Brownstone Institute
The Best Life Lesson for a Teen Is a Job
From the Brownstone Institute
During the Covid debacle, kids were locked out of school or otherwise condemned to an inferior Zoom education for up to two years. What were the alternatives? Unfortunately, since the New Deal, the federal government has severely restricted teenagers’ opportunities for gainful employment. But new evidence proves that keeping kids out of work doesn’t keep them out of mental health trouble.
Yet suggesting that kids take a job has become controversial in recent years. It is easy to find expert lists on the dangers of teenage employment. Evolve Treatment Center, a California therapy chain for teenagers, recently listed the possible “cons” of work:
- Jobs can add stress to a child’s life.
- Jobs can expose kids to people and situations they might not be ready for.
- A teen working a job might feel like childhood is ending too soon.
But stress is a natural part of life. Dealing with strange characters or ornery bosses can speedily teach kids far more than they learn from a droning public school teacher. And the sooner childhood ends, the sooner young adults can experience independence – one of the great propellants of personal growth.
When I came of age in the 1970s, nothing was more natural than seeking to earn a few bucks after school or during the summer. I was terminally bored in high school and jobs provided one of the few legal stimulants I found in those years.
Thanks to federal labor law, I was effectively banned from non-agricultural work before I turned 16. For two summers, I worked at a peach orchard five days a week, almost ten hours a day, pocketing $1.40 an hour and all the peach fuzz I took home on my neck and arms. Plus, there was no entertainment surcharge for the snakes I encountered in trees while a heavy metal bucket of peaches swung from my neck.
Actually, that gig was good preparation for my journalism career since I was always being cussed by the foreman. He was a retired 20-year Army drill sergeant who was always snarling, always smoking, and always coughing. The foreman never explained how to do a task since he preferred vehemently cussing you afterwards for doing it wrong. “What-da-hell’s-wrong-with-you-Red?” quickly became his standard refrain.
No one who worked in that orchard was ever voted “Most Likely to Succeed.” But one co-worker provided me with a lifetime of philosophical inspiration, more or less. Albert, a lean 35-year-old who always greased his black hair straight back, had survived plenty of whiskey-induced crashes on life’s roller coaster.
Back in those days, young folks were browbeaten to think positively about institutions that domineered their lives (such as military conscription). Albert was a novelty in my experience: a good-natured person who perpetually scoffed. Albert’s reaction to almost everything in life consisted of two phrases: “That really burns my ass!” or “No Shit!”
After I turned 16, I worked one summer with the Virginia Highway Department. As a flag man, I held up traffic while highway employees idled away the hours. On hot days in the back part of the county, drivers sometimes tossed me a cold beer as they passed by. Nowadays, such acts of mercy might spark an indictment. The best part of the job was wielding a chainsaw—another experience that came in handy for my future career.
I did “roadkill ride-alongs” with Bud, an amiable, jelly-bellied truck driver who was always chewing the cheapest, nastiest ceegar ever made—Swisher Sweets. The cigars I smoked cost a nickel more than Bud’s, but I tried not to put on airs around him.
We were supposed to dig a hole to bury any dead animal along the road. This could take half an hour or longer. Bud’s approach was more efficient. We would get our shovels firmly under the animal—wait until no cars were passing by—and then heave the carcass into the bushes. It was important not to let the job crowd the time available for smoking.
I was assigned to a crew that might have been the biggest slackers south of the Potomac and east of the Alleghenies. Working slowly to slipshod standards was their code of honor. Anyone who worked harder was viewed as a nuisance, if not a menace.
The most important thing I learned from that crew was how not to shovel. Any Yuk-a-Puk can grunt and heave material from Spot A to Spot B. It takes practice and savvy to turn a mule-like activity into an art.
To not shovel right, the shovel handle should rest above the belt buckle while one leans slightly forward. It’s important not to have both hands in your pockets while leaning, since that could prevent onlookers from recognizing “Work-in-Progress.” The key is to appear to be studiously calculating where your next burst of effort will provide maximum returns for the task.
