Challenges of the Future

¶ … Future

With the ever-changing and highly competitive global landscape of the job market, our generation faces a multitude of challenges in the future. Increases in individual and institutional operating costs, the ongoing exploitation of credit systems and the increasing propensity of out-sourcing have created a bleak outlook for my peers and I. Rising rates of unemployment, joblessness and poverty in many developed and developing countries provide superb indications of such unfortunate prospects (Reed). Therefore, it seems impossible for our generation to sustain a healthy standard of living when we have lost all competitive advantage over other less-developed producing countries. The gargantuan trade deficit of the United States and many other developed nations heeds the failures in productive competitiveness with relation to producing countries (Amadeo). Thus, it seems highly unlikely that our generation will be able to maintain the same wage rates that allowed past generations to flourish financially. Furthermore, if we hope to educate ourselves out of this hopeless future, we must find a feasible means of combating the crippling debt that typically accompanies the modern educational experience (Ballard). Such devastating fiscal obligations have already caused many individuals to completely abandon job opportunities in vital (though low-paying) public service and non-profit sectors (Ballard). Moreover, entering the workforce with massive amounts of debt can place extreme amounts of excruciating pressure on an individual. This kind of anxiety often occurs to such an extent that people have become highly depressed and even suicidal as a result of job search failures (Newsline). Knowing all that public services and non-profit organizations can contribute to societal welfare, and considering the various unfavorable possibilities resulting from intense debt pressure, it seems vital for our generation to closely examine and subsequently restructure the current credit system.

I believe the only way our generation can truly succeed and prosper in the future is through innovation. With the current exponential growth of technology, our generation must find new ways to secure lucrative business models and job environments. The future potential of technology is seemingly limitless; if we think that just thirty years ago computers were only performing the most basic tasks and now they are used to land airplanes (Kurzweil). Therefore, one can only imagine the effect they will have ten or twenty years from now. Innovative endeavors and technological research seem like the only viable means of overcoming this regrettable situation. Rather than try to succeed in the current system in which the cards seem to be stacked against us, we need to create a new system. We must produce a system that allows us the opportunity to engage in meaningful and lucrative work. And while laborious production does not seem profitable because of the competitively low wages of manufacturing countries, in order to regain our competitive advantage and earn a healthy income technology seems like the ideal field of interest. As my peers and I are seemingly destined for failure, or at least relative poverty, in the current system, innovative solutions become the only way for us to recover competitiveness and combat the pre-existing debt cycle.