The End of Work
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Where Is the Recovery Coming From?
As I write this, G.M. has just filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Twelve G.M. plants will be closed immediately and (according to Michigan governor Jennifer Granholm) as many as 12 major corporations in Michigan that depend on GM for their existence (suppliers and so forth) are expected to follow suit within the next four to six weeks.
Lots of talk about how GM will emerge leaner and stronger and will be back in private hands ASAP is all over the news today, but that isn't going to help the state of Michigan or the people who live here.
The fact is, whatever eventually happens to GM or doesn't happen to it over the long haul, millions of additional jobs will now be lost in the coming months, most of them in the industrial midwest. The ripples will be felt throughout the U.S. economy, and they won't be small.
What's happening to GM is only the latest, most visible sign of a sea change that is much bigger than fallout from an 'economic downturn' or a real estate bubble gone bust.
Lots of jobs are going away, and they aren't coming back ever.
Ask yourself, where is this recovery coming from? From clean energy? Really? Where is this clean energy? I mean, where is it now, right now? And once it does exist (if that happens), are we really talking about the same number of jobs that the auto industry and U.S. manufacturing once provided? Is clean energy really going to employee millions of people the way the auto industry once did?
In order to stave off panic, no one in government is talking about this in a plain way.
Fifteen years ago, economist Jeremy Rifkin talked about it though.
Rifkin's book The End of Work describes a looming post-industrial world in which unemployment in the developed nations becomes the norm, not the exception. Rifkin sees the internet and the personal computer as twin technological innovations responsible for changing the world in rapid and profound ways, much like the automobile did when it first went into mass production at the turn of the 20th century.
(It's hard to imagine a time, for instance, when there was no U.S. interstate highway system, but it actually wasn't even a century ago that driving from coast to coast was an ordeal. Now it's hard to find a town where you can safely walk to shopping facilities. You need a car. Henry Ford's invention of the Model T and the innovation that followed it at the beginning of the 20th century literally changed the way the world looked and the way it worked. We are in for another such giant change, but this one could be harder on us.)
Here is a quote from Rifkin's website in which he talks plainly about our current dilemma:
"Many jobs are never coming back. Blue collar workers, secretaries, receptionists, clerical workers, sales clerks, bank tellers, telephone operators, librarians, wholesalers, and middle managers are just a few of the many occupations destined for virtual extinction. While some new jobs are being created, they are, for the most part, low paying and generally temporary employment. More than fifteen percent of the American people are currently living below the poverty line. The world, says Rifkin, is fast polarizing into two potentially irreconcilable forces: on one side, an information elite that controls and manages the high-tech global economy; and on the other, the growing numbers of permanently displaced workers, who have few prospects and little hope for meaningful employment in an increasingly automated world."
As I was watching the news about G.M. this morning and wondering how long even one of the people in my personal household will still have a traditional job (my significant other drives a truck in Michigan; I worked in the financial industry and have been freelancing online since losing my outside job last October), it hit me that no one is really addressing the magnitude of this change. Even Wall Street is acting like we've bottomed out and seems to assume that the recovery that follows that bottom will mean a return to the same level of financial madness we just left, probably by 2010 if not sooner.
But as we've already seen, what makes Wall Street happy doesn't necessarily filter down to working people.
What is happnening now in the U.S. and Europe goes far beyond a temporary lull in a normally robust economy. In terms of historical events, it's more on the scale of the Industrial Revolution: It's a seismic shift in the way the world looks and the way it functions, a shift that will be especially hard on Western nations that have all but lost their manufacturing base and are rapidly losing technology jobs as well.
I have to ask again: Where is the recovery coming from?
I've been asking this all along and I'm still waiting for the answer.
I am beginning to suspect that the answer is, for most ordinary people in the West, there will no real 'recovery'. No return to full employment at jobs with livable pay and decent benefits. No easy solution for how to retrain or what to try next. A reduced standard of living across the board and a diminished place on the world stage. A long period of contraction, decline, and vanished social services. The steep drop in employment will evenutally level off, of course, and once it does we will remain less than we were for many years.
It might help to plan for this right now.
Pretend Work and the Vanishing Middle
I'm not looking for a job.
I work for myself, doing whatever writing I can scrounge online. Over the past six months, my partner's trucking company, like so many other companies in the midwest, has forced pay cuts, benefit cuts, and substantial layoffs and is now trying to keep afloat by working a skeleton crew of its most senior employees half to death. So he's gone 14 hours a day and I'm home watching the vegetable garden we planted and taking care of everything else.
We're lucky. Lots of people aren't working and can't find work.
I have to say though, that none of this is all that surprising, at least not to me, and not to my kids or their spouses (who are all going through pretty much the same thing). For the past ten years, we've all witnessed a change in the very nature of work.
Work became 'pretend' over the last decade.
Let me explain.
It used to be, you'd get a job, and you had a task, and when you performed the task, you saw the results in front of you. My first job was waiting tables at Kreskge's lunch counter. People ordered food, you got them the food, they paid you, you saw that someone got fed. That was your job: getting food. You could tell if you were doing your job or not by whether or not people were getting their food. Pretty straightforward.
Not long after that, during the big recession of on the late 1970s, I worked in a factory that made camera bags. I sewed bags. So the work was this: I sat down at an industrial sewing machine, and if I did my job I'd fill up a vat with completed camera bags each day. I could see the bags. They were real. I made them. You might even still own one. It's possible.
In my 30s, I worked for Public Television. I was the editor of the membership magazine and I recruited volunteers for pledge drives. I knew I was doing my job if a magazine went to press each month and if the phones were staffed for each pledge drive. Real job, real results.
You get my drift.
About ten years ago, I got divorced, which meant it really wasn't a great idea to keep working in my ex-husband's landscape design business. I had to get a job. Even though I have two college degrees, good and wide ranging office skills, years of work experience, and am as internet-savvy as the next guy, the only positions that seemed to be open were euphemistically referred to as 'customer service' jobs. They all were located in vast cubicle sweatshops that made peeing on the clock a punishable offence.
I was able to get two of those jobs over the course of ten years.
It became immediately apparent to me however that the work was in some sense not real.
First, we did not really serve customers. Our job was to get rid of customers. If we could sell them something new, we were to do that. Later, we were evaluated solely on whether or not we could sell them something new, even though they all were calling with a problem or complaint about something they'd already been sold that wasn't working.
Most of the 'products' we sold were pretend in the sense that you couldn't see them. Services that weren't services. Chances to make money that were really chances for the corporation to steal money. At the end of the day we could total our 'sales' but we couldn't really quantify what exactly we'd sold and we certainly couldn't feel good about it. Not for long anyway. If we 'sold' a lot of imaginary 'products' we got to stay and were pushed hard to sell even more. If we didn't sell and tried to actually address the customer's concerns, we were terminated.
I worked alongside former psychologists, former radio announcers, former factory workers, former realtors, former retail workers, people from all walks of life and all levels of education. I worked with many people who had advanced degrees or technical skills that you might think would be saleable but were not.
We all worked like dogs but to do what? What were we doing exactly? Where was our contribution? The vat of bags we'd sewn or the food we'd delivered to hungry people or the people we'd recruited to a cause or our written work? All we'd really done was bully unhappy consumers into forking over even more money so people already way richer than ourselves could have even more money, and in return we provided not much of anything,
In a distillation of an upcoming book Shop Class as Soulcraft: An Inquiry into the Value of Work, writer, philosopher, and motorcycle mechanic Matthew Crawford talks about a similar experience he had after graduation at his first (and last) corporate job:
"After earning a master’s degree in the early 1990s, I had a hard time finding work but eventually landed a job in the Bay Area writing brief summaries of academic journal articles, which were then sold on CD-ROMs to subscribing libraries. When I got the phone call offering me the job, I was excited...But the feel of the job changed on my first day...
