most basic principles of handing money imaginable. Do you remember a teacher ever bringing this up?

Rich people go bankrupt all the time. Middle class people struggle with money. Poor people definitely struggle with money. No matter how rich you are, it’s always possible to spend more than you earn, thereby losing your money and eventually depleting your funds. No matter how much money you have, if you can spend less money than you earn, you’re on the right track.

Avoid debt and liabilities like the plague.

What’s a liability? Oh, you don’t know because you went to public school!

Liabilities are basically expenditures – things that cost you money rather than earn you money. Your job is a source of income; your car (and its subsequent payments) is a liability.

Some liabilities are necessary evils, like paying money for shelter and for the aforementioned car (by the way, since cars lose a ton of value once you drive them off the lot, why are you buying new ones?). The best way to work on these is to research and make sure that you can have a comfortable living with a minimum price tag. Generally you’ll only want to spend some 25-33% of your income on lodging (house payments or rent).

Debt ruins lives. It ruins lives. Debt ruins lives.

Is the repetition sinking in yet? Good. Because it is absolutely true. Mammajamming debt ruins mammajamming lives. When you have debt, you become an indentured servant to the people you owe. Stress increases. You have more limited options in life. Relationships are strained. Confidence is crushed.

There’s hope, of course, just like in all things. But if I’m speaking to the people who haven’t heard this lesson before, do not underestimate the power of debt to ruin your life.

To avoid it like the plague, follow these rules:

• Don’t own credit cards. Parents, don’t get your kids credit cards – get them debit cards.
• Don’t take out loans. If you must (for a house or for college), be absolutely sure you can afford the payments and have a plan for being able to afford it.
• Don’t borrow money from friends.
• Don’t buy a new car – save up and buy a used one.
• Make paying off debt a major priority in your life.

Now, if you’re already in debt, don’t let my doom-and-gloom about debt get you down. Keep hope alive – with planning and discipline you can come back into the light.

Don’t use credit cards unless you can pay the balance off every single month – no exceptions.

Some financial gurus – like Dave Ramsey – recommend that you actually just get rid of all your credit cards and use debit exclusively. If you don’t know a lot about money, this is the way to go.

If you do use credit cards, only use them you pay them off every single month and always pay on time. And only if you’re proven to be responsible with money. If you leave money on your bill left over for the next month, then you’ll still have to pay that off, and what’s worse: you’ll have to pay interest on that debt. The longer you wait, the worse the credit card debt gets, even if you’re not spending any money anymore.

The best solution is either to get rid of your credit cards completely or to pay off all debts and never charge more than you can afford to pay in one month again. If you’re bad with money, using only a debit card is the way to go.

Saving money is for winners.

I have eight separate accounts right now at ING Direct for my savings. In one account, I’m putting money away for a trip. In another, I’m putting money away toward a new laptop. It’s like I’m customizing my own purchasing plans in order to buy what I want simply by delaying gratification and waiting until I have the money before I spend it.

While other people spend money they don’t have, my savings slowly gather and I gain purchasing power that makes me look richer than I really am. Once I’m ready to use the money, it’s almost like I’m writing myself a free check, since I put in the money I saved bit-by-bit but get to use it all at once. I get to use this money for big purchases without effecting my budget at all.

Saving for retirement is for winners.

You’re mortal, and one day you’ll be 72. If you haven’t been saving for retirement, chances are that you’ll have to work like a dog at 72. It’s time to think about what you’d like life to be like at 72.

(My G. Gordon Liddy voice: Social security? Unreliable!)

If you don’t have a Roth IRA, now’s the time to start one. If you have a 401(k) at work, set up automatic contributions as soon as you can.

One note on saving: set aside some 10-20% of your income each month for saving in both retirement and general purchases. This way you’ll be spending a maximum of 80-90% of what you earn – meaning you won’t spend yourself poor – and you’ll be amassing a nest egg you can use later.

Have an emergency fund.

I’ve heard one definition of wealth that I very much enjoy: if you lost your job today, how long could you still keep living the way you’re living? The longer you can live that way, the wealthier you are. If you would instantly go into debt, you are basically poor.

One way to amass this kind of wealth is to save up an emergency fund for approximately 6-8 months of your current monthly expenses. How secure would you feel if you knew at any given time, if you lost your job, you’d be fine as long as you could find another in 6-8 months? Chances are you’d feel pretty good.

Buy used.

Save money, get similar quality.

Follow a plan.

Want a step-by-step guide for handling your finances? Boom! Just like that. No school required.

