Discussion for article #222359
Another thing employers donât want to pay for is experience. I live with a couple of long-term unemployed people, my former neighbors, who have failed to find employment. Itâs not that there are no jobs, itâs just that people donât want to pay a paramedic with 14 years experience or a retail manager with 10 years experience. I myself work but I am paid about $12,000 less than the average wage for the area in my field. It isnât easy out here for anyone. We are part of the most productive workforce in the history of the world, but that isnât important, apparently. What appears to be important are the wealthy sonsofbitches being the most wealthy minority in the history of the world, and all the social obligations that usually go with great wealth being forgotten or trampled on. Meanwhile, I think about the lives my roommate could have saved with her experience. There are several areas that should not be for profit. Healthcare is one, and public utilities like water and heat should be others.
We deserve better treatment from our employers as well as our government. My roommates feel lucky I took them in right before their unemployment cut off suddenly, because Iâd never turn them out in the middle of winter. I wonder what happened to all the others.
As far as I am concerned the GOP Congress is guilty of murder for letting aid to these people expire when and how it did. They should be held to account.
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Iâve said it over and over again. These
statistics are a game of three card
monte, and it isnât the people in trouble
holding the cards.If everyday people
understood (which is to say that if the
âNews Mediaâ had enough courage to
honestly report the depths of the
statistics and their genuine effects)
there would be nothing short of a
national emergency, because people
would demand nothing less than that.
The Congress would be utterly and
absolutely compelled to agree to and
apply solutions. That would
destroy both the Grumpy Old Partyâs
obstructionism, and the Doormat Partyâs
excuse for what amounts to a four year
âPity partyâ over what the people
have allowed their âGovernmentâ to
become.
Meanwhile, the people who suffer
the most (the 99-ers and the 199-ers)
are the ones who get nothing,
and who can give no more, because
itâs all been ground out of them.
But âGovernmentâ can report, and
political parties can regurgitate the nice,
âcleanâ stat that âUnemploymentâ has
gone down three tenths (0.3) of one
percent, and thatâs all people âabsorb.â
That is, unless you happen to be an
inner city teenager, Black, Latino,Latina, or female in general, , and or female in general. If youâre not
one or more of these, life is all of a
sudden turning up roses. Otherwise,
itâs another kind of brown sandwich,
and No, I donât mean peanut butter.
Re: 800K leaving the work force - last month a net 500K supposedly joined the workforce. Iâm guessing neither number was particularly accurate, and the 800K was a sort-of ârevisionâ of the 500k.
Boy, you just described me to a âtâ. Iâm part of the long-term unemployed and at the age of 51, my experience is now a liability. The mid-level jobs are either gone or taken by those who have no intention of ever leaving. No one wants to see me for a low-level job because - well, itâs pretty obvious.
There was a time when large, multinational corps. would hire people. Now, the ultra wealthy CEOâs have taken the salaries that formerly were being paid out to experienced employees for themselves.
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I wish to echo the first two posters. And add one other thing. And I have said this before:
If the United States were a country in which. letâs say, 99% of the population were
(a) the same âraceâ
(b) the same ethnic group
© the same religion
(d) the same strengths of stances on âwedge issuesâ across the
spectrum
There would be a near-zero probability that what is taking place would occur. After all, why would 99% of the population choose to harm themselves and their society so as to further enrich 1% (or less) of the country? And to go a bit further, why would this society exist such that 99% of near-desperately needy people IDENTIFY with less than 1%? My wife and I were in my doctorâs office last week and we browsed through a magazine targeted to the 1%âwith advertisements and merchandise few people can even be in a position to CHECK OUT, let alone BUY. Why would 99% of of a society masochistically thumb through these pages?
FOX, Talk Radio, a highly sophisticated GOP messaging system and the corporatized, compliant remnants of the Fourth Estate have converted the segments of the population who vote the most consistently and aggressively into, literally, GOP-voting foot soldiers, who are underwriting what Piketty and others have observed as an accelerating ârace to the bottomâ on social inequality.
It is one thing to operate a Soviet-style regime in which there is concentration of power, oppression and absense of legitimate representation for the majority of its citizensâbulwarked by aggressive (top-down) police-state oppression.
It is quite another to subvert an entire Constitution-based representative government such that a significant minority of the population (consisting of bigots, haters, militiamen, xenophobes, misogynists, religious zealots and neo-Confederates) has achieved and will achieve similar results. The motivation for these highly motivated individuals?
The fact that the US is not
(a) the same âraceâ
(b) the same ethnic group
© the same religion
(d) the same strength of beliefs across the spectrum
Obviously the Plan is working. People are talking about a GOP takeover of Congress in 2014. Think of that. A Party consistently on the wrong side of every social and political metric imaginable (except the metric of getting Old People to the polls) is going to be in control of the Legislative Branch of the Government of the United States of America.