My job was structured on the supposition that in writing an abstract of an article there is a method that merely needs to be applied, and that this can be done without understanding the text. I was actually told this by the trainer, Monica, as she stood before a whiteboard, diagramming an abstract. Monica seemed a perfectly sensible person and gave no outward signs of suffering delusions. She didn’t insist too much on what she was telling us, and it became clear she was in a position similar to that of a veteran Soviet bureaucrat who must work on two levels at once: reality and official ideology. The official ideology was a bit like the factory service manuals I mentioned before, the ones that offer procedures that mechanics often have to ignore in order to do their jobs.
My starting quota, after finishing a week of training, was 15 articles per day. By my 11th month at the company, my quota was up to 28 articles per day (this was the normal, scheduled increase). I was always sleepy while at work, and I think this exhaustion was because I felt trapped in a contradiction: the fast pace demanded complete focus on the task, yet that pace also made any real concentration impossible. I had to actively suppress my own ability to think, because the more you think, the more the inadequacies in your understanding of an author’s argument come into focus. This can only slow you down. To not do justice to an author who had poured himself into the subject at hand felt like violence against what was best in myself.
The quota demanded, then, not just dumbing down but also a bit of moral re-education, the opposite of the kind that occurs in the heedful absorption of mechanical work. I had to suppress my sense of responsibility to the article itself, and to others — to the author, to begin with, as well as to the hapless users of the database, who might naïvely suppose that my abstract reflected the author’s work. Such detachment was made easy by the fact there was no immediate consequence for me; I could write any nonsense whatever."
Rifkin posits the emergence of a third sector, a kind of grassroots social services and reform movement that grows out of the lack of real work so that people will be provided for in the absence of actual earned income.
Matthew Crawford, who like me, now works for himself (fixing motorcycles at home and writing professionally when that work is scarce) sees craftsmanship, work with one's own hands, and entrepreneurship replacing the traditional job.
Both of these may well be a big part of what comes next--I think they already are--but again, the point I'm trying to make in this hub is that the days when (Americans at least) could expect to finish high school, college, or even graduate school and then enter the work force and make a positive contribution for a living wage, appear to have ended.
Please, feel free here to convince me I am wrong.
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Comments
If you look at it historically the traditional job has only really only been around for the last couple of hundred of years - before that most people were casual labourers of even serfs - tided to (other people's) land or to the occupation of their fathers.
The concept of work - and the concept of driving value from it - is very,very new. It sounds like your part of the US is going thru what happened in northern England in the 60's and 70's when the boat building and steel industries left never to return- causing structural unemployment for several generations. GM won't rise again - unless they figure out how to sell what the customer wants - like Toyota and Hyundai do. The reality is that manufacturing is taking a one way hike to low cost economies - or at least efficient ones (neither Japan nor Korea are actually cheap countries).
In NZ we saw our so-called, heavily subsidised car industry and most other industry for that matter disapear when the subsidies went in the 1970s,80s There was unemployment up to 25% which matched the interest rates of the time. But NZ has been relatively unscathed this time - sure unemployment is up and the $ down - its not a crises in the sense that the US or the UK has a crises. The difference is quite simple - having stopped subsidising any part of the economy in the 80s (dont even get me started on US farm subsidies) we now have a small open flexible economy.
If you want to work in heavy industry in NZ - there are no options. But there is not structual unemployment on the scale of US/UK - we don't have great wages - but people don't starve and there is a good social security safety net. Where do those ex heavy industry workers do now? They work hospitality, services, trades - they've adapted - the sad thing is that unlike yourself - few people caught up in a crises can see beyond the hype and actually undestand that they have to move on rather than just proping up failing industries - I think Obama has made a big mistake bailing out the car companies - its just throwing good money after bad.
Pam: It makes me sad, and I mentioned this to my sister, that the young generation of today, do not in any way have the job options we had back in the late 70;s and 80's when we were both at the prime of our lives. When sis would go job hunting, she would often have to choose between two jobs, while nowadays, many do not even have a job. I think more and more young people should be educated to learn how to be self employed and self sufficient, one cannot depend on working for others.
My s/o and I are self employed, (he is a former engineer who has done remodeling and me a banking employee), we have to, we can't depend on retirement benefits if we want a comfortable, not rich, just a comfortable life where nothing out of the extraordinary can happen
Excellent post. Yes, the day's of our being actual producers of things is past. We all seem to be just information middle men now. good luck
Sorry Pam, you're not wrong.
I have come to the conclusion that at the time I voted for Obama I was experiencing a delusional psychotic episode. The decisions he has made, or accepted from his masters, can do nothing but make matters worse by far.
You might find this interesting: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/michael-moore/goodby
It makes clear that there are actual, workable solutions to a lot of what's going on. I think we knew this anyway. Why is our "government" ignoring them and pursuing policies that absolutely guarantee the complete collapse of the country?
Add to the suggestions of Mr. Moore the information from here: http://www.monetary.org/ and you begin to understand that what is being done is very cold, calculated and deliberate. There's just no getting around it.
There are clear, mathematically logical actions that must be taken to prevent the playing out of a post-apocalyptic scifi movie right here in the real world. There really aren't many options.
The actions being taken instead will certainly eventually lead to massive social disruption, poverty, violence and staggering loss of life.
I just can’t see it any other way. It’s the ageless cycle repeating again. Only this time it will massively affect the population of the entire world.
Very good article as usual...Outsourcing and greed brought us to where we are today. The greed of Wall Street, banks and CEO's...I wonder, how can they look at themselves in the mirror...?
Hi Pam, brilliant article as usual, but I'm not sure the situation is quite as bleak as you describe it. Personally I don't mourn the passing of "work" in the traditional sense, meaning work for a corporation or a large company so the shareholders can make a profit. Nor do I mourn the passing of "security" which, to me, is just another word for stagnation and decay. I think the new world we are moving into opens up immense possibilities for us as humans - once we are rid of the parasitic thought-form virus that is capitalism and can organise a money system and an exchange system that is fair and equitable - to discover our real skills and potential as human creatures. I suspect it will involve some degree of pain along the way though, but sometimes, you know, pain is a measure of growth. CJ.
Thanks for another thought provoking, well written Hub.
Yes, the world is changing. I think this is similar to the end of traditional agriculture and the move into cities and industry. That was not just a change in the type of work available, but a change in family life, where people lived, leisure pursuits - a major society shift.
I notice above that Lissie commented their was a change in industry in northern England in the 60s, 70s and 80s - and she is quite right. When i was in my late teens I lived near a large steel works and vividly remember how the road lit up with car headlamps at the change of shift. (all the workers owned cars). That's gone now, and the area is still going through economic adjustment.
I wish I could predict the future, but my vague ideas for future jobs would include education (especially basic skills & vocational), health and social services.
I hope that there will be a change in the service industry - I would like to see a return to real service as opposed to the pretend service that you describe. My grain of hope comes from the idea that if people have less money they will choose very carefully how to spend it, and might exercise their choice based on good service. (maybe).
If I could sell my house and buy a patch of land I'd be interested to see whether subsistance vegetable farming is possible on a small scale -- i.e. whether I could survive without work. Doubt it, though.
Hi Headstrong Farm--Thank you for posting. I think you may be right.
Lissie--I've thought of that period in Britain's history a lot lately. I think we will see a similar long bottoming out here in the U.S. followed by a slow shift to a much reduced standard of living. What troubles me is the possibility of violence somewhere in the middle there.
Violet Sun--It is sad. My girls got through college mostly on loans (I had no money to send them) and they now are saddled with huge debts at the start and small prospects. And you are so right--lots f people can never retire now.