Barack Obama is known as quite the communicator in his own right – he’s been called a “master”. And when the spotlight is on, he does indeed display a poise and sense of tempo that is in stark contrast with his predecessor, one Dubya “Is Our Children Learning?” Bush.

But to realistically understand Barack Obama’s actual talents as an orator, you have to stack him against someone who could speak circles around Dubya. Compared to Martin Luther King, Obama has no energy. Compared to JFK, he looks dry.

Compared to The Great Communicator? It’s really no contest.

So what, you say. After all, it’s possible to support a President who isn’t the greatest speaker in the world.

True. But they make Obama out to be a stunning orator who sends tingles up their legs.

For now, let’s concentrate on the most glaring of Obama’s oratory issues: the teleprompters. He can’t live without them. No, not even in school classrooms:

And not even in his task force meetings:

Watching Obama speak is like watching a member of a tennis audience – their heads will predictably move back and forth and you’re left wondering if you’re missing out on the real action by watching the wrong person.

Obama is, of course, not the first president ever to use teleprompters, and using them isn’t what makes him a bad president. But it does reveal a significant chink in his armor of Oratory Superiority: he has a clear crutch that has sunk to embarrassing levels. Even mediocre speakers like George W. Bush could at least ditch the teleprompters when they’d simply become distracting to the audience, no?

I’ve been watching State of the Union speeches for a while now, and in terms of the speechmaking department, Barack Obama is essentially a modest-to-strong improvement over Bush. That’s it. I’m not sure Obama’s better than Clinton was, and I’m certain that he’s no Great Communicator.

For contrast, consider Ronald Reagan.

Ronald Reagan’s strength in communicating came from two things: his skills and charisma as a communicator, and his deep belief in the principles he held. In other words, there was no “static” in between his mind and his mouth. The listener hears a clearly-tuned signal and receives it without impediment. That’s great communication. (Note: Watch “A Time For Choosing,” Ronald Reagan’s speech at the 1964 Republican Convention, to watch great skill come in harmony with great conviction.)

Obama clearly aspires to Reagan’s level of communication – he’s even said he wants Obama Republicans like Reagan had Reagan Democrats. But he so plainly falls short that he just looks ordinary. He is also demonstrably a poor communicator when it comes to policy. After dozens of speeches about health care, many people still seem to think that the problem with passing health care is that it hasn’t been made clear enough to the public. In fact, you might even make the point that all the ambiguity has helped give rise to all the anti-government sentiment that’s sweeping the country right now.

But, for all of my criticism, it’s clear that Obama’s not a bad speaker. Unless, of course, he’s speaking to your sixth grade class. Or if you’re one of the many people who can see right up his nostrils.

It’s just too difficult to get past the idea that someone who needs teleprompters in a school classroom is all that great at public speaking. Especially as great as they make Obama to be. This guy think he’s one of the best speakers of his lifetime. This guy feels tingles up his legs. Obama’s not even the best Presidential speaker of the last twenty-five years, if that. And “the best President public speaker since Bill Clinton” is not exactly high praise.

With Obama’s most recent State of the Union fresh in your mind, take a look at the easy energy and the rock-solid conviction that Reagan spoke with in 1982.

Though liberals might like to compare Obama to Reagan, there is really no comparison. Reagan used his oratory to communicate a foundation of hopes and deep beliefs; Obama uses oratory as his foundation. It’s built on sand.

In 2010, with me four and a half years wiser by my own estimations, this list needs a good updating. I’m still no expert (Who really knows where to put Zachary Taylor?) but have a few criteria you might find interesting.

Here are some of the boosts or downgrades I gave to many Presidents which might help you clarify why I put who where:

Limited government Presidents – George Washington, the only President not to belong to a political party, gets boosted to #1 over Abraham Lincoln thanks to this. William Henry Harrison, who died shortly after his inauguration, gets a boost because he did less damage many other Presidents.

Wartime boosts and downgrades – if you helped America win an important war, then you get a boost. If it weren’t for his leadership during World War II, Franklin Delano Roosevelt would easily be the President on the absolute bottom of the list. LBJ takes his place both because of his domestic policies and the disaster that was Vietnam.

Space Age and technology boost – JFK is the biggest recipient of the Space Age boost because he was the most decisive Space Age leader we’ve had – followed by Dwight D. Eisenhower and Ronald Reagan, whose visionary embracing of missile defense has made him almost like a prophet.

Reductions for Presidents who expanded government – Teddy Roosevelt sinks like a stone on this list and Woodrow Wilson is also downgraded from the previous list.

