It feels like we're being hounded, guilted about this. Perhaps we should revel in the fall of the Clown Era. They're creepy and they make people frightened or angry. What does a clown provide the world? Don't give me that "entertain the children" line. Want to make a room full of toddlers cry? Bring in someone wearing white grease paint and polka-dot clothing. I'm not sure what makes people want to toss clowns into vats of boiling acid, but yeah. Fewer clowns, more crumpin'.
I read something about that too. To be fair, it's a pretty hard thing to sell. Plus, there's that stigma if you want to quit. I've always thought the celibacy thing for priests and nuns was odd, as you'd think that priests and/or nuns would raise the most devout Catholics.
Also, I just learned the celibacy policy took 700 years to implement.You'd think that priests and/or nuns would raise the most devout Catholics.
That goes against the "preacher's kid" stereotype in Protestant Christianity. That said, I've known preacher's children on both sides of the stereotype.
My mother went to Ringling Bros' Clown College. Being a circus clown is a lot of work. It doesn't look it, because they're trying to make you laugh rather than to impress you, but the tumbles and folding yourself into a clown car without hurting yourself takes a lot of training. Juggling isn't hard, but it takes a lot of practice. You usually have to learn other circus arts, and when you do them you not only have to do them as well as someone who specializes in them, you have to look funny doing it. Pay attention when the clowns walk the tightrope or get on the trapeze next time you go to the circus; you notice that stuff is hard when the trapeze artists and acrobats do it, when a clown does it in giant floppy shoes while someone sits on their shoulders and juggles it looks like they managed by accident. Also, during shows you have to clean up after the elephants.
Clowns doing birthday parties have it easier, but isn't a very stable source of income. You can make $300 at a party, but helium is expensive, as are costume/makeup. Good clown shoes you can walk in all day will be around $500, a good nose is $20 and you'll be replacing it constantly because kids will always find a way to pull it off and tear it up no matter how much adhesive you use, your wig costs at least $50 and you'll have to keep replacing that too as kids tear out tufts of it. You need to do a lot of parties to cover your costs.
I know a few people who also attended the Ringling college, both of them are highly skilled in their respective fields (neither of them a professional clown). They are two of the most unique and wonderful people I've met. I don't know if the college contributed to their amazing-ness, or if people drawn to clowning are just amazing to begin with… probably a little of both.
Is there really a shortage? Or are employers demanding higher quality than the market supplies? I think this is becoming endemic in many industries. Employers say "we can't find enough workers," while demanding ability far in excess of what the market can supply. The market can supply the workers they need, just not at the level they demand. I wonder if it's caused by globlisation, or something else. But I definitely think it's happening, in more and more industries. It breaks Capitalism, and it exacerbates our already broken economy.just 11 clowns out of 14 who were selected from 531 applicants
They tend to say things like, "We can't find enough workers that can write well enough to do their jobs," or, "We can't find enough workers that know how to think well enough to operate independently in a work environment." So what they're saying has to do with our education system and is valid, depending on your point of view.Employers say "we can't find enough workers," while demanding ability far in excess of what the market can supply. The market can supply the workers they need, just not at the level they demand.
We can't find enough workers that can write well enough to do their jobs
Eh, I was more referring to employers who say "We can't find enough software engineers who have 10 years of Ruby on Rails experience and know mongo, django, d3, iOS, backbone, jquery, coffeescript, php, java, groovy, and scala. And are passionate about Bioinformatics!"
Although it's more complex than that. Some employers cry wolf from lack of skills they're unwilling to train. But some complain about intellectual level. This is especially prevalent in software; I don't know about other fields. Interviews need to select. If a CS graduate doesn't understand OO or recursion, yeah, you shouldn't hire them, they probably can't be taught. But the selection process has recently become unbalanced. Interviews contain problems which can only be solved by the brightest 1%. They occasionally find that 1%, so they say "clearly they're out there" and refuse to hire anyone else. I think the underlying problem is a combination of employers being unwilling to train, and being unwilling to settle for the top 30-50% because globalisation has made the top 1% imminently visible. How do we fix it? I dunno. Adam Smith thinks it'll fix itself. Maybe it will. We'll see.Solution, job training
Yep.
It will ... maybe. The process of blanketing the entire world as opposed to western Europe with a free market is going to be long and painful for everyone and only in the extreme long run (hundreds of years) will the highest gains be realized. You're right.
If we take a look at certain professions that were common in the past and now are not, I think we'll find that it often lines up to what you're saying. For example, cobblers used to be much more common, though not overly so (from what I have read anyway) as making shoes is a technical skill and a painstaking one at that. However, everyone who could buy shoes once went to cobblers. Now, (in the Western hemisphere anyway) custom shoes are extremely expensive and tend to be held to an exceptional standard of quality. But yeah, perhaps there is a clown version of "entry-level position" but "5 years minimum of related experience required".