We are seeing it constantly. Truckers badly needed! Fast food workers wanted urgently! Massive shortage of teachers! Miners in short supply! Call center operators needed – apply now! Timber and lumber workers and operators wanted NOW!

But just as noticeable to us at TPOL? We hear and see this in South Dakota, Wyoming, Colorado, New Mexico, Utah. Companies hurting for people. Some rapidly increase wages and salaries to steal workers from their competitors. It is no secret: we here at TPOL have close ties with mining (mostly construction aggregates), lumber, over-the-road trucking, and construction. We constantly hear and see how clients and friends can not find the people they need. To work to make money, of course, but they make money by doing work and providing products that people need.

It is a multi-level nightmare. To mine sand and gravel, you need people. And you need equipment for those people to operate. To excavate, crush, screen, and load materials. And to reclaim the mined land. That equipment in turn needs parts fuel and lubricants. Which must be manufactured or produced, transported, and installed. Done by people.

Fast food places have limited hours. Or resorted to drive-thru only: not enough people, even with overtime (time and a half), to keep the doors open. Ditto for many convenience stores. And even supermarkets and other businesses.

And the people aren’t there: jobs are begging. Well-paid jobs – generally well above the nonsense of “minimum wage.” We see signs on many business windows, we see pop-up adverts and more.

But at the same time, we hear of people who cannot find a full-time job.

So what gives?

We should be long past the enforced and bought-off “no-work” force of COVID – the beer flu Pandemic Panic. At least here in the Western States. We supposedly have people flooding into the Rockies and the Great Plains who are fleeing from the Coasts. And we are seeing massive construction projects – especially of apartments – across multiple States. Many of which have experienced great delays. We are told it is labor shortages and materials delays. So again we ask, what gives?

Part of it is certainly a growing underclass. Yes, many border jumpers are hard workers and eager to make a living by providing services. We tend to meet a fair number in and at various projects.

But we do see, and hear, those who are coming across that seem only to want handouts and easy living off others. And otherwise spend a lot of time preying on people or just doing nothing good. And they are part of a growing population of native-born and longer-term migrants who also are, in old terms, bums.

And then there are others who can work but their work skills are minimal – if not nonexistent. Elementary and high school standards are high – and not followed. Students are “graduated” with vast amounts of indoctrination but who have somehow missed basic life skills. Like reading (and comprehending) and math skills. Ah, but they can explain how they are victims of society, and of their families. And of anything and everything beyond their control. Yet seem to think that government can fix it all.

So what can we do?

We are told that automation is a solution. But guess what? Automation requires machines – and computers. Which require skilled people to install, maintain, repair, and (as is more and more necessary) find parts and clean up messes made by vandals, careless people, and poor quality materials and equipment.

So throw money at it~ that fixes everything, right? Except for time after time, we see that it does not. Just paying substandard workers more money gets politicians more votes, but doesn’t turn them into useful, productive, and competent workers.

What are some other ideas? (Readers, feel free to share your own.) First, we can stop wasting the bright ones by sending them off to colleges and universities to be corrupted and spoiled. Most of the work we need to do to help each other, and therefore, our communities and economy do NOT require sheepskins: degrees. They require knowledge and experience – practice. NOT practice reading whatever current fads in literature are pushing. Not knowledge of why Professora X or Doctor Y think that Che was wonderful and Jefferson was a racist, but practical things. Things that can make them a good living and at the same time, give them the spare time for them to learn about history and politics and especially the “nicer things of life.”

It isn’t just colleges. All too often, the damage is already done by age 18. We need children freed from the institutional bondage and the often vile and debased goals of the educational establishment. And even free the teachers from that pitiful situation which drives more and more of them into mental instability and perversion. This reaches right down into preschool and the abuse of children in the hands of government-appointed and -approved incompetents and even monsters.

There is one more sector where reform is a waste of time, and the situation involves the circular file: getting rid of the corrupt system that has resulted in hideous schools and colleges. And this has beggared the family, taking mothers out of children’s lives and education. And for that matter, fathers: where both parents must work outside the home in institutional settings. Where children are at the mercy of peers and older bullies and worse – and the childcare and education establishment.

And we need to stop killing our children. And stop abusing immigrants who do make our nations better places while sorting out the scum that preys on them and us. And people who use stolen money to pay people to be parasites.

Yes, we are speaking of government and of business managers of vast, impersonal, and autocratic business enterprises and government agencies. All of these things are products of government.

This broken system took a century to develop: we must be slow and methodical in replacing it. Not reforming, but replacing.