- 4 days ago
Tonight on The Cameron Journal Podcast, we are talking about the breaking news story of the Department of Education employee cuts going through, the ICE raids being blocked in California, why Gen Z men can't find a job, and why shame is such a pernicious and powerful thing.
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01:00Hello, everyone. My name is Cameron Cowan.
01:05Um, this is the Cameron Journal.
01:09News hour. Hello.
01:12Oh, boy. Did I not have my act together this week?
01:16Oh, did we have a live event set up for this? No.
01:23Am I starting this stream 15 minutes late? Also, yes.
01:26Um, I haven't even done clips for Friday's interview, much less today's interview.
01:33Um, it's, yeah, it's a disaster here.
01:38Um, I, yeah, I've been working through a little bit of a crisis with the Cameron Journal.
01:47For some reason, there is an error in how Google is reporting my traffic on the Cameron Journal.
01:53And so, I have advertising clients who are convinced that I have no traffic anymore at all.
01:58You've gone away.
01:58And I'm kind of like, no, no.
02:01Um, we just have a reporting issue.
02:03So, I spent a lot of the day working on that.
02:07Um, I spent a lot of the day, uh, um, trying to solve that problem.
02:13And I ended up doing a lot of work on Saturday.
02:16So, I really only had Sunday to chill.
02:18And that, that means I kind of crash into Monday.
02:22And so, yeah.
02:24And I've crashed into this, into this show as well.
02:27I had a recording earlier.
02:29Um, and I was up and dealing with email.
02:32And there's just a lot of things happening.
02:35Right now.
02:37Um, a lot of things, you know, going on.
02:41But I want to remind everyone, um, if you are a Cameron Journal Plus subscriber,
02:45thank you so much for coming.
02:46If you are not, um, please make sure to do support the Cameron Journal
02:49by setting up for Cameron Journal Plus.
02:51You get exclusive hangouts with me, um, and support great journalism
02:55and this show, um, which is really important.
02:58Head over to CameronJewel.com slash subscribe.
03:01Um, Saturday's newsletter was extremely entertaining
03:04and had lots of great info.
03:05If you want to get that newsletter delivered to your inbox,
03:08make sure to head over to CameronJewel.com slash newsletter.
03:12Um, and sign up for that.
03:14Um, I know that there's actually a new collection.
03:16So two new things are happening right now.
03:18As I mentioned, I've started a new buddy podcast
03:20with Will and Connor called The Living Joke
03:23that airs on Wednesdays right here on the Cameron Journal.
03:26Um, the response to that has been really awesome.
03:32And we're moving forward with all sorts of stuff.
03:35Um, the video content on YouTube is probably going to stay here on the Cameron Journal
03:39at least for now.
03:40Um, but we are reposting everything over on Rumble.
03:45So if you want to head over there, um, and, uh, you can watch gaming content,
03:51you can watch the podcast, it's all happening over there.
03:54Um, we also have a substack going, um, which is going to host art
03:58and a lot of different, um, a lot of different, uh, a lot of different things,
04:04um, including the podcast as well.
04:06So thelivingjoke.substack.com, you can get all of our stuff delivered right to your inbox.
04:13The other thing that's happening is my new 10-part collection on Millennials
04:19is publishing now and going out via email to people.
04:27Um, I took kind of the 10 best parts of my book
04:32and put them together in this really great promotional, um, promotional, uh, series.
04:40Um, and we're calling it the Millennials Collection.
04:42Um, if you go over to CameronJournal.com slash Millennials,
04:45um, I have a bunch of other Millennial content in there,
04:48all this I've written from the past, um, a lot of videos that I've shared
04:51as the years have gone by, and this new collection are all in there.
04:55But if you want the new stuff delivered to your inbox,
04:57sign up for the newsletter.
05:00CameronJournal.com slash newsletter.
05:01So, we have a lot of things going on.
05:03I got all that content set up last week.
05:06Um, I, um, and it was, it was good.
05:12It was, it was a lot of fun.
05:13It was really interesting to kind of see all of that finally, finally come together.
05:17But obviously that's all in support of my upcoming book,
05:19America's Lost Generation, um, which is the story of Millennials.
05:23In fact, I, the person I was interviewing, um, interviewing today,
05:29um, we were talking about that.
05:31Her, her organization offers kind of real life writing and job training,
05:35um, and leadership training for young people.
05:39And, um, uh, and that was a really great conversation.
05:44We got a little bit into topics around ALG and all this sort of thing.
05:47So, there's a lot of things happening, which is why I'm a little tired.
05:51And tomorrow I'm leaving to go to, I have to go to Delaware and run some errands.
05:54So, um, it's going to be great.
05:56It's going to be a great week.
05:58We're going to be, we're going to be okay.
06:00We're going to be okay.
06:01Right?
06:02Right.
06:02Um, and it's also a busy week on the headlines.
06:06Um, there's a lot.
06:10Um, especially the breaking news with President Trump in the Education Department.
06:13So, without further ado, let's turn to the headlines.
06:18Here we go.
06:20And here we are.
06:22So, obvious, this just came through, um, this evening.
06:28Um, it says here, I'll put my glasses on so I can see.
06:35Uh, in a major victory for the Trump administration, the Supreme Court on Monday let it fire more
06:39than a thousand Education Department employees and functionally eliminate the agency.
06:43The court's decision, while technically temporary, lets workers who had been reinstated during
06:47the legal battle be fired again.
06:48The department manages federal loans for college, track student achievement, and enforces
06:52civil rights laws in school.
06:54Let's read more.
06:56Um.
06:58The Trump administration has announced plans to fire more than 1,300 workers, a move that
07:03would effectively gut the department, which manages, yes, the Department of Education
07:07began the year with more than 4,000 employees.
07:09The administration also fired some probationary workers and offered employees the ability to
07:13resign.
07:14Altogether, after the terminations, the Education Department will have a workforce of about
07:17half the size it did before Mr. Trump returned to office.
07:20The move by the justices to represent an expansion of presidential power, allowing Mr.