One of this crew’s tasks that summer was to build a new road. The assistant crew foreman was indignant: “Why does the state government have us do this? Private businesses could build the road much more efficiently, and cheaper, too.” I was puzzled by his comment, but by the end of the summer I heartily agreed. The Highway Department could not competently organize anything more complex than painting stripes in the middle of a road. Even the placement of highway direction signs was routinely botched.
While I easily acclimated to government work lethargy, I was pure hustle on Friday nights unloading trucks full of boxes of old books at a local bindery. That gig paid a flat rate, in cash, that usually worked out to double or triple the Highway Department wage.
The goal with the Highway Department was to conserve energy, while the goal at the book bindery was to conserve time—to finish as quickly as possible and move on to weekend mischief. With government work, time routinely acquired a negative value—something to be killed.
The key thing kids must learn from their first jobs is to produce enough value that someone will voluntarily pay them a wage. I worked plenty of jobs in my teen years – baling hay, cutting lawns, and hustling on construction sites. I knew I’d need to pay my own way in life and those jobs got me in the habit of saving early and often.
But according to today’s conventional wisdom, teenagers should not be put at risk in any situation where they might harm themselves. The enemies of teenage employment rarely admit how the government’s “fixes” routinely do more harm than good. My experience with the highway department helped me quickly recognize the perils of government employment and training programs.
Those programs have been spectacularly failing for more than half a century. In 1969, the General Accounting Office (GAO) condemned federal summer jobs programs because youth “regressed in their conception of what should reasonably be required in return for wages paid.”
In 1979, GAO reported that the vast majority of urban teens in the program “were exposed to a worksite where good work habits were not learned or reinforced, or realistic ideas on expectations in the real world of work were not fostered.” In 1980, Vice President Mondale’s Task Force on Youth Unemployment reported, “Private employment experience is deemed far more attractive to prospective employers than public work” because of the bad habits and attitudes spurred by government programs.
“Make work” and “fake work” are a grave disservice to young people. But the same problems permeated programs in the Obama era. In Boston, federally-subsidized summer job workers donned puppets to greet visitors to an aquarium. In Laurel, Maryland, “Mayor’s Summer Jobs” participants put in time serving as a “building escort.” In Washington, D.C., kids were paid to diddle with “schoolyard butterfly habitats” and littered the streets with leaflets about the Green Summer Job Corps. In Florida, subsidized summer job participants “practiced firm handshakes to ensure that employers quickly understand their serious intent to work,” the Orlando Sentinel reported. And folks wonder why so many young people cannot comprehend the meaning of “work.”
Cosseting kids has been a jobs program for social workers but a disaster for the supposed beneficiaries. Teen labor force participation (for ages 16 to 19) declined from 58 percent in 1979 to 42 percent in 2004 and roughly 35 percent in 2018. It’s not like, instead of finding a job, kids stay home and read Shakespeare, master Algebra, or learn to code.
As teens became less engaged in society via work, mental health problems became far more prevalent. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention found that in “the 10 years leading up to the pandemic, feelings of persistent sadness and hopelessness—as well as suicidal thoughts and behaviors—increased by about 40 percent among young people.”
The troubled teen years are producing dark harvests on campus. Between 2008 and 2019, the number of undergraduate students diagnosed with anxiety increased by 134 percent, 106 percent for depression, 57 percent for bipolar disorder, 72 percent for ADHD, 67 percent for schizophrenia, and 100 percent for anorexia, according to the National College Health Assessment.
Those rates are much worse post-pandemic. As psychiatrist Thomas Szasz observed, “The greatest analgesic, soporific, stimulant, tranquilizer, narcotic, and to some extent even antibiotic – in short, the closest thing to a genuine panacea – known to medical science is work.”
Those who fret about the dangers that teens face on the job need to recognize the “opportunity cost” of young adults perpetuating their childhood and their dependence. Sure, there are perils in the workplace. But as Thoreau wisely observed, “A man sits as many risks as he runs.”
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
No data is 100% secure, and this is mental health data. Data that might be extremely embarrassing, career-damaging, or has the potential to disrupt family relationships. Remember, no one knows what new laws, regulations, or more might come to pass years from now.
True Story: The Health app built into iPhones is now collecting as much personal information on the mental health of each and every one of us as they can get a hold of.