Thinking out Loud--Thank you, I appreciate your comment.
CWB--I get similar reservations about Obama, but only in terms of the financial sector. I think whatever he does though he'll get half of it wrong because it's SUCH a huge mess. I think for national security reasons we should be way more aggressive about keeping manufacturing here (some) and clean energy started, and way less aggressive about saving the toxic, nasty financial system, but it appears the banks own Washington not the other way around.
Thank you Nancy's Niche--I think those CEOs feel fine. They have no sense of guilt at all. Unfortunately.
CJ--I sure don't miss a 'job' job either, but I worry for the future. I guess it will come no matter if I worry or not so I should let up. I agree, lots of better options will open up--lots of folks here are still in denial though. Thank you for your thoughts.
2patricias--Yes we are already MUCH more careful about every penny. Hopefully the era of providing nothing for a large fee is ending. Good riddance to it.
Teresa, I think it would depend on what you grew. Pot might be a good cash crop! lol! Seriously though, there are some things you could grow that would be better than others but in general I agree. It would be hard. We doubled our garden this year and put in two more fruit trees (pears). We're trying to be a bit more self-sufficient bit by bit but it isn't as easy as it sounds. :)
Very good Hub.
The common energetic theme among the comments seems to me to be a general confusion as to how this happened (we have our theories but no one seems certain) and a general submission to the inevitability of the apparent trend. I admit to having those same feelings much of the time. I support 20 people and, despite working 24/7 in whatever way I can, we are probably headed for bankruptcy.
But corny as this may sound to many, these are the times when God matters most. I said God . . . not religion, which I don't view as any different than the CEOs and politicians in whom we have lost our trust. I have been to the bottom more than once, and the difference now is only one of scale.
And all forms of responsible spirituality point, not to the deficiency of the masses or the leaders, but the individual's personal connection with God and his/her purpose. Why? Because if it's really true that the CEOs and politicians and technology wizards and so forth control our lives, then there is nothing to be done, and we might as well sit back and accept our plight. But if the problem is in us, we may take some blame we don't want, but at least we have the means to make the change.
So I suggest that, when as now the general situation becomes so filled with quandaries and dilemmas that it cannot be understood, then the real problem is spiritual/psychological and above all personal. How long have we lived in a subtle belief that there is only so much of things valuable (love, money, sex, power, food) and that life is therefore fundamentally a matter of getting what you can, using the tools of bullying (if you are stronger) and seduction/manipulation/deference (if you are not)? Not only is there no God in this assumption (God=abundance) but, by living in that mental place, we have created the CEOs and politicians and gurus which we now complain about. In a sense, we have by our example authorized their conduct. Not the sort of responsibility you want to take? I understand, but inherent in that interpretation is that we have the ability to change the example.
You and I created this problem, which means we can solve it. But it is a matter of each person starting from scratch and asking whether he/she could face God right now and sincerely claim that he/she served beyond the greed.
Maybe, just maybe, all this is happening because someone wants us to learn this lesson.
Hi Steve--Thank you for that insightful comment. I do think that this is an opportunity for each person to reassess and make changes. I know for myself I had to do that. I just got to a point where I had to, it wasn't possible to avoid it anymore. Working for one of the big banks that failed, I realized a year before I left that what I was doing wasn't right, and it couldn't all be blamed on the bank so long as I stayed there willing to do their dirty work for $10 an hour. I do have some hope that something better will come out of this mess, but first the mess. Then the better.
I am so glad that I came across this Hub. The Hub reflects your experience. Recession has hit all of us. It has hit extremely hard in US and then in Europe. When some people started claiming that recovery has started now, GM files for bankruptcy. Being in India
I may not feel the actual impact that has happened in US as many expert believe that Indian economy has really done very well in these times when compared to countries with strong economy. However, no matter what the case be the effect is being seen here too, maybe it is not so intense. So far India is concerned, IT industry is the one that felt the pinch first (it is still feeling). Everyday 100s of people are being offered pink slip simply because client (mostly American) is not able to bear the cost of the project. Fortunately my client is a FMCG company and is in good shape. But you never know what may happen tomorrow and if I too happen to loose my job then I better be prepared to support myself and my family (actually I am).
Thanks for this Hub and hope that things improve (I do not see it improving before the end of 2010).
very good article...Im a software engg andi agree with what you hav mentioned...gr8 job!
Hi packpack and nms--I agree, I think it will be late 2010 before is started to get better, and then it will happen slowly. I think India will continue to grow but the U.S. will begin to contract. We'll see. I'd like to be wrong about it! Thanks for your comments, both of you.
Thank pgrundy for another insightful Hub! I agree that self-employment will begin to be the new norm. My husband works as a heavy equipment operator and just spent 6 months at home. Now that he's back to "work" he may be working 3 days a week, just to screw with unemployment. I finally told him that he needs to get serious about his taxidermy and start taking commissions when people ask, he's refused up till now stating that he's still "practicing". You cannot rely on other people for work anymore.Period. Out of all my college friends I have the best job as a legal assistant (BA in English Ed). My fellow recent grads work: at a nursing home in catering, substitute teaching, at a dental office, Costco...you get the picture. I'm just trying to figure out the best ways to strike out on my own at this point.
Hi cennywenny,
It's hard. My daughters are 30 and 26 and both got through college on student loans. The 30 year old is doing volunteer work and the 26 year old works at the public library for around $10 an hour, but she started at $7. Both have huge student loan debts that cannot be discharged even by bankruptcy. I think it's really harsh for kids now, really harsh. Of course, we live in the rust belt--Indiana and Michigan--but I see similar changes taking place all over.
My partner may or may not make it to his earliest retirement age, which is 62. He's 58, but we live in Michigan and he's a truck driver. If a bunch of auto suppliers go down, and they probably will, it's anyone's guess what will happen. I'm trying to build my business writing, but it's still not much. We are getting our expenses way down and trying to save as much as we can. All of my kids say they just assume we'll all end up in one house eventually. At least we have each other! Good luck
I enjoyed this article very much. But then, I usually do enjoy your work. You are easy to read, clear, concise and insightful. Usually, I don’t agree with what you say but appreciate how you say it. This time, it saddens me to agree. Life has changed in this country; the world even. Our children and grand children will never understand independence and self reliance. Regardless of whose fault; our future has been taken from us. Employment is the most easily identifiable example of our changing culture and you are correct; the tradition of hard work and doing what is right because it’s the right thing to do is gone forever and not coming back. RP (CWB) is correct; we have been left to the mercy of pirates on a worldwide scale. We have been duped and beguiled by the hypnotic propaganda of the world/western media. I didn’t vote for President Obama but it matters not…they are all controlled by the same people and seek the same end…the destruction of most of humanity. Sorry to ramble…good article.
The economy is going to be in change for some time. In the meantime, with your writing ability, it seems like you could make ends meet. Have you ever written a book?
Hi! Your hub and the comments pretty much say it all. I do think, regardless of what anyone's politics is, that we are in store for great economic changes and that it will be a rough road ahead, perhaps for a long time to come.
Perhaps, so many will become disgusted with the world of jobs and being employed by someone else, that they'll turn to self employment and that eventually, all the big companies and governments will fade away and you'll see individuals and small enterprises making up more of the economy again. It would be tough to reach this end, But I think it would actually be better than it is now, where working is concerned.
The tough part will be that many will have to get used to really running their own lives and making big business decisions and planning and working on their own, and, on the general level, the effects of this transition, such as layoffs and big businesses going under, until things stabilize.
The good part of this is that many people will feel freer when they find that they have more control over how they work, and business will be more personal, especially where service is concerned. I felt this way, and still do where my flyer distribution business is concerned. There was a lot I didn't know at first, and it was scary to make the move, but once I jumped in, I realize just how liberating it is to not have to get permission to work as I want to.
