Maybe the teens aren’t worth hiring?

Don Quixote and I dined at McDonald’s today.  Usually, the employees are Hispanic.  Their English is fractured, but the service is competent and friendly.  Today, we had a young Caucasian boy, who looked to be around 17 or 18.  He did not look as if he had a disability.  (I recognize that not all disabilities are obvious to the beholder, but certainly some leave their mark on a person’s face or in his movements.)  Instead, he just radiated incompetence.  We’d seen him at this McDonald’s before, so he didn’t have the excuse of being a brand new hire.  He was just a numbskull.

I thought of him today when I saw that this is the worst summer for teens since WWII when it comes to jobs:

For the third year in a row, American teenagers hoping to land summer jobs will face the worst teen hiring slump since World War II.

The unemployment rate for 16- to 19-year-olds is 24.9 percent nationally, and in some major cities the rate is much higher.  In Washington, DC, the teen unemployment rate is 51.7 percent.

I believe that a large share of the blame for this dismal economic scene lies with a president who sucked money out of the private sector, which functions efficiently, and parked it with the government, which does not. I do wonder, though, whether we can also blame forty to fifty years of Leftist education of the type that resulted in young people who have no logic, cannot count change without a calculator, don’t know the meaning of the word “polite,” and have a nonexistent work ethic.  Even when they’re sweet-natured and honest, a lot of these kids just aren’t worth hiring.