Yet, a search on Google and Brave yielded no results on the dangers of sharing such information over the phone or the internet. Seriously, no single MSM has done an article on why such data sharing might be a bad idea?
To start, in sharing such data, you aren’t just sharing your information; iPhone knows exactly who your family members are. In many cases, those phones are connected via family plans.
iPhone mental health assessments not only ask questions about your mental health but can also infer the mental health status of family members, as demonstrated by the image publicly shared by phone on the benefits of a phone mental health assessment.
What could possibly go wrong?
Although the iPhone has historically been known to keep user data “safe,” this is not a given, and there have been hacks and data breaches over the years.
CrowdStrike happened – from just a simple coding error. In 2015, all of my confidential data given to the DoD and the FBI in order to get a security clearance was harvested by the Chinese government, when they hacked into the government’s “super-secret,” and “super-secure” government data storage site. In response, the government offered me a credit report and monitoring of my credit score for a year. Yeah – thanks.
The bottom line – no data is 100% secure, and this is mental health data. Data that might be extremely embarrassing, career-damaging, or has the potential to disrupt family relationships. Remember, no one knows what new laws, regulations, or more might come to pass years from now. This type of information should not be harvested and stored.
Stay Informed with Brownstone Institute. Sign up for updates.
Furthermore, trusting that Apple will never sell that data or pass it off to research groups is very naive. In fact, mental health data is already being mined.
Apple has partnered with various health organizations and academic institutions to conduct health-related studies, such as Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, and the University of Michigan on various health studies. Apple also collaborates with the University of California, Los Angeles (UCLA) on a Digital Mental Health Study. This study likely utilizes data collected through Apple devices to investigate mental health patterns and outcomes. Trusting that the user identifiers have been completely stripped before that data is passed on is a risk that one takes when entering such information into an iPhone.
“Connect with resources.”
So how does Apple benefit? At this time, it appears that Apple is selling advertising of various mental health services by “connecting” services to people’s phones. Apple writes that “These assessments can help users determine their risk level, connect to resources available in their region, and create a PDF to share with their doctor.”
That might mean that if one presses the depressed button in the mental health assessment, Apple will place ads on the search engine for anti-depressants or physicians that prescribe them.
Why would that example be relevant, and which pharmaceutical companies might benefit?
iPhone has developed their mental health assessment with an “educational grant” from Pfizer!
Pfizer manufactures and sells Zoloft, Effexor, Pristiq, and Sinequan formulations. Together the sales revenue for these drugs is in the billions each year:
From 2015 to 2018, 13.2% of American adults reported taking antidepressant medication within the past 30 days, with sertraline (Zoloft) being one of the most common. Even off-patent, there were 39.2 million prescriptions filled with an annual sales revenue of 470 million.
Effexor XR is an antidepressant medication that was originally developed by Wyeth (now part of Pfizer). In 2010, when the first generic version of Effexor XR was introduced in the United States, the brand name product had annual sales of approximately $2.75 billion. By 2013, due to generic competition, Pfizer’s sales of Effexor XR dropped to $440 million.
According to IMS Health data, in 2016, Pristiq (desvenlafaxine) had annual sales of approximately $883 million in the United States, although sales appear to have fluctuated over the years.
The bottom line is that Pfizer is not supplying educational grants to develop mental health assessment software for Apple out of the “goodness of their heart.” Mental health inventions via medication are a big business, and these companies are looking to profit.
This is just one way that Apple is using surveillance capitalism by data mining mental health status and then selling access to that data to Big Pharma, Big Tech, physician and insurance companies, etc.
How this information, which once released or leaked, can never be returned with privacies intact, will be used in the future is unknown.
If the setting for sharing research on health conditions has not been deactivated, this information will go into a database somewhere. It is only Apple’s assurance that your identification has been stripped from the data. Further, your mental health information will be uploaded to the cloud and will be used as a behavioral future. To be shared, packaged, sold, used to influence your decision-making, etc.
