Are we as a country just becoming dumber?

I run a few businesses and I've been through many employees, for each one, since 2002. Almost everytime it's generally the same thing. It boils down to these people, mostly adults, repeatidly mess up the simplest things. Take basic math for example. You know, 1 + 1 = 4 , err.. wait, it's not 4! That's the point; it's 2. Either way, I've become not only frustrated by the [lack of] education these people claim to have but obviously don't but I'm getting worried by time I'm 40 or 50 that the country will be ran by people who are bigger idiots than the people I've been dealing with. It's like if the task seems too easy there will be mistakes. Something similar to Murphy's Law, in a way. But how can people repeatidly make such trivial mistakes? I have no clue.

I came up with a "sure fire way" to screen possible employees. Think about your driving test. If you misspell your name you lose points, right? Well, has it come down to that point? Are we becoming so dumb now days that we cannot even do anything remotly simple? Another example is the fast food chains. Remember when people would say "if you don't graduate school you better get used to saying: Do you want fries with that?" Well, I think the time has come to require some kind of education to even work at McDonalds or similar. I mean, I'm not someone who eats fast food daily or anything but I notice more and more when I do my order is messed up. Is it so hard to get "just ketchup and mustard" correct? I think sadly it has become more difficult to do the simplest of things for almost everyone. We, as a country and culture, have become not only lazy but also borderline idiots. I'm not saying everyone is, but for the majority of my observations, both business and personal, I'm a bit worried about the future of our country.

Just looking at our President sends a crippling chill down my spine. If that's our future, and our leader, it's no wonder we're as big of idiots as he is. But lets talk facts: America is no longer one of the top two smartest countries in the world, nor are we one of the world powers in the technology field anymore (hello Japan). How did we slip, and when? I'm not sure what to blame: drugs, video games, music, you know the norm, or our extreme reliance on computers to do everything for us which ultimately makes us less intelligence. Sure it's less likely you'll mess up hitting some numbers in on a register of some sort, or inputting data in to accounting software (ha..!) but what if your enviornment is more ... simplistic, and you need to crunch some numbers in your head. What if you have a visual map/matrix where each block represents a virtual storage unit. Inputting data in to these by hand should be more of a "pay attention and do your job" kind of effort but I'm baffled by the results people bring when doing something like that. Welcome to my world. It's so pathetic that grown adults cannot comprehend left from right, basic math (and we're not talking long division here fellas) that I'm at a loss on how to find hard working "smarter than a 6th grader" employees these days. It's no wonder so many CEOs launder money and what not these days. You have to do something to bring profit when your entire team cost you thousands, millions, and sometimes billions right? I'll take a lesson learned that I'd rather have a bit less money than sit in jail but I can't say I don't see where most of these guys are coming from.

In the end, it's really mind boggling how stupid we as a country have become. Long gone are the days of intelligence being a common attribute to most in this country. All I know is that if our sad sad little society continues at this rate I'm going to start offering milk and cookies while canvasing the local elementary school looking to recruit the elitest minds they have because by the end of the day they'll work for less and produce the same, if not better, results than almost everyone else. For the love of god kids, get an education. Not only so you're not a waste of space in a country who used to thrive and set the bar for others to follow, but so if you end up flipping burgers I don't need to return mine because someone put pickle on my stuff when I specifically said not to.

Enough of the people who have some paper saying they're qualified for a job, how about some real life experience? More often than not it's an utter waste of time to take a risk on people. It's also no wonder large corporations now days rely on "temp services" to fill their staffing holes or out source overseas where people whose only downfall is a slight language barrier (I'd rather debug what you said than lose $10,000). Why bother setting someone up on insurance, etc when you know ultimately they'll be gone in 2-4 weeks like everyone else who came before them. So next time you get turned down for a job you think you're qualifed for go home, borrow the neighbor kid's middle school homework and see if you get a B or A on it. It's unlikely you will.

I don't want to be too hypocrtical here though. I couldn't write some cursive letters if you paid me $1,000 so I'm pretty much as bad as the people I'm referring to, however I'm not trying to be a writer or teacher either.