What joyous tidings are in store for us today? How about the top headline from today’s New York Times?
“Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs”
Methinks the operative word here is ‘YEARS’, especially for people who have already been out of work more than two years now.
This is a disaster and it’s even worse than it appears because we were already ‘carrying’ a third of the workforce/population. (The over 80 million ‘discouraged workers’ not counted as being ‘in the workforce.’ Never mind the 40% of the ‘official’ workforce that only works part-time because that’s all there is.)
What two questions pop into your mind good citizen? What is being done about the (obviously) incompetent management of the US economy?” [Answer: we’re giving them bonuses!] and ‘What does this mean for the future of the Republic?” [Answer: You’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto…]
What should really ‘blow your mind’ is that they are still clinging to the fantasy that the economy is ‘recovering’…while openly admitting the job market will not/can not accommodate those thrown on corporate USA’s scrap pile.
What’s truly frightening here is the question of how these nincompoops define the term ‘economy’, apparently it doesn’t mean what we think it means.
Somewhere down the line the definition got perverted into something along the lines of ‘the system that lines our pockets with money’ as opposed to the system that supports society.
There is no lack of things that need doing, what we have here are people who don’t want to pay to get things done…a.k.a. incompetent management.
Worse, these people are so incompetent that they ignore half of their job! The ‘human relations’ half is left for the ‘resource’ to handle on its own.
Can’t live on what they pay you? Tough, it’s not their problem…it’s yours!
So…what are you going to do about your little problem? There certainly isn’t a ‘legal’ avenue where you can pursue a remedy, in fact, the law is the problem…people with this problem don’t have the necessary ‘re$cource$’ to seek satisfaction.
Well, if you’re too impoverished to sue for justice/protection, your only choices are A.) die or B.) do it yourself ‘justice’ (a.k.a. ‘steal what you need’. Using the word ‘commandeer’ doesn’t alter the material facts of the matter.)
Just one more little ‘gripe’ before we plunge into the greatly abbreviated article and that would be the disturbing tendency of the MSM to use ‘personal stories’ so the conservatives among us can tar all of the unemployed as lazy and worthless with the same brush.
In this multi-paged tome we follow the personal ‘tragedy’ of one 57 year-young woman and her invalid husband. The article does provide ‘snapshots’ of other victims but the focus is mainly on this couple…’shrinking’ the crisis to just a ‘few people having a hard time’.
We’re talking a third of the nation here good citizen…don’t lose sight of that fact.
Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs
By PETER S. GOODMAN
Published: February 20, 2010
BUENA PARK, Calif. — Even as the American economy shows tentative signs of a rebound, the human toll of the recession continues to mount, with millions of Americans remaining out of work, out of savings and nearing the end of their unemployment benefits.
Economists fear that the nascent recovery will leave more people behind than in past recessions, failing to create jobs in sufficient numbers to absorb the record-setting ranks of the long-term unemployed. [Yet not one of these fucktards dares to point at the source of this affliction…off-shoring!]
Call them the new poor: people long accustomed to the comforts of middle-class life who are now relying on public assistance for the first time in their lives — potentially for years to come. [Understand, these people were ‘the old poor’ who weren’t yet living in the gutter, which is where they’re headed. Massa don’t need Toby no more so he threw him (and his chillun) out in the street to fend for demselfs! Poor, poor Massa, saddled with ‘unproductive peoples!’ for about thirty seconds--then he palmed them off on John Q. Public.]
Yet the social safety net is already showing severe strains. Roughly 2.7 million jobless people will lose their unemployment check before the end of April unless Congress approves the Obama administration’s proposal to extend the payments, according to the Labor Department. [What do you think good citizen? will they ‘extend’ or will they cut them loose? (They have to eventually.) There is a ‘third choice’ but it doesn’t exist under ‘borrow and spend’ capitalism…]
Here in Southern California, Jean Eisen has been without work since she lost her job selling beauty salon equipment more than two years ago. In the several months she has endured with neither a paycheck nor an unemployment check, she has relied on local food banks for her groceries. [Um, the ‘safety net’ wasn’t designed to withstand this kind of ‘abuse’. Most unemployment checks are the product of stimulus money because the states have long ago exhausted their ‘employer funded’ unemployment pools.]
