Interns, stop whingeing!

In this week’s Spectator, Brendan O’Neill turns on unpaid interns who complain about their lot, arguing that they should instead be paying their employers for the opportunity. He attacks the argument that unpaid internships hit working class young people the hardest, when these placements will encourage self-drive, rather than self pity. O’Neill writes:

It speaks volumes about the parlous state of modern history teaching that these interns so liberally refer to themselves as ‘slaves’. Anyone who had been taught properly about the Roman era, or about black slavery in early America, or about the Holocaust, would know that there’s rather more to being a slave than being asked by a gruff boss to buy him a hazelnut latte.

But there’s a bigger problem with these sad-eyed agitators than self-pity. There’s the negative impact that making all internships paid will have on young people’s battered sense of voluntarism.

The demand that internships become paid positions is an extension of modern youth’s corrosive belief that everything they do should be instantly rewarded.