07:24Trump to dismantle the inner workings of a government department created by Congress
07:27without legislators' input.
07:28The firings will hobble much of the department's work, supporters arguing in court filings.
07:33Particularly hard-hit was the department's Office for Civil Rights, which had seven of
07:36its twelve offices shuttered.
07:39It comes after a decision by the justices last week that cleared the way for the Trump administration
07:43to move forward with cutting thousands of jobs across a number of federal agencies, including
07:46Departments of Housing and Urban Development, State, and Treasury.
07:50The order by the court was unsigned and gave no reasoning, as is typical in such emergency
07:57applications.
07:58No vote count was given, which is unusual for emergency orders.
08:01But Justice Sonia Sotomayor wrote a dissent, joined by the court's two other liberals, Justice
08:05Lena Kagan and Ketanji Brown-Jackson.
08:07The three argued that Mr. Trump had overstepped his authority with his unilateral efforts to
08:11eliminate a cabinet-level agency established by Congress nearly a half-century ago.
08:15Quote,
08:15Of course, the White House phrased the decision, and it says down here, the effort from the
08:42Trump administration to dismantle the Department of Education is playing with the futures of
08:46millions of Americans, and after just four months, the consequences are already evident
08:49across our education system, Sharia Smith, the president of the American Federation of
08:53the Oval Employees, Local 252, said in a statement.
08:59Obviously, there was an order back in January to get rid of the Department of Education.
09:04The Trump administration replied in court filings that the department, quote,
09:08had determined it can carry out its statutorily mandated functions with a pared-down staff
09:12that many discretionary functions are better left to the states.
09:18So, that's, that's fun.
09:21Um, definitely, definitely fun.
09:23There was some other fun stories in here, like, apparently we're gonna, um, tariff to
09:27Mexican tomatoes.
09:28It says here the Trump administration announced Monday it would impose a 17% tariff on most imports
09:32of tomatoes from Mexico, as it withdrew from a decades-old trade agreement that had prevented
09:36those levies from staffing into place.
09:38The tariffs will add to the price of a grocery store staple for many Americans, while also
09:42funneling more business to domestic tomato growers largely in Florida.
09:46The levies stemmed from an early 30-year-old trade case that found Mexican tomato growers
09:50to be selling their products in the United States at unfairly low prices.
09:53The U.S. tomato industry brought a case against their Mexican competitors in 1996, arguing
09:58that Mexican tomatoes dumped into the United States were injuring American growers.
10:01A U.S. trade court agreed with them and ordered tariffs to be imposed.
10:04But on five occasions since then, in 1996, 2002, 2008, 2013, and 2019, the United States
10:09agreed to suspend the tariffs as long as Mexican growers would keep their prices above a certain
10:13minimum level.
10:14The United States said Mexico had been in recent talks about entering into a new agreement.
10:18So, yeah, it's another chapter in the trade war in addition to the tariffs that were put
10:33on the EU last week as well, which were, you know, have been on, off, on again, off again sort of thing,
10:47and I'm not quite sure if it's just a negotiating tactic or what, or if he's trying to get the EU
10:52to go along with something, whatever have you.
10:57So, that's, you know, that's fine.
11:03But it's, yeah, it's just another chapter in the trade war.
11:05We're going to keep seeing this all the time.
11:08We're already starting to see, you know, a bit of inflation from tariffs.
11:13Because, um, the federal government has collected $100 billion already in tariffs, and that just
11:19means the federal government is taking $100 billion out of yours in my's pockets.
11:23Because it's the consumer, or the domestic producer, that pays the tariff.
11:27If the domestic producer, if the person selling it here has to pay the tax, then they're going
11:31to pass at least some of that cost on, so we're paying.
11:35So, when the next time you want something that involves a tomato, and it's going to come
11:39from Mexico, especially in the winter, guess what?
11:41You're paying a tax on it.
11:42The tomato tax.
11:45What else have we got?
11:47Um, oh yes, this is good.
11:50Um, so, as we all know, one of the big stories in the 2024 election was, um, how women really
12:02lurched right, and young women lurched right, white women lurched right, young men, or I'm
12:09sorry, young women lurched left, white women lurched right, young men lurched right, um,
12:15college educated women lurched left in a big way, and there is a new wave of conservative
12:21influencers and magazines that are looking to reverse that trend.
12:25Oh, is this paywalled?
12:29Oh, is this paywalled?
12:30I didn't really look look, um, if it, if it was, um, which is unfortunate.
12:37Um, I might be able to do this and that, and it might let us walk, it might, no, not even
12:56close.
12:56Anyway, let me do this.
13:00Anyway, there's this story of it, which you unfortunately can't read because it's paywalled.
13:06Um, it gets, it, well, the, the bulk of the story and the bulk of this trend, because I
13:13found it on Twitter and a bunch of other stuff, um, the bulk of it has to do with, um, uh, with
13:21the new sets of sort of right-wing influence that brings together a little bit of everything
13:28to, you know, and it, it kind of is an outgrowth of that whole trad wife thing.
13:32That's like the ballerina farms, the, all that sort of trad wife, you know, get married,
13:38have kids, all this type of thing, you know, um, kind of, kind of an outgrowth of that.
13:44Um, and there's some new publications and influencers kind of promoting that as an ideal
13:51it's something new, it's something new in the narrative that I thought was interesting.
13:55I'm really sad that it's paywalled, but this is, you know, very common now.
13:59I don't blame CNN for wanting to make a buck.
14:02Um, um, but we're going to move on to, uh, this story.
14:07Um, it was going to be short and anecdotal.
14:09You're not missing anything.
14:10However, we are going to talk about LA immigration raids, which is much more interesting.
14:14Um, and we have a subscription to the New York Times.
14:17It says here,
14:17In the orders,
14:47Uh, well, I'm not going to pronounce that.
14:50Mamei Frimpong of the U.S. District Court for Central District of California directed agents
14:54to stop racially profiling in the course of seeking out immigrants and mandated that the
14:57federal government, which has deployed hundreds of agents from Immigration and Customs Enforcement
15:01and other agencies in Los Angeles County, ensure detainees have access to legal counsel.
