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The Forum > Article Comments > Young people - our greatest asset > Comments

Young people - our greatest asset : Comments

By Glenn Dawes, published 5/12/2005

Glenn Dawes argues while young people immerse themselves in American culture they are still a diverse group.

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Glenn, with three kids aged 18-(almost)24, one left home, one about to leave home,I think that's a pretty accurate appraisal. I take issue however with your comment "Young people in particular, are the victims of the new forms of precarious employment, which tends to be casual with minimum pay and conditions and limited prospects for further advancement in the field." I don't think that the term "victims" is accurate or helpful, many young people I know, including my kids, have appreciated and benefited from casual, temporary employment, they've learned valuable work and life skills and it's complemented their non-work life. As you say, the latter is often more important to this generation than it was to more work-focussed earlier generations who lived in harder times and, in my view, had fewer opportunities.

Re schoolies, two of my kids had no interest, one went and returned unscathed.
Posted by Faustino, Monday, 5 December 2005 11:24:01 AM
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I am sorry but anyone's greatest asset is their home, real estate.
Assets have nothing to do with people. Not now when everything has a dollar value.
A youth is not more valuable than a 40-year old or a 60-year-old.
I always laugh when I catch one of those bumper sticks "Baby on board".You mean a baby is more valuable that the person who drives the car.
The bumper sticker should read "Driver on board". Doesn't that sound silly. Yes it sounds as silly as valuing a baby or a child more valuable than anyone older than that baby.
The only time that anything is valuable is in the time of "Now' and that is a split second.
This world is the world of monitary value.
Take a man or woman's monitary value away and we have two people on social welfare no matter what their wisdom or knowlege or even that they are members' of Mensa.
The same with today's youth. It does not matter how intelligent an adolescent is if they have no wealth to go to universty or TAFE, they will miss out on jobs and opportunity.
Posted by GlenWriter, Monday, 5 December 2005 11:26:35 AM
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Off on a tangent here, GlenWriter there is a history to those Baby On Board stickers. A few years back, quite a few now I'd imagine, there was a car accident in the US in which people were stuck in a burning vehicle. Rescuers managed to save the adult/s, but unknown to them a baby was in the back seat. Tragedy struck. Hence the stickers came out to alert to the presence of a baby on board in case of similar circumstances. Wouldn't seem to be a lot of value in it to me given the freak nature of the incident, and nowadays it really just means a baby might be on board. Wouldn't suprise me if the next phase involves some rescuer copping third degree burns trying to rescue a non-baby on board.
Posted by HarryC, Monday, 5 December 2005 1:02:53 PM
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Children are our greatest asset, a house can't work to produce anything. Our children can produce love and affection for us, an economy, our future, and this country's continueing prosperity, that being the case, I would agree with this article, completely, we need to see the whole picture, please remove your blinkers GlenWriter
Posted by SHONGA, Monday, 5 December 2005 1:05:32 PM
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a good article and a fair point fautismo, allthough i think it may take some time for the effects (good or bad) of opportunity over stability in the job market to become fully apparent, i guess we will see how everyone keeps track of their super while constantly changing jobs. personally i prefer opportunity, i have never had any capacity for 'loyalty' to a job, but you grow up, as the author said, in a growing trend towards globalisation and its associated individualism(as opposed to national, social, racial or work groupings) and thats what your going to get. i have no qualms about jumping job or even country(for a while anyway) if i dont agree with the situation.

i also recently moved out of home, at the ripe old age of 23. i stayed at home through my degree not through lack of independance, but through the simple inability to work enough hrs, outside of the 15-16hrs or so i spent at uni every day, to feed myself.
Posted by its not easy being, Monday, 5 December 2005 2:20:14 PM
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HarryC to reduce the population it is better if the baby dies.
Our greatest asset are adults with intelligence to recognise that we need to reduce our population. We have already been told Australia has not enough water and we are all going to die from thirst in the future so why keep children alive if they are going to die in 20 years' time.
Posted by GlenWriter, Monday, 5 December 2005 4:08:13 PM
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