I am wary of the highly profitable industry that has been built up around “mental disorders.” Over the years, the American Psychiatric Association and the fields of psychology and psychiatry have hurt individuals and families by both classifying diseases and disorders incorrectly and by developing treatments and therapies that were and are dangerous. Many are still in use. Here are a few examples:
- There are estimates that 50,000 lobotomies were performed in the United States, with most occurring between 1949 and 1952. In 1949, the Nobel Prize in Physiology or Medicine was awarded to António Egas Moniz for his development of the lobotomy procedure.
- Homosexuality was classified as a mental disorder in 1952 with the publication of the first Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders (DSM-I) by the American Psychiatric Association (APA). It was listed under “sociopathic personality disturbance.” This classification remained in place until 1973.
- Selective Serotonin Reuptake Inhibitors (SSRIs) are a widely prescribed class of antidepressant medications. There is a link between SSRIs and increased risk of violent crime convictions, and other research has shown an increase in self-harm and aggression in children and adolescents taking SSRIs.
- The APA supports access to affirming and supportive treatment for “transgendered” children, including mental health services, puberty suppression and medical transition support.
- The APA believes that gender identity develops in early childhood, and some children may not identify with their assigned sex at birth.
- Asperger’s syndrome was merged into the broader category of autism spectrum disorder (ASD) in the DSM-5 in 2013. Since then, a large number of people have faced discrimination and barriers to entry into higher-paying positions. Children handed such a diagnosis also can suffer a lack of confidence in their ability to manage relationships effectively, which can easily carry on to adulthood.
These are just a few of the many, many ways the American Psychiatric Association and the fields of psychology and psychiatry have gotten things very wrong.
- A survey of more than 500 social and personality psychologists published in 2012 found that only 6 percent identified as conservative overall, implying that 94% were liberal or moderate.
- At a 2011 Society for Personality and Social Psychology annual meeting, when attendees were asked to identify their political views, only three hands out of about a thousand went up for “conservative” or on the right.
The liberal bias in psychology influences findings on conservative behaviors.
To bring this back to the use of software applications and the iPhone mental health app in particular, be aware that these software programs are being developed by people with a liberal bias and who will view the beliefs of conservatives negatively. What this means for future use of this data is unknown, but it can’t be good.
If you do choose to use the mental health applications, which mainstream media has nothing but praise for, be aware – there are alligators in those waters.
But sure that the data sharing mode, particularly giving data access to researchers is turned off. But even then, don’t be surprised if your phone begins planting messages about the benefits, SSRIs, or other anti-depressant drugs into your everyday searches. Or maybe your alcohol use or tobacco use data will be used to supply you with advertisements on the latest ways to reduce intake or how to find a good mental health facility. These messages may very well include neuro-linguistic programming methods and nudging, to push you into treatment modalities. But honestly, it is all for your “own good and for the benefit of your family.”
Now, the iPhone and the watch can be valuable tools. The EKG, blood oxygen, and heart rate monitoring are fantastic tools for those who suffer from cardiac disorders. I have found them to be extremely helpful.
My wife, Jill is often motivated by getting more walking steps each week via her iWatch tracker.
Just be aware that these programs can be invasive. Data is never 100% secure and it is being used. We just don’t know all the details.
Republished from the author’s Substack
Author
From the Brownstone Institute
It was one of those conversations you never forget. We were discussing – of all things – the Covid injections, and I was questioning the early ‘safe and effective’ claims put forward by the pharmaceutical industry. I felt suspicious of how quickly we had arrived at that point of seeming consensus despite a lack of long-term safety data. I do not trust the pharmaceutical industry. My colleague did not agree, and I felt my eyes widen as he said, “I don’t think they would do anything dodgy.” Clearly, my colleague had not read the medical history books. This conversation slapped me out of my own ignorance that Big Pharma’s rap sheet was well-known in the profession. It isn’t.
With this in mind, let’s take a look at the history of illegal and fraudulent dealings by players in the pharmaceutical industry; an industry that has way more power and influence than we give them credit for.
Before I continue, a word (not from our sponsor). There are many people working in this industry who have good intentions towards improving healthcare for patients, dedicating their lives to finding a cure or treatment for disease. Some therapeutic pharmaceuticals are truly life-saving. I probably wouldn’t be here today were it not for a couple of life-saving drugs (that’s a story for another time). But we must be very clear in our understanding. The pharmaceutical industry, as a whole and by its nature, is conflicted and significantly driven by the mighty dollar, rather than altruism.
