Aren’t you responsible for growing the pie? We are all responsible for growing the pie. Start a business, that’s growing the pie. Or do you think someone else should grow the pie, and you should get a slice of it that is proportional to the pie someone else grew.
Someone else did grow that pie - and it SHRANK. And now some people have no pie. Some of those people who have no pie participated in growing the pie. How’d you like to be Blockbuster Video shareholder right now? Other people who have no pie right now were doing not a whole lot other than eating the pie someone else was growing. Some people did not deserve to get screwed out of their pie. Other people - through skill or luck or hard work - managed to keep their pie, and still others - but a pretty small set of others - have been able to take advantage of the shrinking pie (bankruptcy attorney - there is a growth field for you right now).
Just grow some pie, or help someone grow some. Share what pie you can. Don’t assume that someone else’s pie growing keeps yours from growing. Don’t forget that it’s not just how much pie you grow, but what you do with it that matters.
I am fully able to accept that the loss of my prior job may be good, long term, for society as a whole. However, in the meanwhile, it sucks to be me. Eliminating obsolete and unnecessary jobs may be a good - but it also leaves many, many people without an income, which is bad as desperate people can lead to problems. So… if the economy that is eliminating jobs is also creating new jobs so the newly unemployed can transition to those new jobs and thereby remain self-supporting individuals then on the whole society benefits. IF, however, there aren’t new jobs being created then you will have a pool of people who have no job, no income, and can NOT find word… what are those people to do? The latter is the situation we currently have - those who lose their jobs, five times out of six, can not find new work. Creating a pool of long-term unemployed who wind up destitute and desperate is NOT a social good. How will these people pay for a place to live with no income? How will they afford to eat? (OK, foodstamps maybe) How will they be able to buy new clothes and soap and toothpaste with no income? I think that’s the stumbling block here - some are focusing on the increased efficiency saying “that’s good”, while others are focusing on a negative consequence (job loss) that, at present, seems to have no easy remedy.
No, I mean like a professional engineer for a state agency who has numbers on his spreadsheets representing the millions of dollars he’s going to be doling out to various wastewater treatment facilities. Or a database manager with a college degree and various certifications, working for a large telecommunications firm. Or a billion other professional careers where people stare at spreadsheets all day and make a decent living. Sheesh! Come off it! Your elitism is showing!
What do I want? I want nothing. I have a job, which for now seems secure. I live well within my means and from my vantage point, the economy is peachy keen.
But I’m concerned about people like my brother, who’s been unemployed for almost two years. I’m worried about the millions of other people, especially the people in their 50s, who are looking and looking and can’t find seem to find a job. Not a good-paying job, but ANY job. What are you going to retrain a 55-year-old accountant to do that would help her maintain her three bedroom house, keep her two kids in college, and pay off her credit card bills? A nurse’s assistant? A medical transcriptionist? Should she go to law school so she can become a bankrupty attorney by the time she’s 60?
Let’s say she goes for broke and tries to open up a floral shop, since that’s aways been a dream of hers anyway. Are floral shops doing really well now? Can she get a loan from a bank? Can she afford the risk, given the things she has hanging in the balance (kids, house, any health problems, etc.)? Let’s say she gets a smal loan and covers the rest with most of her savings. For the first quarter things go okay. Not enough to pay back the loan or her bank account, but enough to pay the bills. But then unemployment suddenly takes another nose dive. Now no one wants flowers. Not even funeral directors. The pie she tried to open up and share has now crumbled to pieces, along with everything else in her life. I guess there’s still law school, right?
I’m not asking you to do anything. I’m just saying, there’s a lot more to this than “retrain, retrain, RETRAIN!” If I lost my job right now, I’d try to do just about anything, from scrubbing toliets to being project manager at an environmental consulting firm. But I’m 33, well-educated and experienced, in good physical health, not burdened by children, house, or spouse; and I don’t care how much money I make, as I long as I can eat and buy some deoderant. But most Americans do not share my values, or they have put themselves in situations (like having kids) which make my attitude invalid. If things don’t get better soon, all the lecturing from the well-heeled about retraining and evolving with the times will not stop people from losing their freakin’ minds.