Infrastructure boost – The interstate highway system (Ike) and Panama Canal (Teddy) help provide a small boost.

What are some of the notable changes to this list? Observe:

• George Washington (#1) supplants Abraham Lincoln (#2) at the top of the list.
• Warren G. Harding (#14) gets a large boost for resisting the temptation to intervene with the economy during a recession.
• Teddy Roosevelt (#25) drops from #4 to the bottom half thanks to his economy-meddling. Woodrow Wilson (#16) drops to the bottom ten thanks to helping secure the creation of the Federal Reserve.
• George W. Bush (#30) enters the fray. He is mostly boosted by his dedication to the sanctity of human life and his excellent choices for the Supreme Court. He is downgraded for his contribution to government intervention into the economy that helped set the stage for massive government spending and a Democratic uprising in 2008, his authoritative/bureaucratic approach to homeland security.
• Herbert Hoover (#40 ) moves to the bottom five, as his disastrous early-Depression Presidency and intervention into the economy helped set the stage for the New Deal.
• Bill Clinton (#24) moves up.
• LBJ (#42) stays at the bottom.

Without any further ado, here is the Presidential Ranking 2.0 list:

1. George Washington (previous position: 2)
2. Abraham Lincoln (previous position: 1)
3. Thomas Jefferson (previous position: 3)
4. Ronald Reagan (previous position: 5)
5. James Monroe (previous position: 7)
6. James K. Polk (previous position: 6)
7. Dwight D. Eisenhower (previous position: 9)
8. John F. Kennedy (previous position: eight) – (it made a sunglasses smiley face when I typed in an 8 and a closing parenthesis)
9. Andrew Jackson (previous position: 10)
10. James Madison (previous position: 12)
11. John Adams (previous position: 11)
12. William McKinley (previous position: 14)
13. John Quincy Adams (previous position: 15)
14. Warren G. Harding (previous position: 39)
15. Harry S. Truman (previous position: 13)
16. Calvin Coolidge (previous position: 17)
17. William Henry Harrison (previous position: 22)
18. Grover Cleveland (previous position: 18)
19. William Howard Taft (previous position: 19)
20. Martin Van Buren (previous position: 20)
21. George H. W. Bush (previous position: 21)
22. James A. Garfield (previous position: 23)
23. Zachary Taylor (previous position: 24)
24. Bill Clinton (previous position: 31)
25. Teddy Roosevelt (previous position: 4)
26. Rutherford B. Hayes (previous position: 26)
27. Gerald Ford (previous position: 28)
28. Andrew Johnson (previous position: 27)
29. Chester A. Arthur (previous position: 29)
30. George W. Bush (previous position: none)
31. Franklin D. Roosevelt (previous position: 25)
32. Richard Nixon (previous position: 30)
33. Benjamin Harrison (previous position: 33)
34. John Tyler (previous position: 34)
35. Millard Fillmore (previous position: 35)
36. Jimmy Carter (previous position: 37)
37. Woodrow Wilson (previous position: 16)
38. Ulysses S. Grant (previous position: 36)
39. Franklin Pierce (previous position: 38)
40. Herbert Hoover (previous position: 32)
41. James Buchanan (previous position: 40)
42. Lyndon B. Johnson (previous position: 41)

Now, to the post:

“No matter how I look at this I am in the wrong. And I’ve looked at this thing, like, a hundred different ways. From my point of view, from their point of view … 98 others … and bottom line, I’m in the wrong. I’m the bad guy.”

-Michael Scott in “The Office”

Let’s get it straight first.

Jay Leno keeps the Tonight Show at #1 for over a decade. Conan O’Brien follows him strongly for over a decade. NBC – making a poor decision, yes – approaches Jay Leno and basically wants him to make way for Conan. So he says, in 2004, that he will retire in 2009 and make way for Conan.

2009 inevitably arrives, and suddenly Jay doesn’t want to leave. So NBC, not wanting to ditch a popular guy and cash cow, bumps him into an experiment in primetime, allowing Conan to take over the Tonight Show as planned. Jay’s ratings in the new slot tank, the affiliates get angry, and both NBC and Jay want him to take over at 11:35 EST, bumping Conan into what would then be the “Tomorrow Show,” since it would be airing at 12:05 EST.

From what I can gather from this, Jay Leno is some sort of jerk. Why? Consider:

In 2004, Jay told Conan the show would be his. In 2004, Jay literally said, on the Tonight Show in fact, “Conan, it’s yours – see you in five years, buddy.” He also said “When I took this show over, boy there was a lot of animosity between me and Dave…and I don’t want to see anybody ever have to go through that again…this show is like a dynasty…you hold it and then you hand it off to the next person.” Jay had five years to come to terms with a decision he had already made, and yet is ultimately returning to the Tonight Show via NBC’s booting of Conan.