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And, as a reward, Americans are going to let the Republicans keep the House of Representatives and take the Senate (not to mention return a sizable number of Bagger Governors to Power).
The narrative goes likeâŠ:âDems hope for turnoutâ, and so forth. Sounds like âturning outâ to see the State Fair (instead of utilizing voting rights our ancestors have died for).
Americans are the most patient people I have ever seen (outside of the minions of poor Mexicans who at least are aware that, in Mexico, their system only Operates For The Rich).
Why people know these things and refuse leave home, go to the polls and vote out the Republican Party will, I am positive, forever be a mystery to me; and a proof that a person can learn English, function in a society and still not get a handle on what really makes its citizens tick.
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Itâs inevitable isnât it, right before the election we were at 7.8% and the Republicans re-cooked up the skewed numbers routine because Obama needed to be below 8 to get re-elected according to them. It was still a drop and the trend has been constantly downward. Now we are at 6.3 with lots of new jobs and the never happy people just start shitting on the report instantly.
Compared to 10 or 8, this is awesome and getting right down to normal and somewhat acceptable but the doomsdayers always find a way to rain on the parade.
How about complimenting Obamacare with letting people get out of the grind that they were forced into because of the need for healthcare that the job provided. Now, with affordable true coverage, many people can retire and walk away or pursue other opportunities because they arenât anchored to a job they didnât want. Compared to last month, the negative Nancyâs can spin the numbers, compared to 2 years ago or 6 years ago, they look like the numbnuts that they are.
How 'bout that, focusing on the positives instead of dredging up imagined negatives.
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Who writes this crap? The number of unemployed persons dropped by 733,000 in the household survey. The civilian labor force is the same as it was last October. These numbers are seasonally adjusted for a reason. If you want to cherry pick numbers from only one report you could reach just about any conclusion you like.
The bottom line is that the unemployment rate is dropping and has been dropping steadily for the last three years and the number of people employed has been going up for the last three years. Add to that the fact that weekly layoffs are at historically low values and, overall, the economy appears to be improving.
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Agreed. To properly criticize results in the poll, they should apply the same analysis to the previous results as well. For example, 543,000 no longer seeking employment is a big number. But what was the number in the previous surveys? 542,000? 400,000? 600,000?
Cue the wingnutsâ âMore people leaving the workforceâ spiel.
Mostly agree Dave but âthe economy appears to be improving.â is the issue. Throw out the '09 numbers when the economy/unemployment was still seriously hemorrhaging and weâre still flying at stall speed. You said it all when you said âappearsâ. Great all around numbers on Friday but two days previous we had a 0.01% GDP report for the 1st quarter. And not a peep from either party. âWeather relatedâ is the throwaway line they use. And housing, which is a leader in almost all recession recoveries also took a major hit these past two weeks. The whole thing is bizarre. I canât figure out the cavalier attitude that permeates Washington these days.
If you get dropped into a 400 foot hole it will take you a lot longer to climb out than if you get dropped into a 40 foot hole. The economic improvement has progressed at nearly the same rate most recoveries progress. The fundamental difference has been how far we had sunk this time. Few people will say the economy is doing well before weâve recovered fully. Until that day, pessimism will grab all the headlines no matter what the reports say
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One of the reasons why Americans are âpatientâ is because thereâs a certain amount of dumb optimism that things will get better. The notion that âWell, things have got to turn around sometime.â I would venture to say that most Americans canât conceive of a time when things really didnât get better, at least not with any sort of speed that they could relate to.
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I agree with you. People talk about the âinstability of peopleâ, but I have found that Americans ARE patient And possessed of a collective wisdom and optimism. And these 0.01%-ers have factored both of those things in as well, as part of their Game Plan.
Dave, itâs about the speed (health) of the recovery that matters, not how deep of a whole weâre in, and these past 60 months have been the slowest average GDP growth since the great depression. This is significant IMO in that people can only hold on for so long. This is a real crisis and it is growing. So fuck the half a loaf meme and fuck the Correspondence Dinner attendees. .
According to the Pew Research Institute, 10,000 American baby boomers have turned/will turn 65 each day from 2011- 2030. I am no mathematician, but I think that figures out to 3.65 million potential retirees per year. Of course the number of people looking for jobs has shrunk.
*âThe unemployment rate plunged to 6.3 percent from 6.7 percent.â
Wow!!
*âYet the household survey, in calculating unemployment, found that 73,000 fewer people had jobs.â
Oh. Nevermind.