Dangerosa keeps mentioning the permanently unemployed inner city black dudes, as if that’s supposed to be reassuring or something. I dunno about you, but I don’t see a lot of hope, happiness, or gumption in that particular demographic. Do you?
OK, 3% unemployment is considered good - I’m assuming that it would represent enough new people entering the work force and a certain amount of turnover of people within the work force, the idea being that you don’t want a labor shortage.
Right now, best figures are three times that much unemployment. In some locations it’s [four times or five times higher than that 3%. People who are educated and willing to work can NOT find new employment for extended periods of time. And this isn’t even counting the people who still have jobs but who have had their hours/wages cut, or who are settling for part time work who want full time work.
I don’t know if it’s “structural” or not, I’m not even entirely sure what people mean by that, but clearly this is NOT normal! The last time we were seeing this sort of thing was the Great Depression - and that went on for a decade or more. Sure, after it - and WWII - we had the very prosperous 1950’s but that doesn’t magically make the suffering of the 1930’s go away.
Here’s how I think about it: normally, we get all sorts of weather. Some days are sunny (call that “good economic times”) and some have thunderstorms (call that “a recession” or a “downturn”). Now we all know that there will be rainy days but they don’t last long and can even be interesting events and stimulate our gardens to grow. What we have now, however, it more like a hurricane - it’s a lot more intense and lasts longer than a thunderstorm. It’s not enough to close your window you need to board it up, too - times are NOT normal. Of course, hurricanes don’t last forever, and neither will this - but meanwhile instead of stimulating our economic gardens it may well destroy a few. Which loss is extremely painful and rebuilding may well take years.
Me, I’m getting by somehow or other, in much reduced circumstances. I’m working on ways to improve my lot. This isn’t the first time I’ve had my profession rendered obsolete and retrained but this time is MUCH different than prior times. I don’t know why people fail to see that. This is NOT a typical recession and I think answers that worked fine over the past 40-50 years may not be sufficient this time around.
I mean, sure, after the hurricane you can leave your neighbor to rebuild on his own and bitch about how the mess is binging down the neighborhood, but if you could bring yourself to lend a hand to him for a little bit the whole neighborhood looks better sooner. Why is there such resistance to looking at ways to help people get retrained/re-educated/re-employed? The faster we get the masses of unemployed back to work the sooner they’ll start buying stuff again and stimulating the economy.
[QUOTE=Broomstick]
I don’t know if it’s “structural” or not, I’m not even entirely sure what people mean by that, but clearly this is NOT normal! The last time we were seeing this sort of thing was the Great Depression - and that went on for a decade or more.
[/QUOTE]
Well, no.
The last time we saw this was in 1982-1984. That spike in unemployment was about the same and lasted about as long.
We did not see “This sort of thing” in the Great Depression, we saw something that was far, far, far worse.
I’m not jumping on the “everyone has to retrain!” bandwagon here because frankly that’s simplistic and silly, and ignores why this recession happened - it’s a monetary crisis, not a sudden, radical readjustment in job types. But it’s happened before, will end, and someday will happen again.
Some people have had the right combination of luck, ability, and good work ethic going for them, so in their minds that means everyone can make it.
Regardless of age.
Regardless of innate abilities and educational level.
Regardless of the money they DON’T have in their pockets right now.
Regardless of the external issues going on their life, like family problems and health concerns.
Regardless of the fact that the “jobs in demand” seem to switch up every year or so. So you train to become a software developer, because everyone knows that’s where it’s “at”. But by the time you get your first real gig, they’re laying you off and out-sourcing your job to India. So you somehow get a loan so you can go back to school and learn how to teach, figuring teachers have a recession-proof job. You work as a second-grade teacher for two years and then suddenly, to your horror, you are laid off again. The government is flat broke.
