As of yesterday late afternoon it was Garret Graves, Rep. outta Louisiana who was demanding poor folk work for Gov assistance of any sort. Seems he thinks all poor folk are lazy slugs on the make for free money. Of course then this is how he sees his constituents. And that is odd when he needs their votes to keep his job.
He is holding up the debt deal on this one point and he is willing to burn the economy over it
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Cruelty is what this Graves guy is after
With 5 goober signatures the Discharge Petition would work and the debt ceiling raised in a clean manner i believe. Now i could have this wrong but at this point i don’t think so
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There may be lots of reasons people cannot really get jobs, in spite of complaints that employers cannot find new hires. People may not live where the jobs are, and cannot afford to commute or move. (This is a problem that most of us have trouble accepting, but it is no less real. Having your own car is expensive, and public transportation has lots of complications, including both the pickup location and final destination. Not every place is on a route.) Many have a poor work history, or lack the experience or basic skills that are being sought. (And if there are kids involved, we have not even mentioned daycare.) Yes, employers want new hires, but they want them with no complications or associated issues. If we are going to demand that they work, are we going to ensure that they really can (and I do not mean merely being able-bodied).
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It’s by a guy who created a bunch of AI generated photos for an article called “How AI will change the Blackmail business.”
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Employers want new hires to come in with 5 - 10 years of experience. That’s where the gap is. Also, there’s a skills gap where many of the jobs available in a specific area have no match with the skill sets of the available workers.
Then you have the IT gap. This story appeared in ‘The Economist’ this morning:
You studied computer science but big tech no longer wants you. Now what? (economist.com)
With hundreds of thousands of layoffs in the industry, where are the new kids on the block supposed to get jobs, particularly if they can’t even get internships (as the article is focusing on).
There’s more reasons than we can count as to why jobs are going wanting.
Right after Y2K, a lot of COBOL programmers actually came out of retirement (my brother in law was one of them) to transition old programs to new programs. There are no COBOL programmer jobs anymore (or darned few) because the language is all but defunct.
But the Horse Feathers caucus and other GQP party members can’t acknowledge that disconnect because it takes the wind out of their narrative.
Look around you, all Hivers - how many folks do you know or that your friends know that absolutely positively refuse to get a job/find work? What’s the real number, given that unemployment, even among minorities, is at an all-time low? Makes these nincompoops talk about the unemployed in their own districts and the number of jobs going wanting. Don’t let these sick people off the hook - if they make the accusation, they have to be able to substantiate their accusation.
I’m frankly tired of the no one wants to work nonsense - most of it is coming from retirees that have no clue.
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As a COBOL programmer, I can assure you that the language is far from defunct. (Many of those systems just keep working away, without a need for changes . . . until there is suddenly a problem or a need for a change. Y2K was a good example, and I know many programmers who followed the siren song of contracting for that effort, and then found that they were unemployed and basically unemployable once that effort was settled.) The problem is indeed to find such jobs, in part because there is the expectation that the need is defunct, and no one wants to hire or make the effort to learn the skill with the promise that it is not a career with any long-term prospects. I am one of those nearing retirement, and I plan to go out on the mainframe in part because I have seen what a mess the “modern” development efforts are for anything more than very minor applications.
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I’m in the ABAP world, but only as a functional consultant.
I’m wrestling with start my SS payout (I’m eligible, just wanted to wait another year) while I’m working what has become effectively part time for my current contract house. They simply don’t have any work for me in my functional area, but have a good bit of work behind the scenes, if we could just get started, that would keep me working pretty nicely for the next year.
I get a talk with the CEO on Tuesday to see what can be worked out.
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The 4GLs are one of many “obsolete” attempts at making programming easier and cheaper, which never really delivered either. (We still have some IDMS that was meant to be retired over a decade ago, but saying so and making it be so are very different things.) That is almost certainly an even smaller niche. A lot could be done in our current mainframe systems to remove obsolete code, streamline processes, and learn the inner details of existing systems (for which the original developers and analysts have long retired or even passed on) such that it would facilitate the effort to create more “modern” approaches. (I put “modern” in quotes because JAVA is now 30 years old.) There was long an injunction against such efforts, with the idea that those systems were about to be made obsolete. As the actual replacements have grossly failed at more than just nibbling around the edges, it may be that they start to allow more activity of the sort just described, but there is still the problem that they want mainframe talent and yet they keep saying that it is a short-term need. Those two things are in conflict, and it is a self-inflicted wound.
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My favorite listing was for a reservoir engineer with minimum 3 years’ experience who could mentor.
When they determine you have 15+ years or are over 50, the job description changes before you get to the interview.
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Reelection out weighs all else. Good of the country or other humans is waaay down the list … if on said list at all.
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Employers want workers who who never get sick, never have childcare issues, never have transportation problems, never try to organize, never go on strike…and, in fact, never get paid.
Does that sound like the big, fat, wet fantasy AI seductively dangles in front of corporate America?
(Of course, AI can do some things better than people, but the idea that it can solve every problem from world hunger to hemorrhoids – especially without consigning massive waves of humanity to the economic dustbin, while the obscenely wealthy become more obscenely wealthy – is a pipe dream.)
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I think a large part of the country had that back before the Civil War. What was it called? What was it called? It is on the tip of my tongue.
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((Raises hand)) I GOT IT TEACHER!! (thumbs thru history book)
13th Amendment
Right?
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Sorry, I think that was the reform that began the modern quest to recreate what they had.
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Garret Graves(R-asshole) of Louisiana demands people hafta be employed to get assistance. The federal government has no sense of irony
Theoretically if employed someone might not need assistance covering stuff like food or child daycare. Of course most of the people getting assistance are already working.
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Yellen using her middle fingers, “1+1= Go fuck yourself”
If she glued all those pages together they’d never know
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You could put the whole caucus in the room with Yellin and they still wouldn’t have enough fingers or toes to figure out what she’s saying.
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Welcome to TPM Jonl. This is a great site that will help you to maintain your sanity during the coming elections! 
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