April 17, 2012

Tucker Carlson’s Career Advice

By: AF Editors

Tucker Carlson, founder of the Daily Caller, gave job advice last week at the Cato Institute. Francesca Chambers writes about the event here, but these were some of Tucker’s points that stuck out:

1. “Live for today and always do the thing most interesting thing available at the time.”

2. “You can be anything you want to be” is not true. “No you can’t. You can’t be most things that you want to be. Why? Because you’re not capable of it.” This humbling advice highlights how you should find your comparative advantage and leverage it for your best career path. For example, if you’re not good at math, don’t work in finance.

3. Don’t get a degree (and the debt that goes with it) if it’s not right for you. “I bet you $1,000 that five years from now, it will be a common place opinion that a lot of people should not go to college…It was never designed for everybody. And I’m not being a snob here. Just let me restate – I should not have gone to college.”

4. Carlson said it’s better to work at an internship and get hands-on experience than sit through “government-subsidized college courses” or “underwater basket-weaving for feminists or whatever” they teach these days.