15:06What the federal government would have this court believe, in the face of a mountain of
15:09evidence presented in this case, is that none of this is actually happening, the judge wrote
15:13that the tactics barred in her order.
15:15She said that, quote,
15:15The ruling, which remains in place up to 10 days, came in response to a lawsuit filed
15:26last week by immigrant advocacy groups led by the American Civil Liberties Union of Southern
15:29California and the nonprofit Public Council.
15:32A fuller hearing is expected in the coming weeks as the groups seek a more durable order,
15:37known as a preliminary injunction.
15:39Los Angeles, the largest city and the largest blue state, has become the center of President
15:42Trump's efforts to ramp up immigration arrests and achieve his pledge of mass deportations.
15:46It is also about 30% Latino and is home to the nation's largest population of undocumented
15:49people.
15:50During a hearing on Thursday, the judge was skeptical of the government's assertions that
15:53it was not violating the constitutional rights of people and that agents were stopping
15:56immigrants based on the totality of circumstances rather than relying on race.
16:00In addition to ICE, which is responsible for detaining and deporting immigrants, the Trump
16:04administration has tapped the Border Patrol, the FBI, and the Drug Enforcement Administration
16:08to assist with an aggressive enforcement operation in Los Angeles that prompted several days
16:12of protests last month.
16:14Agents have arrested people in parking lots, in tow yards, and on job sites like restaurants.
16:17Some encounters have been captured on bystander video, and in some instances, the arrests have
16:21appeared to be roundups of random Hispanic people by armed agents who drive up in unmarked
16:25vehicles in military or plain clothes wearing masks.
16:27Mark Rosenbaum, a lawyer with public counsel, said, quote, the order reflects that there
16:32is something very wrong when the federal government goes to war against an American city and ignores
16:36the constitution, he added.
16:37Quote, hopefully this ends the actions of the government rounding up car wash workers and
16:41other hardworking people like they were domestic terrorists.
16:44The mayor of Los Angeles, Karen Bass, said the judge's ruling represented, quote, American
16:48values and decency.
16:49During the hearing on Thursday, Sean Skudalewski, ooh, that's a nice Polish name, a lawyer for
16:57the federal government, defended the tactics that the agents had been using in Los Angeles.
17:00He said that when they encountered people whom they weren't initially targeting, quote,
17:03agents can put blinders on.
17:05Judge Frimpong described the government arguments as very general, saying that they did not really
17:09engage with the high volume of evidence that the plaintiffs put on the record of things
17:14we've all seen and heard on the news.
17:21It says, the near 52-page ruling judged from the government may not rely solely alone or
17:27in combination on race or ethnicity, on a person speaking Spanish or English with an
17:31accent, or on a person's presence in a particular location, such as a day labor or agricultural
17:34site, or the type of work performed to establish reasonable suspicion to stop and detain people.
17:38And, I mean, this was, this was coming, I mean, some, it's California, somebody was going
17:50to say not so fast, um, and I think other places are going to start, you know, citing this
17:57case, it's not a, you know, the national injunction thing is kind of not a thing anymore.
18:01But, someone was going to block this sort of thing somewhere along the way.
18:07There's enough immigrant groups and whatnot, they were going to find some judge somewhere
18:09with the authority to do it, and they found Judge Frimpong here.
18:14Um, I think if we're going to be serious about immigration, and I think we should be serious
18:20about immigration, the best, there's, you know, kind of three things to do.
18:25So, one, they are doing, and that's encouraging self-deportation, which I think is very important.
18:34Um, the other one, which I think is equally important, um, is they're doing an excellent,
18:41I think the other thing that they, you know, could be doing is, um, not arresting people
18:47at immigration hearings, and actually taking the time to find actually undocumented people.
18:53Back in the 90s, Bill Clinton deported 20 million people, and we didn't, it wasn't like this.
18:58Obama was the deporter-in-chief, he was putting the kids in cages long before Trump was.
19:03Um, and, and that was, there's a certain, I think if they set up an actual process for
19:09this, you know, where people, much like they did in the first term with the stay in Mexico
19:14policy, so the national process, instead, they're just running around, because they're not getting
19:19the numbers that they were hoping for, they're just running around town snatching people
19:22off the road.
19:23I think there needs to be a different process for this.
19:26I'm not saying that we need to do another, you know, mass amnesty, although there is a
19:30rumor, there is a rumor that Trump is talking, thinking about mass amnesty.
19:34Um, of course, you know, right now everyone's directing the whole Epstein thing.
19:38Um, but that was, I watched a video about that today, that was entertaining.
19:42Um, um, you know, there needs to be an actual, you know, reasonable process for this, that
19:51at least kind of sort of follows the law, rather than just running around town looking for any
19:55old place to pick people up, or, you know, or doing workplace raids, or, or whatever have
19:59you.
19:59Um, it is very obvious to me that I think a lot of people are very frustrated with how
20:06society is changing, um, and immigration, the, the blame is going straight onto immigrants and
20:14immigration.
20:15And I, I don't think that's entirely misplaced.
20:17But here's, here's kind of the sad thing about this, is when you raid the Home Depot parking lot,
20:23you are raiding illegal immigrants who are on the fringe.
20:28Um, you are kind of going after the most vulnerable people in any given system, which I, I mean,
20:35I think that has its own sort of sadness to it sort of thing, just simply because they're
20:41not getting the numbers they hope for and they want, you know, they want more, you know,
20:46they, they want to, you know, be getting, you know, getting more people and putting them
20:49on planes and all this sort of thing.
20:50And there's, yeah, I think, I think there's a lot of people, if you set up an actual process
20:55to evaluate claims, you know, do you have family or all this sort of thing, and you sort
21:00of go through that process, you're going to get a lot of the numbers.
21:05You're not going to have little issues.
21:06You're not going to have the protests of people just, I mean, this is basically a kind
21:10of a Gestapo situation, just running around.
21:12And we're going to actually have an interesting story about that that I found on Twitter.
21:16Hmm.
21:17Um, it seems like a Gestapo running around.