There are many players and different games being played by the industry. We ignore these at our peril. The rap sheet of illegal activities is alarming. It seems that barely a month goes by without some pharmaceutical company in court, somewhere. Criminal convictions are common and fines tally into the billions. Civil cases, with their million-dollar settlements, are abundant too.
A 2020 peer-reviewed article published in the Journal of the American Medical Association outlines the extent of the problem. The group studied both the type of illegal activity and financial penalties imposed on pharma companies between the years 2003 and 2016. Of the companies studied, 85 percent (22 of 26) had received financial penalties for illegal activities with a total combined dollar value of $33 billion. The illegal activities included manufacturing and distributing adulterated drugs, misleading marketing, failure to disclose negative information about a product (i.e. significant side effects including death), bribery to foreign officials, fraudulently delaying market entry of competitors, pricing and financial violations, and kickbacks.
When expressed as a percentage of revenue, the highest penalties were awarded to Schering-Plough, GlaxoSmithKline (GSK), Allergan, and Wyeth. The biggest overall fines have been paid by GSK (almost $10 billion), Pfizer ($2.9 billion), Johnson & Johnson ($2.6 billion), and other familiar names including AstraZeneca, Novartis, Merck, Eli Lilly, Schering-Plough, Sanofi Aventis, and Wyeth. It’s quite a list, and many of the Big Pharma players are repeat offenders.
Prosecuting these companies is no mean feat. Cases often drag for years, making the avenue of justice and resolution inaccessible to all but the well-funded, persistent, and steadfast. If a case is won, pharma’s usual response is to appeal to a higher court and start the process again. One thing is clear; taking these giants to court requires nerves of steel, a willingness to surrender years of life to the task, and very deep pockets.
For every conviction, there are countless settlements, the company agreeing to pay out, but making no admission of guilt. A notable example is the S35 million settlement made, after 15 years of legal maneuvering, by Pfizer in a Nigerian case that alleged the company had experimented on 200 children without their parent’s knowledge or consent.
Reading through the case reports, the pattern of behavior is reminiscent of the movie Groundhog Day with the same games being played by different companies as if they are following some kind of unwritten playbook.
Occasionally there is a case that lifts the lid on these playbook strategies, revealing the influence of the pharma industry and the lengths they are willing to go to, to turn a profit. The Australian Federal Court case Peterson v Merck Sharpe and Dohme, involving the manufacturer of the drug Vioxx, is a perfect example.
By way of background, Vioxx (the anti-arthritis drug Rofecoxib) was alleged to have caused an increased risk of cardiovascular conditions including heart attack and stroke. It was launched in 1999 and, at peak popularity, was used by up to 80 million people worldwide, marketed as a safer alternative to traditional anti-inflammatory drugs with their troublesome gastrointestinal side effects.
In Peterson v Merck Sharpe and Dohme, the applicant – Graeme Robert Peterson – alleged the drug had caused the heart attack he suffered in 2003, leaving him significantly incapacitated. Peterson argued that the Merck companies were negligent in not having withdrawn the drug from the market earlier than they did in 2004 and, by not warning of the risks and making promotional representations to doctors, were guilty of misleading and deceptive conduct under the Commonwealth Trade Practices Act 1974.
In November 2004 Dr David Graham, then Associate Director for Science and Medicine in FDA’s Office of Drug Safety provided powerful testimony to the US Senate regarding Vioxx. According to Graham, prior to the approval of the drug, a Merck-funded study showed a seven-fold increase in heart attacks. Despite this, the drug was approved by regulatory agencies, including the FDA and the TGA.
This finding was later supported by another Merck-funded study, VIGOR – which showed a five-fold increase, the results of which were published in the high-impact New England Journal of Medicine. It was later revealed by subpoena during litigation that three heart attacks were not included in the original data submitted to the journal, a fact that at least two of the authors knew at the time. This resulted in a ‘misleading conclusion’ regarding the risk of heart attack associated with the drug.
