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xxv - "If a private company hired a consultant to come up with a business plan, and it resulted in a sharp decline in profits, that consultant would be fired. At the very least, he'd be asked to come up with a different plan. With free market reforms, this never seemed to happen. The more they failed, the more the were enacted."

xxiv - "in most wealthy countries, the younger generations can, for the first times in centuries, expect to lead less prosperous lives than their parents did. Yet on observing these effects, proponents of market ideology always reply with calls for even stronger doses of the same medicine, and politicians duly enact them."

xxiv - "While neoliberal rhetoric was always all about unleashing the magic of the marketplace and placing economic efficiency over all other values, the overall effect of free market policies has been that rates of economic growth have slowed pretty much everywhere."

xxii - (continued) in positions designed to make them identify with the perspectives and sensibilities of the ruling class... but at the same time, foster a simmering resentment against anyone whose work has clear and undeniable social value."

xxi - "Real, productive workers are relentlessly squeezed and exploited. The remainder are divided between a terrorized stratum of the universally reviled unemployed and a larger stratum who are basically paid to do nothing, (continued)

xxi - "It's even clearer in the United States, where Republicans have had remarkable success mobilizing resentment against schoolteachers and autoworkers... for their supposedly bloated wages and benefits. It's as if they are being told "But you get to teach children! Or make cars! you get to have real jobs! And on top of that, you have the nerve to also expect middle-class pensions and health care?"

xxi - "Even more perverse, there seems to be a broad sense that this is the way things should be... You can see it when tabloids whip up resentment against tube workers for paralyzing London during contract disputes: the very fact that tube workers can paralyze London shows that their work is actually necessary, but this seems to be precisely what annoys people."

xxi - "A world without teachers or dockworkers would soon be in trouble, and even one without science-fiction writers or ska musicians would clearly be a lesser place. It's not entirely clear how humanity would suffer were all private equity CEOs, lobbyists, PR researchers, actuaries, telemarketers, bailiffs, or legal consultants to similarly vanish."

xxi - "What would happen were this entire class of people to simply disappear? Say what you like about nurses, garbage collectors, or mechanics, it's obvious that were they to vanish in a puff of smoke, the results would be immediate and catastrophic."

2020 PROVES THIS CORRECT – "ESSENTIAL WORKERS"

p xx - "For instance: in our society, there seems to be a general rule that, the more obviously one's work benefits other people, the lesson is likely to be paid for it."

p xx - "How can one even begin to speak of dignity in labor when one secretly feels one's job should not exist? how can it not create a sense of deep rage and resentment?"

It's past my bedtime and I have dozens more quotes I want to include and I'm not even to page 1 yet ;D

p xviii - "The ruling class has figured out that a happy and productive population with free time on their hands is a mortal danger."

2020 reveals that a frustrated and stressed population with free time is also dangerous.

Black Lives Matter.

p xviii - "While corporations may engage in ruthless downsizing, the layoffs and speed-ups invariably fall on that class of people who are actually making, moving, fixing, and maintaining things. Through some strange alchemy no one can quite explain, the number of salaried paper-pushers ultimately seems to expand."

p xviii - "It's as if someone were out there making up pointless jobs just for the sake of keeping us all working... In capitalism, this is precisely what is not supposed to happen... this is the very sort of problem market competition is supposed to fix."

p xvii - "technology has been marshaled, if anything, to figure out ways to make us all work more."

p xv - "What, I wondered, if those jobs really are useless, and those who hold them are aware of it? ... Could there be anything more demoralizing than having to wake up in the morning five out of seven days of one's adult life to perform a task that one secretly believed did not need to be performed—that was simply a waste of time or resources, or that even made the world worse?"

p xv - "Everyone is familiar with those sort of jobs that don't seem, to the outsider, to really do much of anything."

I'm not posting about this much because I'm getting to do my discussing in our online book group. Yay! :D

I know exactly which picture he's referring to. That child was forced into that situation by abusive foster parents, and later killed by them.

"Change rather than stability will characterize the workplace. We need to develop in young people a passion for lifelong learning. We need to communicate that education and work are useful, challenging, and enjoyable."

"Teachers, parents, and counselors should spend more time advising young people about the links between time use (such as television watching and socializing) and future job options."

Did they not ask students in their surveys about this? Do they think students believe watching TV is productive?

"Restructure school-to-work programs in high schools so that students come to realize that productive employment in the future will require continual training and learning." Does our work-based learning program provide students with valuable work that invites reflection and career support? Or does it simply get students out of the building and allow them to earn money, teaching "skills" like attendance and obedience?

"Group projects should be utilized more widely, taking advantage of teenagers' natural inclination to work together with peers. Other instructional formats that engage students' attention are individual work and testing."

"In the future it will be essential to establish more links between disciplines, see commonalities among different subjects, & master synthetic as well as analytic approaches to learning. Only then will young adults be able to move effortlessly from one job to another as market conditions change. At the same time, abstract academic learning should be presented in a context of personal and social responsibility."

Persons who seek out challenges that are equal to their expanding abilities are more likely to develop a positive view of their lives. Such self-directed persons strive to achieve goals that are intrinsically motivating. Having such goals means that the activity itself brings enjoyment and satisfaction."

"Work orientation seems to be optimal, at least in the short run; the students who have it are involved in their studies and report a higher quality of experience overall. Play orientation, more typical of boys and those in economically advantaged families, might bring better results later, as students move on to college and career."

"For instance, when a teenager repeatedly feels that what he does is play, he signals an open, experimental attitude toward life; when another feels that her activities are more like work, she reveals a responsible, persevering attitude. Both of these have distinct advantages."

"What is needed is an opportunity for youth to experience the joys and responsibilities of making things happen, without being prematurely drawn into monotonous work."