When asked to comment, Jay said “You hold it and then you hand it off to the next person, who you boot out so he hands it off to you again.” Okay, I made that one up.

He asked us not to blame Conan…when no one was blaming Conan. When Jay made a statement on his show about all of this, he asked us not to blame Conan. Okay, we’re not blaming Conan. Got anything else to say?

Jay portrays himself as some sort of unwitting non-participant. To hear Jay Leno explain it, you’d think NBC and a bunch of suits are to blame for all of this. And they largely are, sure. But at any point, isn’t Leno free to say “You know what, you can cancel me…but I gave Conan the Tonight Show, and I’m not going to take it away from him now”? With millions upon millions of dollars of wealth, you’d think this would be a no-brainer classy move, right? Especially if you had around five years to come to terms with not being at the Tonight Show anymore. But it doesn’t look like Jay made that move.

NBC is in the wrong, obviously – because they stink – but so is Jay. It’s one thing to hang on too long; it’s another to go back on your word five years after agreeing to turn the show over.

That’s because many adults keep on insisting we have this thing they call the Department of Education – wouldn’t you know it, education is too important to be left in the hands of a private market or a school voucher system. The current public education system in America is, quite literally, communist. And, like the U.S.S.R. before it, it’s basically a giant expensive disaster.

Even today’s most preeminent promoter of public schools, Barack Obama, has daughters that attend private school. They attend in D.C., actually, where it turns out the federal voucher system (oh, no! Vouchers!) has slashed costs by some 75% while improving the quality of education:

Consider the federal DC voucher program. Just a year or two after switching from public to private schools, the effect of the private schooling was not big enough to rise to the level of statistical significance. But by their third year in private schools, the evidence was clear that voucher-receiving students were reading more than two grade levels above a randomized control group that stayed in public schools. This program, as I’ve previously documented, costs 1/4 as much per pupil as DC spends on public education: about $6,600 vs. $28,000.

During the election Barack Obama said he wanted to recruit an “army of teachers.” But why? In his own city – where, again, he sends his very own kids to a private school – there is hard evidence that vouchers work.

Army of teachers? Why can’t he just print off a bunch of vouchers instead?

It doesn’t take a genius to figure out that many NFL teams simply conduct “token” interviews in order to comply with the Rooney Rule – which, oddly enough, is named after a white guy.  Just recently, the Washington Redskins and the Seattle Seahawks hired two big-name coaches who happen to be white – one of whom was a highly prized college coach, Pete Carroll of USC.

In the case of the Seattle Seahawks, they unexpectedly fired their old head coach, Jim Mora – apparently once Pete Carroll became available.  In other words, it looks like the Seahawks fired their head coach with the intention of hiring Carroll and no one else.  But because the NFL has the Rooney Rule, they had to pretend like they actually were giving a minority coach a chance.

This is, in essence, what is wrong with how we treat minorities today.

Says Gregg Easterbrook of ESPN:

The Rooney Rule, that NFL teams cannot hire a new head coach or general manager without interviewing a minority candidate, in recent use smacks of snake oil. The Redskins hired Bruce Allen as general manager, then Mike Shanahan as coach, without any meaningful consideration of anyone else. Skins assistant coach Jerry Gray, who is African-American, appears to have been interviewed strictly to satisfy the letter of the rule; the spirit of the rule was ignored. Seattle appears to have hired Pete Carroll as coach without giving meaningful consideration to anyone else. The Seahawks interviewed Minnesota defensive coordinator Leslie Frazier, who is black, but reportedly not until they were already finalizing a deal with Carroll. The Rooney Rule was supposed to be about progress, not public relations tokenism.

…

Ted Cottrell, who did a great job as defensive coordinator for the Bills, Jets and Vikings, got called in for so many head-coaching interviews that were shams to cover the Rooney Rule that it seemed to burn him out, reduce his effectiveness and make him bitter about the NFL. Cottrell may have actually believed he was being considered for the jobs! He’s now exiled to the UFL, and that’s not because he forgot how to coach.

If the exact problem is that people in the majority look at a minority and automatically think “skin color, skin color,” the Rooney Rule perpetuates that.  One can only imagine the team owners talking to management:  “Well guys, I think we’re ready to hire Mike Shanahan.  But we do have that Rooney Rule to comply with, so which token black guy can we get in here for a phony interview by tomorrow?”  So equal.  So racially blind.  So progressive.