21:20And I, immigration is something in which I'm very conservative.
21:23I'm broadly in favor of not having a whole lot of immigration for a while, while we kind
21:27of work out the social ramifications that we have.
21:29But that goes for, like, H-1B visas, too.
21:32That even goes for a lot of these companies who hire an H-1B visa for no other reason than
21:36Americans won't work for the paltry wages they want to pay.
21:39I'm broadly in favor of really just ratcheting down immigration, you know, capping the amount
21:47of student visas so that colleges will expand their seats so more, you know, more Americans
21:53can get in.
21:54I am, you know, broadly in favor of, uh, um, I'm broadly in favor of, uh, of, you know,
22:05keeping, you know, we've, we have this kind of weird country quota system.
22:09And I think a lot of those should be, you know, held down as well.
22:14I think it also needs to be more inexpensive, you know, to come to America.
22:18I think a temporary workers program would be very helpful.
22:22Um, most people don't know.
22:23It's actually, in a kind of a weird way, incredibly difficult to come to this country.
22:27I, there's a lot of things within the existing system that need some reform.
22:33And I think with those things put in, you could sufficiently tamp down immigration in a,
22:39in a productive way.
22:40One of the kind of mistakes that was made along the way, as the nineties came to a close
22:47into the two thousands, there had been a system of significant reforms of what was then called
22:50the Immigration and Naturalization Service, or INS.
22:55Um, after 9-11, the Bush administration took a bunch of disparate parts of the federal government,
23:01including INS, um, and mushed it into the new Homeland Security Department.
23:06Um, which was, you know, manned by a guy named Tom Northwich, who was the governor of Pennsylvania.
23:11Um, and, uh, and he, um, and they, what, when they kind of redid that, they really kind of
23:20undid the tremendous progress that had been done by the Clinton administration in the nineties
23:25to kind of make the INS a functional organization, which it was not when the Clintons got into power.
23:30And, um, and unfortunately, ever since then, it was renamed ICE, and, uh, since then, it really
23:40hasn't functioned very well at all.
23:44And there have been different attempts by the Bush administration, the Obama administration,
23:49the Trump administration, the Biden administration, the Trump administration, again, to get ICE
23:52working and functioning, and functioning more carefully.
23:54The reality is, economically speaking, the, um, the amount of, you know, sort of low-end
24:03labor we need is a lot.
24:07Um, I, that's why I said I'm quite comfortable kind of cutting off the H-1Bs, because we have
24:12lots of skilled, educated workers.
24:13No shortage of those.
24:14Um, we do need people in fields picking vegetables.
24:17Um, so I, I think we have to kind of look at the whole labor market, work with companies,
24:21figure out what they need and they're looking for, and then do that.
24:25And, but, a little thing, chain migration, not so good.
24:28I was in favor of the remittances tax.
24:30We have let immigration, to a certain degree, get out of control.
24:34And I'm not anti-immigrant or anything like that, but I'm not one of those people who's
24:38open borders, borders are fake, all that sort of thing.
24:41No.
24:42I do think it is vitally important that we know who's coming here where, why, and when, and,
24:48and, and we have, you know, we are smart about how, how we do that.
24:53But turning ICE into a Gestapo and, and pulling people off the road is not the way to do that.
24:59Have a process.
25:00Have something dignified and civilized that people can go through.
25:04Use actual intelligence to find people.
25:07This is how you do it.
25:08All this does is create articles like this, judgments like this, protests, video.
25:14It's not good for the narrative, and it's not a good way to fix immigration in this country.
25:18So, again, not surprised that this has happened.
25:22It's, yeah.
25:23Anyway, let's move on.
25:25I saved this story from Fortune because, um, it's very reminiscent of something I wrote
25:36about in America's Lost Generation about needs not in education, employment, or training.
25:44Neat not in education, employment, or training.
25:48Um, and I had written about this in looking through the lens of millennials who suffer
25:53from this and Gen Z suffering from it, too.
25:55And I think this is, you know, interesting about, um, we're now getting headlines.
26:02When I was looking for the Neat Phenomena, I really had to dig for the people that were
26:06writing about this.
26:07For this to be in Fortune Magazine is quite significant.
26:10And we start with the headline.
26:11Gen Z grad says being unemployed is harder than a nine-to-five because most workers would
26:15have a breakdown dealing with the admin.
26:17He's among the neat men frozen out of the workforce.
26:19That's actually true.
26:21Looking for a job is more stressful than having a job.
26:24The amount of paperwork, you're constantly doing applications, everyone has a different
26:28account system that you have to sign up for, everybody wants something different.
26:32If you're supposed to rewrite your resume for, you know, every single time you've got a
26:36tab with AI open, it's out of control.
26:38So, I mean, you, and if you, and especially nowadays when you have to apply to, you know,
26:44so many, like, you know, dozens, hundreds of jobs, um, before you get anything, the reality
26:49is you're basically doing, you know, this level of admin work all the time.
26:54And it says here, college-educated Gen Z men are stuck in the class of Neats, not in
26:59employment, education, or training.
27:00Many are watching their careers erupt before they even started.
27:02Quote, it's a full-time job trying to claim benefits is one of the positives.
27:05As a Gen Z grad has complained in a series of TikTok videos, been working harder than
27:09a 9-to-5 employee lately.
27:11The male user blasts in another, and the brutal wake-up call has struck a generational nerve.
27:14The 27-year-old Josh E.B., as he goes by on TikTok, has been unemployed and job hunting
27:19since graduating with a master's in business in October.
27:21In his popular videos, the Gen Z-er from Edinburgh explains that he's hoped two degrees
27:25would secure in a place in the corporate world so he could finally escape life in a council
27:28estate public housing.
27:29This is in Britain.
27:30But he's been shocked that since tossing his graduation cap in the air, he's instead
27:35been forced to live off unemployment benefits and that that in itself can be like a full-time
27:39job.
27:39The job hunt is still impossible, he says in one video, adding that he's competing against
27:42over 100 applicants for low-wage entry-level jobs and getting a few interviews.
