Tuesday, April 21, 2015

Mc Donalds

When I was in high school, I remember there were a lot of teenagers that worked at Mc Donalds restaurants throughout the city. Usually the only adult in the place was the manager or assistant manager and more often then not, they would be struggling college students. It was that way in many local businesses and grocery stores.

Today the picture is very different. If you walk into a Mc Donalds today, what you see is adults behind the counter. Some of them are very old...like me. Some are housewives. Some are immigrants; yes immigrants that can barely speak English. There are also embittered middle aged white men that most likely lost good jobs elsewhere because their former employer outsourced their work to China, India or Mexico.

Whatever the case, the Mc Donalds demographic has changed. This is not a good sign for our country in my opinion. The youth that get driven out of jobs like these end up on the street and that invariably leads to trouble. The adults that have no other options but to work there are poorer and still most likely on some kind of public assistance. And...quite frankly...the food is terrible...not good for you either. I do like me some sausage and egg Mc Muffin, but that's about the extent of it.

I guess my point is that this is a sign of the beginning of the end. I'm not talking biblical here, but nations do come and go and I think America is beginning to "go" if you know what I'm saying. I do not think we will be 3rd worlders for a while, but I sense the downward slide. Odd that it's all happening in the last part of my life. Somehow I feel at least partially responsible. What could I or anyone else have done differently that would have stopped this? I'm not sure. It might just be a case of having the wrong people in charge from the beginning.

Whatever happens, the vacuum that we leave on the world stage will have to be filled. Who do we give the keys to? I don't have that answer either. The Chinese and the Russians worry me and the Arabs are A1 nut jobs. Everyone else is way too backward and poor or both.

The future will be interesting. 'Interesting' is not good. Boring is good. Boring is the absence of trouble. Trouble is coming. I hope it waits for 30 years to hatch, but I don't have a good feeling about that.