She has learned to live without the prescription medications she is supposed to take for high blood pressure and cholesterol. She has become effusively religious — an unexpected turn for this onetime standup comic with X-rated material — finding in Christianity her only form of health insurance.
“I pray for healing,” says Ms. Eisen, 57. “When you’ve got nothing, you’ve got to go with what you know.” [Is this a ‘snapshot’ of life with our virtually ‘non-existent’ social safety net or is this an endorsement for ‘faith-based’ salvation? Pray and you shall receive?]
Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s. [Bizarre how this seriously malfunctioning management ‘philosophy’ has managed to cling to life in the minds of our executives, isn’t it? Worse, we seem unable to rid ourselves of them or it!]
Men have suffered the largest numbers of job losses in this recession. But Ms. Eisen has the unfortunate distinction of being among a group — women from 45 to 64 years of age — whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly. [In general, people closing in on retirement have suffered ‘disproportionately’ over the past thirty years…]
In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. Last year, they made up 14 percent. [That statement was akin to asking if the rain would hurt the rhubarb, who gives a fuck? Which is to say the problem is definitely larger than ‘females 45 to 64’ so WTF?]
Twice, Ms. Eisen exhausted her unemployment benefits before her check was restored by a federal extension. Last week, her check ran out again. She and her husband now settle their bills with only his $1,595 monthly disability check. The rent on their apartment is $1,380.
“We’re looking at the very real possibility of being homeless,” she said.
Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces — some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession — might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives. [Another ‘pet peeve’ if you’d indulge me…has anyone else noticed how the ‘working class’ has all but disappeared from our social discourse? Working class is not ‘middle class’, they are separated by that stinking piece of ‘sheepskin’. Part of the serious disservice the MSM has foisted upon us is promoting this ‘myth’ that working class is synonymous with ‘middle class’. Is it any coincidence that ‘jobs’ have disappeared along with our ‘working class’?]
Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years. [How many of you caught the fact that this number is 50,000 jobs shy of the old standard? What the hell happened, did our population ‘shrink’ somehow? This is ‘Globalization. This is ‘Off-shoring’. This is your fucking Politicians sleeping with the enemy!]
Some labor experts note that severe economic downturns are generally followed by powerful expansions, suggesting that aggressive hiring will soon resume. But doubts remain about whether such hiring can last long enough to absorb anywhere close to the millions of unemployed. [Stupid is as stupid does…this is just ‘jaw-flapping’, there is no way the economy is going to ‘re-bound’, the consumer is too broke to keep this lop-sided economy moving forward, and that’s a fact Jack! But like most ‘neo-con lies’, repeat until true…]
A New Scarcity of Jobs
Some labor experts say the basic functioning of the American economy has changed in ways that make jobs scarce — particularly for older, less-educated people like Ms. Eisen, who has only a high school diploma.
Large companies are increasingly owned by institutional investors who crave swift profits, a feat often achieved by cutting payroll. The declining influence of unions has made it easier for employers to shift work to part-time and temporary employees. Factory work and even white-collar jobs have moved in recent years to low-cost countries in Asia and Latin America. Automation has helped manufacturing cut 5.6 million jobs since 2000 — the sort of jobs that once provided lower-skilled workers with middle-class paychecks. [That’s a bald-faced lie, most of those 5.6 million jobs were lost to off-shoring, automation has been with us for the past thirty years, there isn’t a single domestic shop out there that hasn’t been automated for decades!]
“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.” [Um, without customers, here is no business…so this model is sporting a rather obvious ‘flaw’, isn’t it? let’s take that a step further, shall we? How does fuckhead become a ‘chief global economist’ without spotting this himself? Is he stupid or does he just think the rest of us are?]
During periods of American economic expansion in the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s, the number of private-sector jobs increased about 3.5 percent a year, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of the Economic Cycle Research Institute, a research firm. During expansions in the 1980s and ’90s, jobs grew just 2.4 percent annually. And during the last decade, job growth fell to 0.9 percent annually. [Which, naturally, wasn’t fast enough to take up the ‘natural growth’ in the workforce.]