Great hub!
I have been thinking, and haven't got all the way through the logic. A lot of jobs are disappearing. Also, a lot of things are getting saturated. I live in an area, where the population is decreasing, but they are still building houses. Well, who are buying these houses? Don't we become over saturated with houses at some point?
American and Europe are have 1.2 -1.4 children to every 2 people living. Thus the population will start to reclaine, and we cannot keep the culture we had. WE have more people going on social security, and less people coming into the job force. One would think the jobs would be plentiful, because of this reduction. I am starting to feel the opposite, the the real jobs a dwindling because of the demand on products because of the less growth in population is not there. This also may be from outsourcing the jobs over seas. If it was not for the immigration our population would start decreasing. I am a conservative, but I am rethinking the immigration, especially of christian Hispanic from Mexico, that we may actually need them, if not only to stop us from becoming Islamic, but for the demand of goods and jobs.
Like I say, I have not gotten through the logic on this Industry and construction of industrial has dropped. We have peaked in the production of may items, where we may not have in steady large increase of population to cause a high demand on the items.
Well thanks for the info and thought provoking hub.
Keep on Hubbing!
The short days that we could expect a solid job, promotions based upon performance and retirement benefits are long gone. I am so aware of that. To compensate, businesses present workers with the 401k plan, which is bogus in my opinion. It's not a real retirement, and most companies that manage 401k's are taking so much off the top that you are not getting your money's worth. You're so right, we work at pretend jobs - even the real ones. I fuel aircraft, and although that job is real in and of itself, the work politics are truly insane. In response to the economy, the owner of my company started cutting hours, (to his credit, didn't lay off anyone - however, most of the dead weight has been eliminated one way or another), and told us to give even better customer service. Well, when you're in the middle of fueling one aircraft, and two more jets pull up, how are you supposed to give all three jets with passengers excellent customer service? Also, were we giving them bad service to begin with? I don't think so.
Cubicles are way worse I know, and to make 10 dollars an hour after the life experience, skills and education you gathered, is worse than an insult.
One positive is that with the internet age, we are living in a world of entrepenuerial opportunity. Bloggers can make money writing whatever, Ebay is a great way to run a business from home with no store front. If your videos are good enough, you can make money on youtube. All of this goes back to hard work.
I am also hoping, (because corporations are treating employees so badly), that things will get so bad that everyone will want to freelance. Then, as freelancers, potential employers will have to entice you to work for them as a slave, and treat you right to keep you! This is a little sappy, but even with the negative outcomes, I think these positive ones are also a result of the weird transformation of the traditional work place.
Hi,
Thank you for all your excellent comments. All of you had valuable things to say and I really appreciate you taking the time to say them.
Everyone I know in my family who still has a job is going through some version of what Alexander is going through--some combination of layoffs, pay cuts, benefit cuts, and push for more productivity even though all the places are now badly understaffed. Of course, this leads to customer frustration and even less business because customers get mad.
The news here is all about how GM will emerge stronger and leaner. Great. But what about the people in Michigan who now don't have jobs. Lots of companies will go belly up over this--anything connected to GM, and that's a lot. Everybody in Michigan can't go back to school to be a nurse. In fact, NOW they are hiring fewer nurses--hospitals can't afford them.
I'm working on my writing business. I do enjoy it. Any business though is hard work for little money the first few years. I don't mind. I put in a lot of hours but at least it's what I want to do.
I hope that many of these big corporations fail. I know it will be hard on the rest of us, but they SHOULD fail. Thanks again.
Great Hub, Pam - you have the wonderful habit of cutting straight to the heart of the matter.
It is a worrying time for you all - as 2patricas said, the UK went through this with the decline of heavy industry, and with the closing of the coal mines in the 80's. My father worked as a fitter in a shipyard, and I remember standing outside the yard watching thousands of men cycle home from work. Now, the workforce is tiny and the town half-derelict.
The one ray of hope is that the comments show that 'good old-fashioned' conservatives and liberals share the same concerns, which is extremely refreshing. Perhaps a good place to start building something new.
Hi Sufi,
I noticed that about the conservatives and liberals agreeing on this one. It's funny too, because it's definitely the case that ordinary working people seem to see it more clearly than either the press or the government does, and it doesn't seem to matter which 'side' you are normally on, no job is no job is no job.
I'm worried but also I kind of hope a lot of it falls down. So many thieves at the top. Why do we need them? Erase and start over might not be such a bad thing, even though it will be very hard. Thanks for your thoughts. :)
"Erase and start over" may be closer than we think. All, or most, of us who participate in this conversation are pretty "rational" people, or at least our rebellion stays within the range of complaining to theorizing. But yesterday, my daughter-in-law saw something a little scary to me. It was a new or newish Escalade with an obnoxious license plate: "EZ LIFE". But also, the back window had been kicked in, all four tires has been slit, and someone had painted "F__K You" all over the car.
Steve, that's horrible. That's my worst fear--that it will get violent. I don't want to live through that, but I have this gut feeling it's coming.
You certainly nailed this topic in your always profound way. I was thinking while reading it, about a much older book that Jeremy Rifkin wrote on the subject of entrophy in business (can't remember the name of it) that applies to much of what's happening today.
You hub also reminded me of what happened when our government bailed out Amtrak and how it was supposed to be a one time thing that now apparently is going to last forever.
I guess for me, it boils down to looking how the public schools (aka government schools) and entities like the post office have ended up, and scratching my head thinking -- OK, what makes them think they can solve any of the current problems. They aren't fooling me. I worked on Capitol Hill as a lobbyist and nothing is ever going to change. So, I guess you can tell I'm very jaded.
Much needed hub that I hope gets a lot of readers thinking and asking questions.
Still no job in sight for my husband and he's so depressed after 6 months of looking.
Hi Jerilee,
Thanks for your thoughts on this. I agree, government needs to get out of this bailout business now and start dealing with the real issues--like what are we going to do next? Are we going to slide right off the developed nations list, or are we going to make some things here and pay people a decent wage for it? And if we are going to do the second, how? How do we compete with India and China? We have real problems, but we're throwing all our money at bloated fat cat corporations that are basically doomed. For instance, if Citi can't make money the way it bullies and cheats people, when WILL it make money? Same for BOA and don't even get me started on AIG. GM and Chrysler may well emerge much leaner and more viable, but what of the jobs lost? You can't buy a car on a fast food job, so a real downward spiral is possible here--nay, likely.
We are in a similar position to you and your husband. Bill is a trucker too and he's still working for now...but in MICHIGAN. God, every day is like, is it today? Does the other shoe drop today? Since December of 08 they've closed his barn (he how commutes 70 miles to a different city just to drive right back in the truck to deliver and pick up), cut everyone's pay 5%, cut everyone's vacation, stopped 401k matching, downgraded the 401k fund...had three new waves of layoffs... Everyone I know is going through the same thing at their own job.
Yesterday our local paper printed an article on how to sound younger on your resume and downplay your age when applying for work. It was full of chunks of wisdom such as how to leave off experience, how to avoid talking about your education (if you have one), how to look and sound younger... It made me so mad I wanted to wad up the paper and jump up and down on it.
Hello I live in VA and even hear it is hard because of GM and the others my Husband works for a trucking co. and they deal a lot with the auto makers they have laid off a lot of workers and cut the hours of all most everyone else. last week my husband only got 2 days of work.
Hi myra636--yes I think it's rough out there right now and will likely get rougher. Good luck to you both!
