OK. The video obviously has a motive unrelated to pharmacy/pharmacy school. However, the claim that the US has a fiat currency is true. Judging from the illustrations, the video is a year or two old. But one needs only look at today's economic headlines and . . . . .
Anyway, as hokey as the video may be, and as ridiculous as it is for most anyone to leave his family and move five states away for an $18 an hour job, the makers of the video are telling a core truth. The pharmacy schools are now dumping small armies of wet-behind-the-ears pharmacists into the marketplace. There is a limit to just how many pharmacists we need . . . . at the current rate of expansion, compounded over the next 70 years, 42% of the adult population will be pharmacists. [Yes, I realize that it is really only 41.7%, but 42% sounds better.]
I guarantee by the class of 2013, that there will a sizable number of pharmacists that will end up doing something else for a living, as there simply won't be pharmacist jobs available. At the same time, a good number of pharmacists who have jobs will start to see their benefit packages trimmed, if not an outright cut in pay -- after all, there are unemployed pharmacists willing to take the job for less pay than the currently employed pharmacist in question is being paid. Mark my words, that in the midst of an inflationary time, the real wages of the average pharmacist will be going down. (And no, all of you can't be above average.)
By the year 2015, pharmacy schools will see a decided erosion in quality of applicants, as career fields with substantial unemployment aren't so attractive to top students. By the year 2020, I anticipate the average paycheck, in today's dollars, will be about $70,000. Which is fine if you have your loans paid off and house paid for, or maybe if you went to an in-state school. For those that went to private school at a cost of $30,000 a year, you will begin to wonder why on earth you paid so much for training for a job that is hard to get, and then doesn't pay the "big bucks" once you do get it.
Now, just entertain this thought for a moment. What would happen to pharmacist pay and pharmacist jobs if the lawmakers decided to create a pharmacy version of the nurse-practitioner? Where someone who is basically a tech with extra training can handle the routine stuff (as in counting pills and putting them in the bottle and handing it to the customer w/o a pharmacist there to directly supervise). Seriously, the techs basically do all that now, except the pharmacist is there to supervise (many times not too closely). Some techs are smart enough to learn drug interactions and how to counsel patients. Heck, most anyone with a college degree in chemistry (or most any other hard science), along with one year of tech work and perhaps another year of advanced practical training, could competently handle the job of a retail pharmacist. (Yes, that's essentially the equivalent to a nurse-practitioner.)
You do realize that the requirement that a full-fledged pharmacist be present when the patient is handed the medicine is solely a function of state law? If that one law were changed, we would instantly see a surplus of pharmacists this very day, no need to wait until 2013.
You also realize that if controlled substance laws were amended to allow just the non-narcotic meds to be avialable over the counter, your job would be toast. I'm smart enough to read the prescription the doctor gave me and then go hunt down the bottle on a shelf, even without 4 years of pharmacy school.
Don't laugh. Medical doctors back in 1970 couldn't imagine a day that a nurse could do a pap smear, write prescriptions, or provide a diagnosis to a patient and tell him to take two aspirin and call the next morning; all with virtually zero supervision from a "real" MD.
The law school segment that followed the pharmacy school segment is very very true -- fully 20% of law school graduates never practice law. Another 10-20% practice only a short time, and move into another vocation. There are so many law graduates there literally aren't enough paying customers to provide work for all of them. Sure, a law school education is a plus (all other things being equal), and I suppose knowing how to count pills and put them in a bottle will also be a plus when working as a computer technician, auto mechanic, or insurance salesman.