27:47I could have been working in a warehouse and gotten a promotion or two, and the time it
27:50took to do that master's probably would have given me more of an advantage.
27:53Josh explains that the government pays him £400 a month and $427, but he has to keep
27:57track of all his job hunting activity for the keep.
27:59So although I do want a job, you're spending the whole time getting ready for those weekly
28:03meetings.
28:03More young men are becoming needs than women, not in employment, education, or training.
28:07Josh is far from them alone.
28:08Gen Z graduates are discovering their qualifications no longer guarantee a direct path to graduate
28:12schemes, high-profile jobs, or even the footloader they once did.
28:16Just 10 years ago, 94% of students who needed a landed worker went into further education in
28:21the one year after graduating, according to the UK Department of Education.
28:23In 2024, just 59% of grads had full-time jobs 15 months after graduating.
28:29They make up a growing class of needs that is not in employment, education, or training
28:32with college-educated men particularly hard-hit.
28:35Separate data suggests that while the share of female Gen Z grads participating in the
28:38workforce has steadily increased, the participation rate for their male counterparts has nose-dived
28:43since 2023.
28:46In the six months after graduating, another Gen Z-er, Max Onkin applied for 20 jobs a day
28:50and has mostly heard nothing back.
28:51He's been hunting for two years now.
28:52I have now lowered the amount of applications I do because I find that so many of the adverts
28:56out there are completely bust.
28:57My degree was supposed to get me a job.
28:59Gen Z law graduate James Harrison similarly spent 15 months applying for jobs and even
29:03got rejected for a barista role at Cafe Nero before landing his current paralegal gig.
29:07Meanwhile, in the States, Hunter Howell, a 22-year-old and grad with a degree in business administration,
29:12submitted north of 1,700 job applications.
29:14In his 10 months of job hunting, he only landed one full-time offer.
29:17Likewise, on Joshi's TikTok videos amid the stream of hate from users calling him a lazy
29:20scrounger, there are sympathies of men in similar positions.
29:23Fifty applications, four interviews, and one year later, nothing.
29:26One young male user wrote, I know the man echoed, going through the same thing right now.
29:29The classes of 2023 and 2024 are confronting a tougher job market than those who graduated
29:35during the Great Resignation when hiring rates and wages at a record high.
29:39It's a trend that Louis Mala, CEO of the Global Recruitment Agency Bentley Lewis, has
29:43witnessed too.
29:43While young college-educated women are making due by widening their job search, Mala has
29:47seen their male counterparts try to wait it out.
29:49Many seem to be holding on for that, quote, dream job that ticks all the boxes of seeing
29:52that value is starting somewhere and working their way up, he tells Fortune, while adding
29:56that traditionally male jobs in tech and finance have been especially impacted by the economy.
29:59I also think there's a still-outdate idea of what kind of work is acceptable for men,
30:02he adds.
30:03They don't want to take jobs as he has beneath them, even if it's just to get by.
30:06And when you add in how complicated it is to get benefits, it's no wonder many are feeling
30:09discouraged.
30:10His advice to young men, you don't need to have it all figured out right away.
30:13Quote, it's tough entering the workforce with that kind of pressure, Mala says.
30:15I always tell them there isn't so much value in trying different things in your 20s.
30:19Your early career is about exploring and learning.
30:20You have all those social media posts about overnight success.
30:23Building a career, just like building a successful business, takes time and effort, and more people
30:26need to talk about that, he stresses.
30:27I think it's funny that the only advice this guy offers is, well, they're lazy, they're not
30:48doing other types of work, they're not working up, all this type of thing, without ever talking
30:54about the root cause of this, without ever talking about the systemic, you know, the systemic
31:04end of this.
31:05Um, I don't think anybody, not that you go into as much debt in the UK as you do in
31:10the US, but nobody's going to school to get an MBA to then be at the Panda Express.
31:16Remember that whole thing on Twitter about the whole everyone's like, oh yeah, well they're
31:20paying good wages at Panda Express.
31:21Like, no one's going through all of that to work a job you don't need education for.
31:27Like, that's the point of education, sort of thing.
31:29Um, and I think the idea, you know, that, like, many seem to be holding out for that
31:35dream job that ticks all the boxes.
31:37Oh, you mean like the job that affords them to actually live?
31:40Like, it's kind of funny how people just kind of like, well, just take any, you know, take
31:44anything.
31:44It's kind of like, I mean, yeah, at a certain level, you, you know, a dollar in the door
31:50is a dollar in the door.
31:52Who are we to complain?
31:53No one.
31:54But I think it's also incredibly entertaining that these articles always have the same,
31:59the same thing.
32:00But it's kind of like, well, you know, these things take time to build and all this type
32:03of thing.
32:03As someone who went through the Great Recession, I will tell you that every year, every month,
32:13but every year, you don't have a job in your field, it gets hard to break in.
32:17Every year that you're not making decent money and can save, you are losing a fortune in future
32:24savings.
32:25Every weird job you take that builds your resume is one more kind of point against you in getting
32:37hired for something that you actually do want.
32:40Um, and that's even supposing you're getting paid enough to actually live, actually exist,
32:49find a date, get married, anything like that, you know, do anything fun at all.
32:56Um, there is, uh, yeah, it's, and the reality is you, you know, you start this now and you
33:07wake up and five years have gone by, you've never worked in your field, um, you know,
33:12you're still kind of doing dead and stuff.
33:14And that's what I talk about in America's Lost Generation.
33:16And I save this because I talk quite extensively comparing needs against Akiku Mori in Japan.
33:23And it's interesting how even many decades after Japan's own economic changes and Great
33:30Recession, that they still have these men who refuse to go outside and engage in society.
33:35And there's weird social things with Japan instead of all that, so our needs are very
33:38different, um, in that way.
33:41But there's an economic story there as well.
33:45And there's one here too.
33:47Um, the economy is not growing fast enough and producing enough jobs to employ young people.
33:53That's the story.
33:55That's the story.
33:56Um, and the fact that that's not the discussion, that there's a major economic problem here and
34:06this is something worth addressing at a government level is extremely frustrating.
