Up and Coming Weekly is a weekly publication in Fayetteville, NC and Fort Bragg, NC area offering local news, views, arts, entertainment and community event and business information.
Issue link: https://www.epageflip.net/i/440033
DEC 31 - JAN 6, 2015 UCW 5 WWW.UPANDCOMINGWEEKLY.COM I have been worried about this since I read Malcolm Gladwell's 2008 bestseller, Outliers: The Story of Success. Gladwell, who has several other provocative books and who writes for The New Yorker, is an unconventional and creative thinker. In the Outliers, he probes how human beings become successful, concluding what we all know — that it takes native ability, hard work, repetition over time and all the other sometimes seemingly AWOL characteristics of the Protestant work ethic that underpins much of Western civilization. Gladwell, however, adds another element; one that is great if it applies in our own lives and sad if it does not. Gladwell says that success is also a matter of luck, of being at the right place at the right moment in time. The dark underside of luck, says Gladwell, is that ability, skill, hard work, repetition and all the rest cannot overcome the unfortunate luck of being in the wrong place at the wrong point in time. He looks at tech gurus like Bill Gates and Steve Jobs. Both had plenty of intellectual horsepower, both worked hard on computers at an early age, and both logged what Gladwell says is the requisite 10,000 hours at their craft before they were really, really competent at it. Luck for them and others came because computer technology was exploding at precisely the time they became competent at it, propelling them into the stratosphere of technology. He also cites the Beatles, who spent years toiling away in German nightclubs, logging thousands of hours honing their musical skills. When Western culture was ready for a musical change from the rock and roll of the 1950s, there they were ready, willing and able to cash in on the new youth culture and its overwhelming changes. The ugly underside of lucky timing for Gladwell is illustrated by a group of young, smart and well-educated lawyers who came of professional age in the 1930s. In the booming 1920s, they could have made their fortunes practicing law in a go-go economy, but by the time they were ready to hang out their shingles, the Great Depression had taken hold, and people were more worried about eating than about getting legal advice. So, through no real fault of their own other than being born at the wrong time, these lawyers had careers that never lived up to their full potential. And that is what I am worried about for our young people who have come of age during our Great Recession and its lingering and painful aftermath. The Great Recession stole many of the jobs our young people had every reason to think they would have. There are well paid jobs at the top of the heap for highly educated and skilled professionals and jobs at the bottom for the unskilled and semi-skilled at low wages, but the working and middle class jobs that have sustained Americans for decades and that have bounced back after prior recessions have stayed gone after the Great Recession. Factory jobs that often offered significant benefits have gone overseas. Clerical, sales and customer service jobs have also bolted to countries where workers earn far less in salary than Americans have historically enjoyed. Economists call this loss of middle- skill jobs "hollowing out," and it is as real in North Carolina as it is anywhere in our country. Our state had — then lost —thousands of factory jobs at the same time technology was demanding higher skilled workers. Our numbers detail the grim reality. About 40 percent of our manufacturing jobs went poof over the last decade, and our real median income fell about 10 percent. The jobs that are gone were ones easily outsourced or easily replaced by machines. It is human nature to cast around for blame — a particular president or governor, a political party, Congress or the General Assembly, but the reality is that global economic forces far beyond our control are continuing to take a toll on North Carolina. Sadly, the end is not really in sight. Which brings us back to our young people, many of whom have done exactly what we asked and expected them to do. They got an education, perhaps some specific training, and they focused on a field of interest that appeared to have a promising future. But many remain idle or underemployed and underpaid in jobs they never imagined having with no end in sight. I wish I had the answer to North Carolina's job woes, because I see the distress many of our young people are experiencing, and some of our older workers as well who have lost careers and are now working one or more low-skilled, low-paying job. All I can do is try to understand what has happened and why and hope that 2015 will be the year North Carolina's economy and her people get ourselves back in balance by adapting to change and through that most ephemeral of all qualities — dumb luck. THIS WEEK WITH MARGARET Serving Fayetteville Over 50 Years! 484-0261 1304 Morganton Rd. Mon-Sat: 6am-10pm Sun: 7am-3pm Daily Specials • Breakfast • Lunch • Dinner Fresh Seafood • Hand Cut Steaks • Homemade Desserts • Italian & Greek • Children's Menu Banquet rooms available up to 100 guests Contest&RequestLine: 910-764-1073 www.christian107.com KeepingtheMainThing...theMainThing. visitusonline FocusontheFamily 20Countdown Magazine Adventures in Odyssey MARGARET DICKSON, Contributing Writer, COMMENTS? Editor@upandcom- ingweekly.com.. 910.484.6200. DUMB LUCK BY MARGARET DICKSON