You probably know me as Quaestor over at the whywork.org site. You say nobody reads your blog… well, I just read it. I really like the colour scheme and the way you’ve laid things out. Nice job.

After reading this post about newbies, a light bulb went off in my head. I now know the real reason for age discrimination in the job market. It has nothing to do with the capabilities older workers have. If anything, older workers should be more capable by virtue of their experience.

However, employers are loath to hire them because they are not as malleable as younger workers (aka newbies’). Older workers have seen the games and seen through the lies and are far less likely to swallow the bullshit served up to younger workers. More importantly, unless desperate, they are unlikely to take the low initial wages offered.

In our capitalistic society, it is said that paying new workers less is justified. They do not merit higher wages because they lack experience. What absolute horseshit. When you see how de-skilled and mindless many jobs are, it’s plain that everyone deserves the same wage rate.

Employers often use this progressive wage scale as a trick to retain workers. It works if the people offered such a regime are unenlightened and do not realize that taxes (remember our tax system is ‘progressive’) and inflation will quickly null out the gains made.

Something else newbies swallow all too easily is the idea that they will get promoted and that will somehow compensate for the screwing over they get in their early years. Alas, employers only promote toadies, spies, friends, relatives and favourites, or those rare few who have the kind of personality (usually amoral if not antisocial)and skills that are too valuable to let go of.