June 6 2009
I don't know how Lissie can compare Korea and Japan. I live in Korea and have done for over ten years and Japan is far more expensive. The cost of living here is at least half that of Japan at similar wages for foreigners at least. Korea is relatively cheap compared to my native country Canada which I have been back to recently and is now almost as expensive as Japan.
I don't know what Lissie thinks a cheap country is. I spend part of my year in Thailand and it is no longer as cheap as it was only five years ago. Some things such as the cost of internet at internet cafes is more there than in Korea while the wages are about a quarter of those in Korea. Most Thais work for 10% of what a normal Korean wage is.
I experienced in the 1980's what people in America are now just experiencing about work and left North America. I had no idea that 20 years later I'd still be away and the reasons for staying away are stronger than ever. Fortunately for me I have meaningful work over which I have total control and am paid for a year even though I only work seven months. And when I work I only work six hours per day three days a week. Most people will not be able to get this job. But there is no incentive to ever go back home.
I do agree though that we are entering the future predicted decades ago where having a job would be a luxury only few can enjoy.What the rest do I have no idea.
I'm sad to say that it is a timely and true hub. I have heard here and there people talking about the "bubba effect", apparently what they mean is where people go back to close knit communities living off the land and kind of suspicious of outsiders, etc. Sounds crazy I know but it doesn't sound as crazy today as it would have 3 years ago.
Nice photo on top, Grundy, and it's really only the nice thing about this business, aside from the way you told it. Otherwise, this topic depresses the shyte outta me! I can't believe that article on downplaying your age, hiding your experience and what else! At any rate, thanks for putting this out there.
PS: Don't get me started on AIG either. These days, the word "bailout" gives me an apoplexy.
Terrry--Thank you for giving that view from the other side of the world. I'm glad though that you have a skill that's in demand and allows you to work a partial year. That's good. I've only ever been to England, Mexico, and Canada, so I'm not much for speaking on the cost of living worldwide with any kind of authority, but I know a few years ago when we thought we might moved to Toronto the rents there sobered me right up. Thanks.
Jimmy--I think that 'bubba effect' might come to pass. It's weird, but all my kids have recently voiced the conviction that eventually we'll all end up under a single roof. Each of them has said 'thank goodness we have three roofs in the family because eventually it'll be one and we'll all be under it.' I hope they are wrong but they probably aren't.
Elena--Yes, I haven't written a financial or economics hub in awhile because I get too worked up myself. I honestly can't see the point in shoveling all this money into the financial industry so they can create another bubble and do it all over again--if we even have another bubble in us. On the other hand, the SEC did charge Countrywide's Anthony Mozilo with fraud this week. That's a start.
Thanks for your thoughts everyone.
Hi, Pam- See you checked out the book! I guess I see Steve Rench's comments as correct. It's all about a pardigm shift....the control we give to corporations and CEO's (and yes, of course, even those who have career -or whatever-jobs are not necessarily happy.) It is difficult, however, not to 'see' the effect all this has when clearly in some inevitable ways, one is affected. ie, I've never been 'my job,' but that doesn't mean the TIME it takes out of life and the grind and the psychological warfare that goes on doesn't take a toll.
I understand careers are basically a recent century concept...and we will go on, definitely, towards higher things, I think, as a race. It's those of us who are baring the transition, though, that will also feel the ramifications spiritually, materially, and holistically.
Hi Lita,
Yes, thank you for the reference! Fascinating guy, Rifkin. I'd like to read some of his other stuff too.
I think you are right, we will all eventually go on to better things, but will it be in either of our lifetimes? Hard to say. I know I don't miss corporate work. Sometimes I wish I still had the benefit package, but the stress of the dual reality thing was way too much for me. Also, I think that at least in the rust belt workers have very little in the way of bargaining power anymore, so you're on task every single second and constantly pushed to do more. The way I work now is less lucrative but also more satisfying. Thanks for your thoughts, I appreciate hearing from you on this.
Yep. This shift has been coming for a long time.
I was seeing it in the eighties. I got bit by it in the eighties for the first time. I used to do telephone answering service. Then answering machines got cheap enough to be cost effective and that type of shift work vanished except for specialized medical customers. I learned to be a typesetter.
That was good throughout the eighties and then when I moved to New Orleans in 1990 I found out it was obsolete -- PCs were able to do the job well enough and small companies that used to job out things like menus or newsletters or business cards just ran them on the computer.
That's when I found out I didn't need A Job and went to doing street portraits, which was great and lasted until my health went out. But my health would have gone out no matter what I did, that's a whole nother story.
I see a lot of hope for small companies and entrepreneurs and craftspeople because that's a situation that an individual can create for him or herself. The solutions to this are individual. The things that the government could do to make it easier to adapt would be to make it easier to be self employed.
Hi robert--I'd like to see more self-employment and more craftspeople too. I think that trend is already starting, it's just not getting a lot of attention. Thank you for your thoughtful comments. :)
Pgrundy,
Very nice hub!
The major problem I see in the future has to do with the current administration printing money at an unstoppable rate without thinking of the consequences. The previous administration started the bailout and the current administration (that ran on "change") is doing more of the same, but at a rate 10 times worse. We once had systems of checks and balances, but today we just shove bills through Congress without reading them, and telling the people it is an emergency. When the trillions of dollars that was printed starts getting spent, inflation will go through the roof and who is going to pay for it? Certainly not the members of congress who are mostly responsible for the mess we're in!! These "Congressional Leaders" were there in both administrations and they need to go.
hi hglick! I don't understand why we keep shoveling money at the financial industry either. It seems to me like it is just making the problem bigger and putting off the consequences a year or two. Of course, no one is calling to ask MY opinion and I'm not sitting by the phone! lol! Thanks for your comment.
Yep, you are absolutely correct pgrundy. The financial industry is just part of the "special interests" being greased at our expense.
yup yup yup. hey all check mine out and add me as a fan, I will return the favor to all who do the same for me.
why did humanity start selling things=to provide for a need, but now we have sold so many things there are really no needs, so what can we sell now? what about for things you might need? YEY!, be ready, be prepare!, but now what? well, now we need to sell the need to need... oh fuck it, I could go on, but really, who wants more of the same?
Structural economic change is a bitch. My parents were both born in Liverpool, in the late 1940s. It was then a very wealthy port city, proud, successful, with a great past and a looked-forward-to future. It was still that way in the 1950s. Lots of ship-building, a major docks facility, all sorts.
Then BANG, almost overnight the whole city went tits up, the docks closed, the ship-building finished, everything changed.
As an example, both my parents, and 3 of my grandparents were born in or near Liverpool. My grandparents all died in the south of England, bar one who died in north Wales, and we don't have a single second or third cousin even who still lives there. Everyone's left.
uli--Good point. So much of what is sold today is nearly useless. Thanks for stopping by.
LG--Yes, that's happening to my hometown--well, the whole of midwestern industrial U.S. really, but some towns worse than others. And it's been pretty fast, although to be honest, we saw signs of it as much as ten years ago. The last few years have been horrid. I don't see it coming back any time soon either.
LG's right. There has been a massive exodus from the North of England to the South over the last 50 years, first when the ship-yards closed, and then when the coal mines shut down. The South of England is very densely populated right now compared to the North of England. Resources and infra-structure are often stretched to the limit, and our Southern property prices are far higher than elsewhere in the UK. I can't help thinking though, that if you are lucky enough to work from home via the internet, as so many hubbers do, that you could literally live anywhere, and that 'anywhere' could be in a beautiful place that just happens to be convenient and cheap as well.
Hello Pam. Nothing would give me more pleasure than to say that you’re wrong, but of course, you’re dreadfully correct. I all but gave up on finding traditional work after being laid off from Ford-Visteon several years ago. Besides, even when I worked for the company, I was never able to absolutely define my role. This article is perhaps one of the most intelligent that I’ve read on the subject. Self reliance is the new employment revolution. You’ve gained a new fan!