You have two big-ass loans to pay off (one for the first time you were in college, the second for going back and getting your teaching certificate). And people are saying “Retrain or open your own business, you stupid jackass.” You don’t have any more money to retrain. You take a job at Subway so you can pay nominal rent to your aunt (her basement is finished and everything!) while paying down your loans and saving some money. Meanwhile, as you perfect your sandwich artistry, you try to figure out what the next big thing will be so you can “retrain” in it. Because that’s what everyone keeps asking about. What are you going to do next? You hope having a long stint in food service won’t keep you from getting a “real” job once the economy recovers.
I don’t know what the solution is because I don’t know anything about economics, unfortunately. But I do know when people are oversimplifying a complicated issue. I feel like that’s occurring in this discussion, big time.
But that’s not good enough. When you help people do…well basically…anything, you make them dependent and destroy their work ethic. This is spin-talk for “you start a snowball of creeping socialism that begins with the unforgivable sin of anybody showing compassion for anybody else less fortunate.”
There are quite a few people in this country who would happily see us go right down the drain into a third-world hellhole of privation and unrest than deny us the opportunity to learn that “lesson” that compassion makes us weak and ungodly and communistic…and don’t forget unChristian, according to those who have cut their faith to current fashion.
Those are the rules now. You make it simple so you can blame “lack of character” and say it’s all God’s will and not have to pay taxes.
I happen to be a professional engineer working for a public agency who has numbers on spreadsheets representing the millions of dollars that are going to be spent on wastewater treatment plant upgrades…but this is only a small fraction of what I do in the course of my job, and only the tiniest fraction of what I am trained and qualified to do. Among other things, I’m capable of securing and allocating funds for treatment plant upgrades, as well as designing the actual upgrades, preparing the specifications, drafting the plans with AutoCAD, obtaining the permits, bidding the construction contract, managing the construction contract, overseeing the construction contractor, inspecting the work, etc. I am constantly learning new things, and I’ve been doing so for my entire life.
Any engineer whose job consists of only staring at spreadsheets is woefully pigeon-holed, and would not likely have the depth of experience necessary for a successful career. Heck, any engineer whose job consists of only staring at spreadsheets won’t even be allowed to take the exam to become a licensed professional engineer.
I don’t expect that to happen. Folks like yourself have taken too much care to instill the principle that humanity and generosity are not productive, and indeed, are a kind of cruel joke on society.
Retraining ignores the fact that you enter a field that suits your talents, interests and abilities. You dedicate yourself to a business and a trade your entire working life. The the entire field gets shipped abroad. You spend 4 years in college learning your profession. Then it is gone.
Gather up your resources and start over. Sounds easy but, what if programming is what you have done since you were a kid. What if you are not good at sales ? What if dealing with people is a problem for you. Tough shit you sissy, get a job managing at McDonalds and shut up. There is so much oversimplification of the problems, both in learning and psychology to restart your life. It is a huge undertaking and not everybody can do it.
[QUOTE=Beware of Doug]
This is what the work ethic has come to mean today. There is no place for you the individual. You do what the system demands and you shut your hole.
[/QUOTE]
Yeah…you tell em brother! Back in the old days, they used to protect your job, so that if it became obsolete it didn’t matter! You could work forever, and people just had to pay for it!
Aw shit. Did I say that “pushing out spreadsheets” was the only skill the guy had or the only thing he ever does? While you’re so busy picking nits and bragging about yourself, you’re missing my point. Professional engineers are being laid off. Database managers are being laid off. Their bosses are being laid off. State agencies are freezing their hiring and losing jobs to attrition. This economy isn’t affecting people with just their GEDs and work in the mail room. This is affecting people who Did All the Right Things.
Bully for you that you have a myriad of marketable skills. But do you think you’re really that unique?
Don’t know how old you are, but let’s add 15-20 years to your age and see how optimistic you’d be if you got laid off right now. No state agencies are hiring. Neither are the Feds. Consulting firms want people in their 30s to manage their projects because these folks tend to have more energy to spend before burning out completely. But the hiring manager won’t tell you that when you submit your impressive resume, of course. So what are you going to do that won’t endanger the wonderful trappings you’ve accumulated over your fabulous adulthood?