34:13And I've always found it extremely frustrating.
34:15And I feel bad, I feel bad for Gen Z kids because they were writing this article about millennials
34:19in 2009, you know, to be kind of like, oh, I mean, millennials are lazy, they're looking
34:26for the magic job.
34:28Oh, you went to college, go into the trades, why did you waste your time and call all this
34:32other, I mean, I've lived through 15 years of a negative narrative about how young people
34:39just can't get it together.
34:40And now it's Gen Z's turn to be reading articles like this and have poor people like me talk
34:45about them.
34:47Um, it's, it's quite depressing.
34:49And no one ever gets to the root of the economy is not working for the everyday person.
34:53And we are producing another generation of young people who are graduating into a tough
34:59economy.
34:59How many more years do we have to play the same dumb game?
35:05Apparently many more.
35:06So, moving along, um, someone texted me, actually.
35:19People forget that I do the news hour.
35:25Um, but it's, dear friend, um, uh, this, so this article in Politico is very interesting.
35:34Um, and this new Federal Reserve study says that the 1918 flu pandemic has a tie to Nazi
35:44party gains in Germany.
35:45And it says here, a new academic paper produced by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York concludes
35:49that deaths from the 1918 influenza pandemic, quote, profoundly shaped German society, unquote,
35:54in subsequent years and contributed to the strength of the Nazi party.
35:56The paper, published this month and authored by New York Fed economist Christian Blickle,
36:01explained, examined municipal spending levels of voter extremism in Germany from the time
36:05of the initial influenza outbreak until 1933, and shows that areas which experienced a greater
36:09relative population decline due to the pandemic spent less per capita on their inhabitants in
36:13the following decade.
36:14The paper also shows that, quote, influenza deaths of 1918 are correlated with an increased
36:18share, an increase in the share of votes won by right-wing extremists, such as the National
36:23Socialist Workers' Party in Germany's 1932 and 1933 elections.
36:28Together, the lower spending and flu-related deaths, quote, had a strong effect on the share
36:32of votes won by extremists, specifically the extremist National Socialist Party, the Nazis,
36:35with made proposits.
36:37This result is stronger for right-wing extremists than largely non-existent for left-wing extremists.
36:41Despite becoming properly known as the Spanish flu, the influenza pandemic likely originated
36:45in the United States and a Kansas military base, eventually infecting about one-third of the global
36:49population and killing at least 50 million people worldwide, according to the CDC.
36:54Germany experienced roughly 287,000 influenza deaths between 1918 and 1920.
37:00The paper's findings likely due to, quote, changes in societal preferences following the
37:031918 outbreak.
37:05Blickle argues that in the influenza pandemic's disproportionate toll on young people may have
37:09spurred resentment of foreigners among the survivors and driven voters to parties whose
37:12platforms match such sentiments.
37:14The conclusions come amid fears that the current coronavirus pandemic will shake up international
37:18politics and spur extremism around the world, as officials and mobile health experts look
37:21to previous outbreaks for guidance on how to navigate the months and years to come.
37:25Of course, there's no significant evidence yet to judge how the novel coronavirus will
37:28affect the city spending or alter voting preferences, and unlike the influence of pandemic a century
37:32ago, the disease has proven this especially fatal among older people.
37:35Historians have generally attributed the rise of the Nazi Party to multiple structural causes,
37:39including economic and social devastation brought by the First World War and the widespread
37:42frustration among the German population about the post-war Weimar Republic.
37:45Blickle did not directly address those broader factors, but the paper did, quote, control
37:50for the influences of local unemployment, city spending, population changes brought on
37:53by the war, and local demographics.
37:56Quote, given a number of econometric challenges, we are cautious about the interpretation of our
38:00results, Blickle acknowledges.
38:02Nevertheless, the study offers a novel contribution to the discussion surrounding the long-term effects
38:06of pandemics.
38:07I think this is very interesting because pandemics do, and I did a podcast about this called
38:14Opium, Opiates, Pandemics, and Wars, and I talk about the geopolitical implications of
38:19widespread epidemics and pandemics, and how, you know, when there's a lot of things change
38:26quite quickly.
38:27And when I saw this guy, and I read it over, and I'm kind of like, huh, fascinating, very
38:32interesting.
38:34Um, it was kind of a very, kind of interesting sort of idea that, kind of two things you wouldn't
38:40necessarily link together.
38:43And I, and I was kind of like, yeah, I hadn't necessarily had that thought, but it makes a
38:47lot of sense given, you know, how when you have a mass death event, it changes society in
38:54profound ways for long periods of time.
38:58Um, I think a lot of the political backlash we've seen in this country comes from COVID
39:04and the COVID response.
39:06Um, if I read one more comment on Twitter that says, like, call me COVID lockdowns, or
39:11my business was destroyed, or my life was destroyed, or whatever have you, um, and I'm
39:14very sympathetic to those people.
39:16But, I mean, I think there, I think a lot of the, I think a lot of where we are right
39:21now politically, um, not just in this country, is because of COVID.
39:28I think, really, that's kind of the meta that we've been living under for the past five
39:33years.
39:33It will be interesting to see what happens five years from now.
39:38When, um, you know, when things, uh, when things, you know, when we've gotten a little
39:45distance from it, and things have sort of recovered and renormalized, and, I mean, it's
39:49kind of, you know, shocking, five and a half years ago, you know, we were in the middle
39:54of the pandemic, and getting ready for a presidential election, and it seems like it was yesterday
40:01and it seems forever ago.
40:03It seems like another world, and yet it's not.
40:07Um, and I think that, I think it'll be interesting to see how, you know, as time goes on, and we
40:14learn more, how all this shakes up.
40:16But I think, I blame a lot of our present political dysfunction squarely on the back
40:21of COVID.
40:23Moving right along, oh, this is good.
40:27So, remember I was talking about the ICE was acting like a Gestapo in LA and the judge
40:30stopping it?