If you’re a supporter of the Rooney Rule, you may be quick to point out that it seems to have worked – there are some six black head coaches in the NFL and many of them have been successful.  There are also black general managers, like Jerry Reese in New York.

Okay.  Fine and dandy.  I’ll just ignore how weird it is to think “success” could be defined by engineering how many head coaches are black. Even then, I’m guessing the last thing Jerry Reese wants to be known as is a “black general manager,” or Lovie Smith a “black head coach.”

The Rooney Rule just keeps this “black head coach” thing fresh in peoples’ minds. How many touchdowns did Andre Johnson have this year? How many MVPs does Peyton Manning have? How many head coaches are black?

And besides, isn’t the whole “skin color of head coaches” kind of arbitrary in the first place?  Most NFL players are black; you don’t see me crying for there to be a predetermined amount of white players based on the general population. The best players play and that’s that.

Maybe we need to institute the Morgan Freeman rule:  just ignore race when it comes to these ridiculous special treatments that end up just patronizing the people they’re supposed to celebrate.

So what’s up? I’m guessing that with today’s technology, jobs don’t stink any more than they did in 1987, and in all likelihood have gotten better.

There’s the economy to blame, sure – it would be nice to have job security – but there’s something else to pay attention to: the unhappiest workers were my age group, people 25 and under.

Why? What’s the big stink about?

Consider:

• Around this time last century, it wouldn’t be unusual to work 12-16 hours per day
• Employers often offer health insurance and other benefits with their payment packages
• Technology has made many tasks easier; admittedly, the toilet cleaning industry is largely unaffected
• They’re even talking about four-day workweeks in many parts of the country

Sounds good, right?

Actually, some of the stats aren’t so great, and suggest the current generation of Americans isn’t lazy at all.

According to the (public school teachers beware!) Wikipedia entry on Working time, a 14th-Century casual laborer in the UK worked some 1440 hours annually, or less than 30 hours a week with two weeks’ vacation.  Today’s forty-hour workweek with two weeks’ vacation runs at about 2,000 hours per year.  Most Americans, of course, don’t take that much vacation.  In fact, the average American spends more time in the john every year than on vacation.

That seems like one answer to the question of job satisfaction – many people are working so hard.  But I think there may be macroeconomic issues at play here as well, and unsurprisingly I believe a freer market might lead to greater job satisfaction.  With that in mind, here are my solutions to help Americans feel better about their jobs.

1.  Eliminate the self-employment tax. Yes, there is actually a self-employment tax.  Soon I’m going to find out that there’s also a “happiness tax” and a “sunshine tax.”  I’m paying my self-employment tax pretty soon, and it’s a ridiculous punishment for creating your own job that doesn’t need to exist.  If you cut this tax, you give people more incentive to pursue their dreams on their own.  I may hire people one day, thereby creating jobs!  Why on earth would you want to punish entrepreneurship and self-employment by taxing it?  Because Uncle Sam’s greedy fingers know no bounds.

2.  Embrace outsourcing. There’s nothing wrong with outsourcing, even if you’re outsourcing to a virtual assistant in India.  More Americans should embrace it – you might even find a better market for it here, where we could compete with firms in India for the outsourcing dollars.

You don’t have to run a huge widget factory to outsource labor.  You can outsource your scheduling and personal appointments to a virtual assistant for a reasonable price.  Outsourcing is so natural that it’s essentially what the employer-employee relationship is: my guess is that Bill Gates can’t handle every aspect of Microsoft’s business, but that’s okay because it’s outsourced to tons of people.  Maybe people don’t need to work so hard if they can be paying someone else to handle some of that hard work for them.

3.  Eliminate payroll taxes. Pay helps job satisfaction, and employers could afford to pay more if they weren’t held down by ridiculous payroll taxes, some of which the employers never even see.

Okay, so that’s all simple enough.  But the title of this post was “How to Not Hate Your Job,” so what do I have to say to you as an individual who hates your job?  You have a few options.  Change it somehow by requesting it be changed and/or taking direct action to change it yourself.  Start a side-business with an eye on eventually having it handle most of your income.  And if you aren’t in a hole financially and can afford to do it, maybe you should just plain quit it.

This shouldn’t be a country where most people working don’t like what they’re doing.  We should be a country full of entrepreneurs and employees who actually enjoy their work or at least don’t mind it for the pay they’re getting.  My guess is that most people are willing to make this happen if the government get out of the way.