Hi Amanda--I do think the U.S. is about to go through what Britain went through a generation earlier. I think it will ripple through the developed world though. Globalization is not so good for developed nations, at least not for the workers. I don't see how we can get industry back.in the U.S. without some form of protectionism, and there are consequences for measures of that sort. I do think though that we should at least manufacture our own weapons here. It's madness outsourcing THAT to China!
I do agree that working online is awesome. Not terribly lucrative, but rewarding and not that hard, really. I like it. I can't imagine working in a cubicle ever again. :)
Bryan--I'm on the same page. I lost my job in October '08 in the financial sector and I live in Michigan. At 56, I'm not even trying to replace it, but moreover, I don't WANT to replace it. It was horrible. If I never work in another call center the rest of my life it will be too soon. Good luck to you!
It does seem that we are "regressing". We are looking are doing more ourselves and seeing the real work before us. Thank you again for a great piece. I'm about to lose my job for the first time ever in my life. I'm grateful that they gave me almost 4 months notice and are allowing me as much overtime as I can get before the last day. But after that..... I'm going to write and make a little money on the side. My husband is going back to teaching part time to make up the difference. We're going to have to realize that it will take a little more imagination to get through it all.
Hi RGraf--I'm truly sorry to hear about your job. You are a great writer. I know you'll come through it just fine but it is a big adjustment. We've had to pare down, live a lot more carefully. Good luck to you. :)
Unemployment is reported to be up to 9.4% however, I do not put the blame on the federal government because of the worldwide economic status. I believe that you have to get to the root of the problem before placing the blame or finding a solution. Sometimes placing the blame is not the issue and a solution just needs to be discovered.
President Obama, a the leader of the western world expects to hear rhetoric to the contrary because of the gigantic problems in which he inherited. It takes a person pressing on to his purpose of being elected to ignore the naysayers and move toward his campaign promises.
President Obama passed into law a $787 Billion Stimulus Package that he plans to wring 600,000 by June of 2009 and as promised 3.5 million jobs. Republican Mitch O'Connell of Kentucky is saying that the economy is going to "recover on it own" and that the recovery package was useless, merely a "pork spending bill." HIs statement is in today's Washington Post.
I do not want to be partisan here, but it is a known fact that Republicans are not that concerned about the plight of the American people. The Ameican's economic condition has rarely been their main concern.
The Guiness Book of World Records reports that President Bush hired the most millionaires of any administration in history. Did President Bush know that this economic crisis was coming. Like Jay Leno asked, should President Bush be pulled out of Texas to answer for the "mess." I am not blaming President Bush but in was in office up until four months ago. He left creative housing finances that had people owning more to the loan company than the value of their homes. The $275 Billion Housing Bill was passed to help new homeowners to stimulate the economy.
The only thing that Americans can do is to support what the federal government is up to now and that is to recover the economy. Economists are saying that the recovery may not be come about until the end of 2010 or the beginning of 2011. Big businesses such as GM and Chrysler have a way of looking toward the future and knew that bankruptcy was in their future. The federal government does not want to run automobile dealerships but when a company need a bailout the federal government is the most logical place to seek financial help. GM will come out of the bankruptcy just as Donald Trump has out of his many financial mishaps,a stronger and leaner company. If the company is in that bad a shape, why is there a commercial on TV telling Americans that the trees are going to be greener in a few months when GM merges out of its financial stigma.
I am saying all of this to say that GM is here to stay, Chrysler "married Fiat" and is being sustained though I hear there is a few problems in the area.
The American people have to stop lamenting about whether or not a job is real or not. If the job does not fulfill your career goals, then there are other jobs out there. The American people should be satisfied if they are working and just do the best they can at what they are paid to do. If the company wants you to cross sell, then that is what you should do. You are being paid by the company and not by the customer. You have probably been trained on how to be a good customer service representative by the company that employed you. If you do not like the politics or how the customers are treated then you have to find another more suitable job.
With 1.6 million jobs that have been lost since February of 2009, I am sure that there is someone who would gladly join the training program in customer service or even waitressing if their family is hungry.
I have worked at a standardize testing company where I was amazed that PHD's were working alongside me. I have a BS degree and have attended several graduate schools after a 30 year career in government procurement.
Marriages do not always turn out the way we expected and there is not always jobs for the newly graduated or the ones whose degrees have yellowed. But this is America and if you have the will to succeed in running your own business or retraining for a job that is "hiring" then you should pursue what you need to do to get placed in a viable career.
Americans do not receive bailouts from the government except for welfare and who wants that. So I would be content where I am or move on to a place where I can be satisfied. The one thing I willn not do is to start a job lamenting session that does not encourage but manifests everything except hope.
Thank you for your comments, Linda. I can see you've given this lots of thought. All the best to you.
Yes we can't possibly blame Congress,(ROFLMAO) They literally forced the banks to make subprime mortgage loans to hundreds of thousands of people who couldn't afford to pay them back. Most of these people defaulted on their loans causing hundreds of banks to go under and insurance companies like AIG to tread water. These same congressmen then blamed the entire mess on the banks and the previous administration (who they were part of!). Anyone who doubts this, look up the facts!! I am not posting from a political perspective, because frankly I don't see anyone in either party who helped us much. I am speaking from the perspective of someone who worked in the mortgage loan department of a bank and witnessed the harrasment from the people in power who run the committees and were in the tank with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This is a plain and simple fact, not a spin.
The economy will recover when the reckless spending, loaded with earmarks stops. Both administrations were responsible for this. Printing money at this rate WILL cause a recovery in the short term, but Will also bankrupt us in the next several years, because inflation will run rampant. Taxes WILL GO UP everywhere, and the middle class will pay for it the most.
Look at the history of administrations that spent during a recession. Catastrophe was always the result. A prime example was Herbert Hoover.
We need to cut taxes across the board to stimulate the economy. This will put money in the hands of the people who will give us the biggest recovery. John F. Kennedy was the first president to prove this theory. He cut taxes drastically, and stimulated the economy for the next decade. Where did these type of leaders go?
hi hglick & lindag,
linda, you said,
"The American people have to stop lamenting about whether or not a job is real or not. If the job does not fulfill your career goals, then there are other jobs out there. The American people should be satisfied if they are working and just do the best they can at what they are paid to do. If the company wants you to cross sell, then that is what you should do. You are being paid by the company and not by the customer."
I do disagree with that. I think that, first of all, there not all that many 'other jobs out there.' I also think that the attitude of do what you're told and don't question is not a responsible attitude. If you are doing work that you feel is wrong or makes you feel like a liar or a hypocrite you have a responsibility to stop doing that work. Lots of the jobs currently available are not respectable jobs. Most people can't do them and face themselves the next day for very long. That doesn't make them bad workers, it makes them human beings with a conscience and with standards. If corporations grew a conscience and adopted some basic human standards we might not be in the economic mess we are in now. If we support their crappy policies and practices with our labor and our consumer dollars we are just enabling incompetence and greed.
I do hate the 'lowest common denominator' argument when it comes to work. That's the argument that says, 'take what you can get no matter how low paid or ridiculous and suck it up.' Many people seem to think that if you work for a living you don't deserve decent pay or respectful treatment from your employer. That's a very harsh, self-defeating attitude. The world will beat you down on its own--you don't have to pick up the stick and do it to yourself to save the world the effort.
If we don't stand up for our own values, how are we different than whores? If we sell our time to do ANYTHING for a little money, then we are part of the problem not the solution.
That's my view and I'm trying to stand by it in my own life. Of course I would never force it on anyone else. Anyone who can get a crappy job and keep it, hats off to them. I would never attack anyone putting in an honest days work. But there are certain things I will no longer do for money. That doesn't make me lazy or picky, it makes me a person with self-respect and values.