Yeah…you tell em brother! Back in the old days, they used to protect your job, so that if it became obsolete it didn’t matter! You could work forever, and people just had to pay for it!
Man…those good old days. When were they, again?
-XT
[/QUOTE]
Dang, I forgot. Since things have never been perfect, all questioning is whining. :rolleyes:
The last time we saw this was in 1982-1984. That spike in unemployment was about the same and lasted about as long.
[/quote]
I remember that recession - I lived in freakin’ Detroit during that recession. You know, it wasn’t as bad as this one.
Or maybe you don’t realize that the unemployment figures quoted in headlines aren’t the full picture. Go up to the Bureau of Labor and Statistics website and look at the “U6” number for a more accurate portrait of the unemployed and underemployed.
Funny - I have eyewitnesses to the 1930’s that tell me otherwise, and not all of them were hurting back then so it’s not just a matter of a family anecdote of how everyone lost their jobs and how painful it was - I’m being told this by people who remained middle class or better during those years, who remember what things looked like back then and what they look like now.
And hurricanes are a regular occurrence, too, but you still don’t treat them like regular thunderstorms. If you admit that the current situation is NOT a normal recession it’s not like the world will end.
Yes, I do believe this is a radical change in the economy, and it’s not just the US it’s everywhere else, too. I expect there will be winners and losers and that, yes, it will end. But I don’t agree that what constitutes a normal response to a normal recession is the best course for these times.
By the way - it may not be a matter of job types but rather job locations. Why wouldn’t that be a problem? If I’m a medical transcriptionist in Ohio but all the medical transcriptionist jobs are outsourced to India… well, I’m screwed, aren’t I? Because it’s no trivial matter to move from Ohio to Bangalore, is it? In today’s world the jobs move around more freely than the people can, and that’s a problem if you have a sudden movement of a lot of jobs from one country to another.
I can’t speak for Ruminator, but last year I donated something over $20k to various charitable causes, including two large checks toward affordable housing initiatives and two large checks to feeding the hungry. I currently own an extra house that I am renting out to an underemployed relative - ‘rent’ being a word that means “he lives there, I may or may not see money.” Within the past two years I’ve helped my sister out with somewhere in the neighborhood of $15k worth of assistance as she pulls herself out of addiction. I paid $3,000 worth of a friends medical bills.
I’ve employed friends and relatives and strangers to mow my lawn, walk my dog, fix things around my home, and care for my children - not because I “need” these things done - most of it I can do myself, but because they need a job and even $25 a week to mow my lawn is something.
I’ve paid for dozens of dinners and lunches for friends - because even if you aren’t well employed, you should get to go out for pizza with your friends.
I paid for five girl scouts to go to troop camp for a weekend, because my daughter is the only one who is “economically advantaged” in the troop.
This means that I’m significantly poorer than I was two years ago. In addition, I took big losses in the stock market in 2008, which didn’t exactly help my ability to help out. But that was why we saved and lived below our income, so that we would have resources when we needed them.
I’ve handed off resumes of people I know to other people I know. I’ve given career advice, coached people for interviews at companies I knows, and connected people together who should know each other for the purpose of finding jobs.
What I haven’t done is to expect the rules that control economics to suddenly change to benefit those I give a damn about, or expect the people I know and love who had a hard time holding a job in a good economy to suddenly be self sufficient.
But go ahead and assume none of us give a damn. You’d be wrong.
Forgive me for not wading into the economics portion of the thread, I can’t hold my own there at all.
I do wonder what the bulk of current un/underemployed people were doing for a living before they were laid off, and what industry are they looking to now for employment?
Living near San Francisco during the boom/bust I noticed a lot of people freaking out because they couldn’t find ANY 100K programming jobs to replace the ones they’d just lost, just no jobs anywhere.
It doesn’t seem like that’s what is happening now but I don’t really know what kinds of jobs are being lost and what kinds of jobs would be considered a valid replacement?