40:31Well, piling on to that, um, I found this story, this fascinating account by someone who
40:38actually went to an ICE job fair paints a picture of an empire in terminal decline with
40:43sociopaths, racists, and macho men alongside bored and alienated folks during the Gestapo
40:48to fill an emptiness in their lives.
40:50And it says here,
40:51I learned all the skills in the army, smash and grab side exploitation and never got to
40:55use them, he said.
40:55So I'm kind of here to do what I learned to do over there, but this time here defending
40:58my country.
41:00Previously impressed by the connections between war and domestic policy elucidated by historians
41:03Kathleen Ballew and Stuart Schrader, I found this man's account almost embarrassingly
41:07transparent.
41:08This was the most straightforward articulation I ever heard of someone bringing the war home.
41:12Other applicants offered similar explanations for their motives.
41:15There was the young, taciturn southerner managing a batting cage near New Orleans and the pimply
41:21youth from Kentucky churning out Yahoo Finance content for $20 an hour.
41:25Both said they were tired and bored.
41:26The latter said his father had been a nice, but he didn't really know what he did.
41:30I spoke to a gregarious New York police officer who was fed up with patrolling Times Square
41:33and all the, on all the quote, on all quote the savages unquote there.
41:38Another applicant said he was sick of installing office furniture and property subleased by the
41:41United States Marines.
41:42A blind man I spoke to who was hoping to find a data-centric position with ICE said he was
41:46sick of his current job collecting child support payments from delinquent parents.
41:50At present he said his, quote, hands were tied, unquote, because the law in his state forbade
41:55him from sending in sheriffs to collect money from deadbeat dads.
41:58In a lilting, basal voice he told me that, quote, in college I wrote several papers about
42:02the harms of illegals in America, unquote.
42:04And the quote tweet is great.
42:14What he was really interested in, he said, was parlaying his wages as a deportation officer
42:19into buying Airbnbs.
42:21He is, oh, and this came from Plus One Mag, in case you were wondering.
42:30Um, and it says, the most motivating force by an American career fascism would appear
42:35to be wanderlust.
42:35The U.S. is filled with, quote, pretty nice guys, unquote, who are ready to inflict, who
42:39have already inflicted senseless and life-shattering violence on innocent, impoverished people.
42:43Um, obviously I'm not, you know, I'm probably not really aligned with this person.
42:55Um, but I mean, yes, when you're, this, I mean, I think the, you know, the inflicted senseless
43:02and life-shattering violence on innocent, impoverished people is definitely quite accurate for the type
43:06of, I've always said, and I've said this about law enforcement on other jobs, a lot of the
43:10issues with these institutions is not the institutions themselves, it's the people they attract to
43:15work in them.
43:16And the reality is, in something like ICE, and many police departments, but that's another
43:21conversation, um, this is the type, these type of people who get attracted to do it, they're
43:28willing to stomp a boot on somebody's neck, knock in a door, all this type of thing.
43:33And, um, and that quote about, you know, really just wanted to buy Airbnbs, and they're ready
43:39to inflict, you know, senseless, I mean, yeah, welcome to America.
43:44You know, no, no one who's been in this country for any length of time would be quite as surprised
43:49by, by, by any, any of this.
43:51Um, but I also said they're both tired and bored.
43:56Um, men need something to do.
44:00Men need a project.
44:01Men need a purpose.
44:03They need a mission greater than themselves.
44:05Always ask anybody who's ever tried to get a group of men to do anything, or any military,
44:10or police, I mean, any institution like that.
44:14It's a lot, it's always talk about mission.
44:16Sublimating yourself to the mission, a lot of men are very happy to sublimate themselves
44:21to something that they believe in.
44:22Um, and, especially given our story about the job market for young men, it's, you know,
44:30any time the job, the domestic job market goes to hell in a handbasket, military recruiting
44:34always goes up.
44:37It, it does.
44:38It's been true for decades, since the end of the draft in Vietnam.
44:41Um, and right now, I, you know, ICE has just got $140 billion and is hiring, you know, all
44:46sort of things, and they'll, you know, oh, you're reasonably fit, got a pulse, can pass a background
44:51check, wonderful, you're hired.
44:53Um, this is, um, yeah, this is, you know, this is our country.
45:00Um, I think there's a, as I said before, there's a way to deal with immigration that does not
45:05involve this.
45:06There's a better, there's a better way to do it, and I hope we can find that better way,
45:12but increasingly, I don't think we will.
45:15Well, I think I know where this is going, and it's the insenseless, life-shattering violence
45:24on innocent, impoverished people.
45:25That's where this is going.
45:27Um, there has to be an outlet for the popular rage.
45:31Um, people are unhappy with where the country is going, there's too many undesirables, and
45:40in a lot of societies when there's too many undesirables around, um, civilization tends to
45:45go out the window and we start killing people en masse.
45:48And unfortunately, I think that's kind of where this is going.
45:52Um, it's gonna be roundups, it's gonna be alligator Alcatraz, it's gonna be all that stuff,
45:56and the reality is, um, I mean, if you were an immigrant right now, I would advise you,
46:01if you can afford to leave, please do so, because you're an endangered child, quite simply.
46:07Um, and, uh, yeah, that's, um, it's a very dark time that we find ourselves in.
46:17Very, very dark time.
46:18I'm gonna wrap up on this.
46:20Um, one, this person can go to hell in a handbasket.
46:24But, I'm just gonna start with that.
46:27Um, the State Department fired over 1,300 people, um, this week, and there was celebration,
46:34applause, one, as people packed up their personal belongings and began to, um, to leave, this
46:40awful person decided to state publicly that, quote, watching theater kids get fired from
46:47tax-funded jobs may be my new favorite hobby.
46:50Well, first of all, you can go get stuffed.
46:52Kate Hyde from New York, you can go get stuffed.
46:54Tell your friends, spread this around, let people know, um, you can get stuffed.
46:59Um, it's not just theater kids who work these jobs, okay?
47:02There are highly, most, here's the, okay, here's the dumb thing about a lot of government jobs.
47:09As someone who has a degree that would normally have a government job, it's actually not an
47:16easy thing to get a government job, especially if you're not ex-military.