Pgrundy,
Those are excellent points. We should all strive for self respect in our lives, because it strengthens our character and really makes us more marketable in the long run. Self respect brings on the confidence to reach for your limits by attaining more knowledge. Confidence + Knowledge + Action will achieve success in the long run.
Hi hglick,
Thanks. I'm also just tired of what seems to me to be a distain for working people. First everyone rushed to college so they wouldn't become one, then the economy went sour and where did everyone direct their rage? At autoworkers. But it seems to me it was the big banks and investment houses that brought us down, the very corporations with the most nonsensical money-over-everything work ethic. Imagine what would have happened (or not happened) if any of those people making money off nonsense on Wall Street asked serious questions about their work, ever? Not like I'm naieve enough to think it would have happened in any univierse, it's just that I'm trying to make the point that uncritical acceptance of the status quo for a buck is not necessarily an admirable quality.
Thanks for your informative hub. I hope the government doesn't keep bailing out businesses. There's something sort of fishy about all the bailing out in regards to these companies-why can't they did themselves out of this hole if they're so efficient. Just wondering.
Hi Writer Rider,
I agree about the bailouts. I think most people are sick of them and very suspicious at this point, especially the financial industry bailouts. I don't see any changes being made, just lots of money shoveled into banks and investment houses.
Really fantastic hub - have been trying to keep up with what's going on and this is a really great personal account and opinion piece about it, pgrundy. The bailouts are happening because of political lobbying although it is also hard to tell the politicians not to take the money and let the companies fail - the taxpayers wants that, but the backlash from people with jobs in those comapnies will also be felt - however they still chose the wrong option because there are more on the ground feeling the pain now than those who had their jobs saved (which one suspects has been low anyway and mostly for those at the top) by a devaluing dollar. Unfortunately things continue to be run by very incompetent and delusional people from Obama downwards. The good news actually is that we as individuals have the ability and power to get over this and come out better, be it continuing to look for work, creating work of our own or simply trying to add value to one's and others' lives.
There are complaint and suggestion boxes to voice disagreements with how a sale is being transacted. It is a known fact that the purpose of the job interview is to "sell yourself." The job interview is the place to present your best qualifications to prove that you are the best fit for the job. I do not think that you are "whoring" yourself if you do the job that you were hired to do after winning the interview. You are being paid a day's pay for a day's work. You may think that way if you are only putting up with the job for the money but that is how the bills get paid.
I wonder if American's circumstances were different, would they approach have a different attitude about their jobs being real or "unreal." People who were once on two incomes are now a one income family because of the economy. But what happens when the one income leaves and two people are out of a job. The scenario calls for putting aside the special privileges of choosing the job that is comparable to the number of degrees that you have. The scenario calls for getting a job, any job that qualifies you to earn pay to make a living. Doing a job the best you can is not selling yourself. Every job seeking employee sells themself at the interview process, including the president during the debates.
There are jobs in America, just not the job that may be comparable to your number of degrees or your area of academic discipline. Like Ronald Reagan said years ago that some people found a bit shallow but true: As long as there are jobs in the classified ads, a company is hiring and there are jobs available.
Americans just have to get off of their disappointment of not starting at the top of a company after graduation from college or working out of their area of interest. I stand by my initial comment, that when we lament about the "emptiness" of a job, we are not presenting the best attitude to move forward. An attitude of moving forward is to do the best job possible so that when and if a job becomes available, you would be the first pick.
Do the best you can at the job that you "won" at the interview and keep hope alive for the job of your dreams as most Americans. The way you feel about your job whatever it may be reflects on your job performance. Just like rushing to write a thesis, the instructor can tell if you put your best efforts into doing your best.
You are not your best critic and employers reviewing your work can tell how you feel about the job. Eventually, either your performance waivers from satisfactory or your attitude of feeling that the job is not "real work" leads you away.
The attitude or thinking that the job was not real eventually shows and you find yourself without work. This is one part or the article that I am going to compare with "whoring." Fake it until you make it. If you do not like you job and you think it may be difficult to get another one because of the economy, then you must put your best performance to the test. Act like you like your job especially if you have mouths to feed. Kids do not know if you think your job is real or not, they just know that you get up every morning and go to work. Kids do know that you are responsible for feeding them with your work and that responsibility should keep you working even if the job is not "real" to you. "Whore" on if you are in a legitimate job with a reputable company that pays you and understands you. When you do the best job you can, you keep the company sustainable in sales or as a janitor and your family fed. What can be more important than that?
Thank you for your comment musicprof--I agree, I think most people want the bailouts to stop, but powerful lobbying groups keep a lot of pressure on Congress.
Linda--We just disagree, that's all. I respect your right to your opinion, I just don't share it. Also, as I said, I would never disrespect anyone who put in an honest day's work anywhere. It's up to each person what they do and what they decide they can handle, and it's not for me to judge.
That said, there are things I won't do because I think they are wrong. I consider this a personal responsibility and I won't be shamed into reversing it. I am not out of work, I work for myself.
We're each free to make our own decisions. I just hate it when people give out this message, "Take what you can get and be happy with it."
That's very negative and shaming, and there are better options IMO. Why not encourage people to think for themselves and develop their talents and abilities? Why all this "Shut up and do what you're told and be grateful for it!" I just think life is too short for that.
You said,
"If you do not like you job and you think it may be difficult to get another one because of the economy, then you must put your best performance to the test and act like you like your job especially if you have mouths to feed."
Sometimes people do have to keep jobs they hate for practical reasons, but it isn't always a good thing to adjust to the thing you hate because you perceive you have no options. Sometimes that's the worst thing you can do. Like I said, I'm not got gonna bash anybody for having to work a job they hate, but don't tell me that lying to yourself and others is some kind of virtue. It's not.
Musicprof - I agree with you 100% . Bob Brinker who has a show called "MoneyTalk" on WABC is is a longtime member of the New York Society of Security Analysts and the Financial Analysts Federation. He has said that the current administration (especially Congress) is spending our money like a bunch of "drunken sailors" and have no idea what they are doing. That says it all
awesome hub..this actually open the eyes of anyone showing that we cannot depend on others for money, people out there dont realize that they can have anything they want, and they can be free of corporate america but we live in a negative world where people dont believe that dreams can come true..and if you fight for something hard enough is possible
Thank lester & hglick, I do kind of think we're going to have to be more self-reliant and frugal. I see more multigeneration households in the future, less home ownership too.
Hi Pam As usual excellent well thought out factual hub. For me across the pond, the scary thing is we have (maybe had) a profitable GM subsidiary and we were building some Hummer Models here in SA. Now the Hummer plant here is closing down and moving back to the US causing job losses. Seems crazy to take a profitable operation and move it back to a loss making entity.
Another thing is it seems to me the sabre rattling in North korea is a variant of "son when you become President - Start a war" (Bush Snr to Bush Jnr). You know of course that capitalism apparently, needs a good war every few years to break down, in order to rebuild, and start all over again.. Fervour and jingoism then replace hunger and job losses and everyone ends up feeding the war machine by supporting the war effort and the unemloyed masses become soldiers and car and aeroplane factories build war machines and missiles. economy recovers.
Is that to be the final chapter in this current economic meltdown?
Excellent hub Pam.
Thanks sixtyorso--I wonder why we don't do what Roosevelt did during WWII and retool our auto industry, only this time make wind generators and alternative energy products? It seems like we are just throwing good money after bad and getting not much in return. If we have to bail out all these industries, I don't understand why we don't at least demand something in return. And you are right, capitalism is War, Inc. But even that--at least we used to manufacture our own weapons which created jobs. Now we outsource that to China, which seems insane to me. Thanks for your thoughts!