By the time Peterson v Merck Sharpe and Dohme, an associated class action involving 1,660 people, was heard in Australia in 2009, the international parent of MSD, Merck, had already paid $4.83 billion to settle thousands of lawsuits in the US over adverse effects of Vioxx. Predictably, Merck made no admission of guilt. The Australian legal battle was a long, drawn-out affair, taking several years with more twists and turns than a cheap garden hose (you can read more about it here and here).
Long story short, a March 2010 Federal Court finding in favor of Peterson was later overturned by a full bench of the Federal Court in Oct 2011. In 2013, a settlement was reached with class action participants which resulted in a mere maximum payment of $4,629.36 per claimant. MSD generously waived their claim for legal costs against Peterson.
What’s notable in this battle was the headline-grabbing courtroom evidence detailing the extent of alleged pharmaceutical misdeeds in marketing the drug. The pharma giant went to the lengths of producing sponsored journals with renowned scientific publisher Elsevier, including a publication called The Australasian Journal of Bone and Joint Medicine. These fake ‘journals’ were made to look like independent scientific journals, but contained articles attributed to doctors that were ghostwritten by Merck employees. Some doctors listed as honorary Journal board members said they had no idea they were listed in the journal and had never been given any articles to review.
But wait, there’s more.
The trove of internal emails presented in evidence revealed a more sinister level of operation. One of the emails circulated at the pharma giant’s US headquarters contained a list of ‘problem physicians’ that the company sought to ‘neutralize’ or ‘discredit.’ The recommendations to achieve these ends included payment for presentations, research and education, financial support of private practice, and ‘strong recommendation(s) to discredit.’ Such was the extent of intimidation, that one professor wrote to the head of Merck to complain about the treatment of some of his researchers critical of the drug. The court heard how Merck had been ‘systematically playing down the side effects of Vioxx’ and their behavior ‘seriously impinge(d) on academic freedom.’
This alleged systematic intimidation was as extensive as it was effective. Result? Merck made over $2 billion per year in sales before Vioxx was finally pulled from pharmacy shelves in 2004. In his testimony, Dr Graham estimated that between 88,000 and 139,000 excess cases of heart attack or sudden cardiac death were caused by Vioxx in the US alone before it was withdrawn.
These systems of influence, manipulation, and tactics were largely operative when Covid arrived. Add to that the ‘warp speed’ development of novel ‘vaccines,’ government green lights, pharmaceutical indemnity, and confidential contracts. Now you have the makings of a pharmaceutical payday the likes of which we have never seen before.
It should come as no surprise then, the recent announcement that five US states – Texas, Kansas, Mississippi, Louisiana, and Utah – are taking Pfizer to court for withholding information, and misleading and deceiving the public through statements made in marketing its Covid-19 injection. That these cases are filed as civil suits under consumer protection laws is likely just the tip of the pharmaceutical playbook iceberg. No doubt the discovery process will hold further lessons for us all.
Author
Canadian pandemic bill wants to regulate meat production, develop contract tracing
‘They’re Gonna Pay For It’: A Texas Billionaire May Be About To Force Greenpeace USA Into Bankruptcy
There are no licensed COVID shots for kids under 12 – but CDC wants babies to get 3 Pfizer shots by 9 months
Why You Shouldn’t Fret Much Over Russian Election Interference
-
Brownstone Institute2 days ago
iPhone Now Collects Your Mental Health Data
-
Daily Caller2 days agoShoplifting And Vehicle Thefts Soared As Haitian Migrants Poured Into Ohio Town, Police Data Shows
-
Christopher Rufo2 days agoIndependent reporter takes on CBS News for contradicting his report “Cat Eaters of Ohio”
-
Daily Caller2 days agoBiden Admin Touts Reduction In Border Crossings While Flying In Hundreds Of Thousands Of Migrants
-
Economy2 days agoIf Canadian families spent and borrowed like the federal government, they would be $427,759 in debt
-
COVID-192 days agoUS medical center refusing COVID shots for employees but still promoting to public
-
Alberta2 days agoPremier Smith to Ottawa: Alberta can’t afford thousands of asylum seekers right now
-
Censorship Industrial Complex1 day agoElon Musk slams woke Los Angeles Times for questioning ‘morality’ of having children