47:20The government has a points-based hiring system, so if you think that the only people working
47:24these jobs are disaffected theater kids who could never find anything else to do in the
47:30market, um, yeah.
47:33Have you, do you follow the President's advice about drinking bleach?
47:35May I suggest you do so?
47:36Um, that's not who's working in these jobs.
47:40Now, in terms of getting rid of people and reducing staff and all this type of thing,
47:44we already know they're doing it in the Department of Education.
47:46It's been happening across the whole government.
47:47This is, you know, um, I mean, relative to the size of the State Department,
47:521,300 people is not, um, is not very much.
47:56Um, all, all in all.
47:58But it is a very sad thing because these people did do important work.
48:01I mean, one of the stories I love is all the douche kids are going to be like, yeah,
48:05we actually didn't find that much fraud, waste, and abuse.
48:07The government's actually surprisingly efficient, you know, sort of thing.
48:10Like, it wasn't what we thought it would, it would sort of be.
48:13And, you know, this is how, I mean, this is going to have an effect on the employment market.
48:17And also, and here's the other thing, and this is the part I always start from.
48:21In politics, whatever we're talking about, I always start from, these are real people.
48:26Using dismissive terms like theater kids is extremely dehumanizing.
48:32Not in that wah, wah, wah, we're being made fun of way,
48:35but in terms of these are people with mortgages, children, car payments, credit card bills,
48:45who are basically getting fired for politics.
48:49Of people like this person, who has decided that this is her new favorite thing.
48:58And that, you know, this, she's going to have some fun watching the bad people
49:04that she doesn't like and approve of get their final comeuppance.
49:11I hope it's comfortable up there on top of Smug Mountain Kate Hyde.
49:15I really do. And I'll tell you why.
49:18Because these are real human beings, just like you're a real human being.
49:21And if you strip away the politics, and you strip away that you're snide remarks about stuff,
49:26because that's all you can offer is snide remarks.
49:29You don't offer any actual solutions or anything actually helpful.
49:33All you do is offer snide remarks.
49:35These are real people who you probably actually have more in common with than you think of,
49:40because they have many of the same problems that you do.
49:42The only difference is, they're probably nicer people than you are.
49:46And they probably wouldn't want to be friends with you.
49:48Because you're not the sort of person who can afford to be friends with decent people.
49:53Simple as.
49:54I feel sorry for everyone who's getting let go at the State Department.
49:57I always kind of dreamed of working there.
49:59Well, I wanted to do two things.
50:00I wanted to go to Brussels and work at the National Court of Justice as a lawyer.
50:03Or, I wanted to work at the State Department.
50:06Attempted both, didn't work out, now I'm here doing the news for you.
50:09Um, but that, um, I do, I feel very sorry for, you know, people who are going through this,
50:15because they are real human beings, who are the victims of changes in policy and politics,
50:20and I, I sincerely wish them well, and I wish more everyday people, like Kate Hyde here,
50:30um, would have a little bit of empathy and sympathy for what's going on,
50:33not from a political perspective, but simply from a, a, a human perspective.
50:39I will say, though, look for more of this honestly shitty attitude, um, from, uh, from people going forward,
50:48because that, the, the, the, none of, none of this, the firings, the department endings,
50:54all this type of thing, none of it is actually helping anyone.
50:58The amount of money saved here is negligible.
51:02The cruelty is the point.
51:06It's so people like Kate Hyde can sit smugly in their house and feel like someone's finally getting punished.
51:14That's it.
51:15That's the only reason they're doing this.
51:17And if that's horrifying or shocking to you, it shouldn't be.
51:23That's the theme of what we're going through.
51:25The cruelty is the point.
51:27I think a lot of the ideas that they have around reducing the size of the government are probably necessary and needed.
51:35Government does have a bad habit of getting bloated over time if you don't trim the fat from time to time.
51:40Um, but there's also, you know, better, nicer, kinder ways of doing it.
51:46But they're not doing that, because the cruelty is the point.
51:51It's punishing every person, a part of every institution, who made the COVID lockdowns happen, who made them feel shame.
51:59And honestly, in human life, and I will say this for sure, in human life, there is nothing worse, more toxic, and more dangerous than shame.
52:15Um, literally got Hitler into power and started World War II, and I'm not, that's not even I verbally, that's not even me joking, literally.
52:23Shame is such a powerful, powerful force.
52:28And for better or for worse, a lot of the narrative coming from the left over many years now has been one of shaming people for, insert it here, being white.
52:43Their ethnic background, their job, their education, their opinions, their thought, all this type of thing.
52:51And this is the backlash.
52:54You made them feel shame.
52:58And they will now watch every single person they think responsible for it suffer.
53:02Starting from a guy in the parking lot of Home Depot who's a day laborer, up to people that work in the State Department.
53:07That's the whole point of this.
53:09Shame, shame, shame, and shame again.
53:12And if you really want to loop it back around, there's the old rumor that the reason Trump ran for president is because Obama made fun of him at the White House Correspondents Center in 2014, 2015.
53:23And talk about someone who can't stand to be shamed.
53:27And when you start looking at this stuff through that lens, it all starts to make a whole lot of sense.
53:34Food for thought.
53:38Anyway, I'm tired.
53:39This Red Bull ain't doing a damn thing.
53:42So I'm going to get out of here.
53:43Thank you guys so much for watching.
53:45I really appreciate it.
53:46We had a great group tonight.
53:47Thank you so much for the person who liked the live.
53:49Thank you so much.
53:50My name is Cameron Cowan.
53:52This is the Cameron Journal News Hour.
53:54You can find me across all social media at Cameron Cowan on Twitter and Instagram, at Cameron Journal on Blue Sky and LinkedIn.
54:02Make sure to go sign up for the newsletter, Cameron Journal Plus.
54:04I could really use the support right now to subscribe to Cameron Journal Plus.
54:10So make sure to go and do that.
54:12And I will see you all next week for the Cameron Journal News Hour.
54:15Stay safe out there.
54:16Bye-bye.
54:20Bye-bye.
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