A job is not a handout. A job is where you do work that is somehow useful to your employer, and hopefully fulfilling to you as well. And if you can’t do the work, you get fired. But as long as you’re qualified, you at least get a chance to prove yourself. That’s common sense in an economy operating near full employment, i.e. in a time of reasonably sane economic policies, not austerity and deflation. Dan is doing the exact same thing (looking for a job) that several generations before him did successfully.

Yes, being enterprising and going above and beyond is fantastic. But when the bar is set so high that everyone has to reinvent the wheel in order to survive, this is a dysfunctional situation, and the solutions to that dysfunction go beyond personal choices, to politics.

If society did not want to create an entire generation of college graduate young people who are unemployed and feel victimized maybe society shouldn’t have lied to them  by telling them that earning a degree will guarantee them a good job.

Being an entrepreneur or creating your own job isn’t the magic bullet that is being preached by many of the so called experts. Close to 80% of small businesses fail in their first year.  This means most people who go this route end up in more debt than they already are.  Other face bankruptcy.  Generation Y should be weary of anyone spouting this “advice”.  After all, we were told a College education would guarantee meaningful employment and look at how that turned out.