“The pace of job growth has been getting weaker in each expansion,” Mr. Achuthan said. “There is no indication that this pattern is about to change.” [Dunno what you’re reading here good citizen but I can tell you what the infamous ‘they’ hope you’ll take from this article; “This situation is permanent, so fucking deal with it.” Which isn’t true at all. The ‘problem’ here is ‘conflicting goals’, you can’t develop the markets of Asia without sacrificing the smaller US market…and the citizens of the US have gotten used to, er, ‘living well’. ‘Push’ is going to come to ‘shove’ real soon and we’ll all see what’s left after those that ‘invest’ try to strangle those that do.]
Before 1990, it took an average of 21 months for the economy to regain the jobs shed during a recession, according to an analysis of Labor Department data by the National Employment Law Project and the Economic Policy Institute, a labor-oriented research group in Washington.
After the recessions in 1990 and in 2001, 31 and 46 months passed before employment returned to its previous peaks. The economy was growing, but companies remained conservative in their hiring. [Truth be told, the workforce has remained at a virtual stand-still compared to population growth since 1990.]
Some 34 million people were hired into new and existing private-sector jobs in 2000, at the tail end of an expansion, according to Labor Department data. A year later, in the midst of recession, hiring had fallen off to 31.6 million. And as late as 2003, with the economy again growing, hiring in the private sector continued to slip, to 29.8 million. [Um, is there something wrong with these figures? We know that every month the economy sheds roughly 2 million jobs, with some of those people being ‘re-hired’, some sooner than later but there it is. So what the fuck is up with this 34, 31 and 29 million figures? Are these ‘annual’ employment figures? Seems to me we have a ‘retention problem’ on our hands, where employers with itchy trigger fingers keep ‘churning’ their labor forces in an effort to hire the ‘cheapest’ workers they can get away with…while lining their pockets with the ‘savings’. Did I mention how ‘predatory’ our system of commerce has become?]
It was a jobless recovery: Business was picking up, but it simply did not translate into more work. This time, hiring may be especially subdued, labor economists say. [No need to get rid of your current workers, this time all you need do is tell them they have to accept less pay or they can hit the door, that way you keep the people you’ve already trained! It’s a double win…for you!]
Traditionally, three sectors have led the way out of recession: automobiles, home building and banking. [Uh-oh!] But auto companies have been shrinking because strapped households have less buying power. Home building is limited by fears about a glut of foreclosed properties. Banking is expanding, but this seems largely a function of government support that is being withdrawn. [Banks are too big to support the volume of business that is no longer there, so what’s this ‘expanding’ nonsense?]
At the same time, the continued bite of the financial crisis has crimped the flow of money to small businesses and new ventures, which tend to be major sources of new jobs.[snip]
Marx didn’t say it first but he said it loudest…Businesses HATE competition! Lower prices for you means less profits for them! They don’t get rich cutting you any slack! Beginning to get a clue as to what’s wrong with this picture?
Worse is the fact that they justify this behavior by claiming ‘everybody else is doing it!’
Perhaps the truth is bad enough, those who refused to play by this warped and twisted ethos have gone out of business. The smart ones cashed out before they were driven out, they could see the writing on the wall.
The question you need to ask yourself here good citizen is, ‘How long can our society let ‘millions’ (of basically redundant) workers hang around doing nothing?
Is the intent to let these people starve to death? There doesn’t appear to be any ‘accommodation’ being made for them (save the rumored Haliburton prison camps.)
Worse, what are these people ‘guilty’ of…outliving their usefulness? (To the wretched, money-grubbing capitalists!) It will be a sad day indeed when that becomes ‘just cause’ to lock people up.
Of course, that is not the reason they will use. Ironically, they will be imprisoned for their indebtedness to a world that no longer has a use for them…through no fault of their own.
Perhaps more interesting is the subject of how ‘in your face’ articles like this one come and go without elevating the level of public discourse.
Nothing to see here, move along now if you’re not going to buy anything.
Thanks for letting me inside your head,
Gegner
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