It was expected: any and every opportunity to attack Donald Trump and divide panicky Republicans who continually re-earn the title “the stupid party.” At Real Clear Politics  Sasha Stone discourses on the H-1B controversy.

Stone correctly points out Vivek Ramaswamy is right in noting American culture has, over the last several decades, turned away from merit and in so doing dumbed us down. There’s a reason many tech companies hire highly qualified foreigners: we’re not producing enough STEM graduates. 

Graphic: X Screenshot

Obviously, such debates are a bit more complex than the surface treatment much of the anti-America/Trump left allows, but I suspect another part of the reason such companies aren’t hiring Americans is some of our STEM graduates are also DEI graduates, people with enormous senses of entitlement without a corresponding work ethic. Consider Elon Musk. By most accounts, he reduced Twitter staffing by as much as 80%, yet the company is humming along. Or take the federal government, a substantial portion of which is “working from home.” Many are reportedly threatening to quit if forced back into innumerable empty buildings. It’s unlikely most of them are in STEM fields, but I’m certain most Americans are on their side to the extent of saying: “your terms are acceptable,” and “don’t let the door whack you on the backside on your way out.”

Stone’s article included a Newsweek graph depicting the top careers “Gen Z are Talking Most About on Instagram.” The top career is “model,” and the rest of the top ten, in order, are, artist, photographer, make-up artist, blogger, marketing, singer, personal trainer, actor and influencer. There’s a great deal of delusion there, like one of my former students, a 5’8,” 145-pound youngster who was convinced a career in the National Football League was his destiny.

I’ve been a blogger since 2011, and that “career” has much in common with influencer, actor and singer. Few make enough to survive. For every Instapundit, there are hundreds of thousands who make enough to slowly starve to death and even more who do worse. Most people can write, but few can write well enough to cause others to pay to read their work. For every Tom Clancy there are innumerable good writers who will never get the chance to be published. There are millions of blogs, but few that attract sufficient traffic to feed a blogger, to say nothing of their family.

Influencers tend to be people famous for being famous, and many are surely bloggers, laboring in obscurity. Virtually everyone with a cell phone is a photographer these days, but damned few will ever be able to make a career of it. 

As for singers, there’s real delusion. I’m a classically trained singer with a degree in music. I was once offered a track to graduate school but turned it down because I wanted to remain married. Living out of a suitcase, traveling wherever gigs could take me, isn’t the life I wanted. Still, I occasionally managed to get paid for singing, but that was a starvation gig and I never gave up my day job. One long-term gig as a staff singer in a metropolitan church paid $35.00 per rehearsal—once a week—and the same for each church service--$3780 per year.  Reality in that “career” is a small number of musical illiterates end up making real money in pop music while people with genuine knowledge and talent make enough to starve.

For every Hollywood star, there are thousands upon thousands of actors who struggle to get a commercial or anything remotely like an acting job. Likewise, there aren’t many openings for make-up artists, and as with everything relating to show business, so much depends on who you know. As for personal trainers, there are many out there, but few that make enough to survive. The hours are long and irregular, no one is paying benefits and retirement, and for every “celebrity” personal trainer, innumerable worthies labor in obscurity and poverty.

Of the twenty careers interesting to Gen Z, not one is in a STEM field, and most are what one might call “creative” endeavors, which tend to share certain characteristics such as low or non-existent wages, no benefits or retirement funds and little opportunity for employment. On the plus side, most can work from home.

One arguably should pursue their dreams, but as I’ve always done, never give up their day job. Apple watches and iPhones aren’t going to dance, sing, influence or blog themselves into existence. That’s going to take people who had the inspiration, determination and work ethic to earn advanced STEM degrees.

Maybe Congressional Republicans ought to keep that in mind and create an educational and cultural environment that would produce a more realistic and profitable list. We wouldn’t need so many H-1B visas then, would we?

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Mike McDaniel is a USAF veteran, classically trained musician, Japanese and European fencer, life-long athlete, firearm instructor, retired police officer and high school and college English teacher. He is a published author and blogger. His home blog is Stately McDaniel Manor.