Pgrundy, there is obviously a disagreement between working for a job without substance or just going to work everyday and doing your best work. But that is the American way and it is a virtue to put feeding your family before analyzing the job description that feeds them.
The subject of taking a job because you are hired to do the job even with lesser pay makes national television news. Executives are taking hourly jobs to keep their families fed. While others who have lost their prestigious jobs have taken matters and their life within their own hands. You would think that sustaining a family could have sustained their lives. What a shame.
I am not advocating that Americans accept less than what they see as their net worth and "whore" themselves just for the "money." I am saying that if that pristine job is not yet available, talking down to yourself about your situation is not much help.
President Obama is promising 600,000 summer jobs from the Economic Stimulus Package. Over 150,000 jobs have been created from the recovery plan. 3.5 million jobs are expected to be created by the time the stimulus package is spent.
What should the unemployed do who do not have another income in the household? They will have to do what the executives did who made national news. Do a honest work for an honest days pay or stand there without an answer when the kids ask, "What's for dinner and where are we going to stay if the mortgage does not get paid?"
The time of job analyzation was before the recession of December 2007. With today's economic downturn, Americans are happy just to be working real job or unreal job. Check out the hubpage community. In the Topics category there is a hubpage writers who is counting down the number of days he has been unemployed. Writers have been telling him that his situation will improve and others are telling him that he is not working hard enough to find a job. Whatever the case may be, I am sure that the "realness," substance or "whoring" for a job is the furthest thing from his mind right now. He just wants a job.
Linda, you're entitled to your opinions. I appreciate you sharing them. We aren't all going to agree on these things. All the best to you, I wish you well.
President Obama promised that unemployment would top off at 8%. It is 9.4% and rising.
Also what jobs have been created? Government Jobs? What happens at the end of this year when the deficit is 2 trillion?
If Obama refuses to cut back on his spending/stimulus plans (despite convincing evidence that Americans are not spending the money), he has three options:
a) He can raise taxes, which will trigger a deeper recession;
b) He can print money, which will trigger huge inflation;
c) He can pay more interest to borrow money, which will send the economy diving down again.
The blame for these outcomes will fall squarely on Obama’s deficit and spending policies
The Stimulus package stimulated NOTHING. It is an AGENDA and payback to special interests.
To those of you that are confused, look up these facts, and stop believing the hype and false promises.
BOTH SIDES ARE AT FAULT.Bush wanted to keep the war going,all the time knowing the economy was on the edge of collaspe.He also knew that the republican's weren't likely to win the next election because of the borrowing he was doing to keep the war going.It was all about oil and saddam not Osama Ben laden He should have been after Osama ,instead he went after saddam .
Hi hglick and someonewhoknows,
I think these problems are at least 30 years in the making. I trace them back to Reagan and the now infamous supply side economics ideal, which some people continue to cling to in the absence of all evidence that it helps anyone except the rich.
I think it's unfair to hold Obama responsible for the current ungodly mess the economy is in, but I also am disappointed in his economic policies and the continuing lack of transparency. I do think it will all get worse and that what is happening now is not going to help most of us.
pgrundy, thank you for allowing me to speak further on the importances of being employed at a job that pays than to be unemployed because of cognizance of what constitutes a "real job." Three hubpages were created out of the comments and cadence was given to a hugpage writer who was looking and is probably still seeking work. Because of disagreements and differences of opinion is no reason for moderators to inhibit discussions.
I think that politics is going to always be a subject that the leader or president is going to answer for because it is difficult to point a finger at the entire Congress; that is the House of Representatives and the Senate.
Many of President Obama's policies are not coming to the forefront because of the Repubicans who continues to vote no on any agressive economic legislation. The stimulus package was passed into law with only three republican votes.
The Washington Post today reports that Americans are indeed cautious about spending anymore of the $787 Economic Stimulus Package allocations. The state of Virginia actually returned millions of the recovery plan money because of thoughts that the taxes would be raised on Virginians. However, politicians running for public office are uses the nay votes on spending the stimulus money as a basis to not elected certain government officials.
Obviously, Virginia and other states who declined the stimulus package funds were not speaking for all of the people in their states. After being in office for less than five months, no agressive action on the part of the current administration would not be a fix on the American economy.
As one commenter here said, inflation may be awaiting after the recession that is expected to end on or about the year 2011.
Because Americans can all talk about politics and can do little else except talk more in protests of agreements or disagreements, I choose to do more. I choose to perform community service and to do my part to help the country move forward in that respect.
The economy has become a world problem with China accepting IOU's in some cases on United States loans in foreign trade. Because of the complexities of government policies, I plan to continue to share my opinions to see if there is a common ground and then to do what I can in community service or obtain a political position to change it.
I never really thought of it the way you've put it before, but it makes sense. A very good article. Welcome to the future, I guess.
Thanks for stopping by Samknight. :)
Lindagoffigan said ,
"Many of President Obama's policies are not coming to the forefront because of the Repubicans who continues to vote no on any agressive economic legislation. The stimulus package was passed into law with only three republican votes. "
First of all I am not a fan of Bush - But lets be logical and intellectually honest here. Otherwise there's no sense in debating with someone who can't see this.
THIS IS A FACT:
No Republican votes are needed for Obama and Congress to shove their programs of spending down our throats. They do not need 1 Republican vote. So how in the world can you blame them?? Obama has a giant majority in Congress and can pass anything he wants. If you can't see this then 1 + 1 = 3
Is Obama's answer to every problem going to be "I inherited this??" His Congress passes the laws and they passed the laws with Bush as well, so they are as much to blame as Bush. Why doesn't anyone see this.
When Obama runs for a 2nd term, what is he going to run on? - The Republican Congress doesn't like him? Give me a break here. Do you think America is this stupid? Does anyone see the logic here? or am I going crazy and all of America is falling for a smooth talker.
By the way - Pgrundy - Thank you for a very thought provoking article
I read the book, pretty though provoking.
Hi! Thank you for expressing the main point, something that has been an interrogation in my mind for many years. I don't know the connection between today's recesssion, that is going to turn around soon, with the much broader subject of jobs disappearing that precedes the recession.
In recession or not, the main point is that jobs as we knew them in this country are gone, I don't know in which proportion, but gone. Things are not done by people anymore, not even by machines that people can use, they are done by robots.
This is the problem no politician is addressing directly. Possibly because this is not the type of problem that you can sit down and think about it rationally and then come up with a solution. You cannot dictate that all computers and robot-like devices disappear in order to give back their jobs to people. It's too late now.
If we envision ourselves human beings and our environment of nature and man-made things, we might realize that we form a type of organism. Changes in an organism do not come from a central brain, they come from the life and adaptative changes of many tissues and types of cells that work in unison but not in conscious accord. I think this problem can be seen from this angle, of us and our natural and man-made environment being an organism that no intelligent scientist, no honest or dishonest politician can direct.
This is a type of big adolescence crisis for this organism of humanity. We are going to get out of it, no doubt. But it would be delusional to expect solutions --in this case, in this crisis-- from institutions or specialized individuals like politicians, CEOs, religious leaders, etc.; the solutions are going to be the result of the collective intelligence, quite unconcious, of our species.
Happily we are individuals too. Those of us who are able will adapt quickly with not great pains. Those of us who are too old or weak or unable will adapt with difficulties. What a great opportunity for the former to help the latter, what a great opportunity.
I am scared, no doubt. For myself, for my descendants. But I am full of hope too and there is one thing I can do, and I am so grateful to know that I can do it: I can pray with all my heart for this transition to be the easiest possible on my beloved fellow beings.
Hi rosario--Thank you for that excellent and thoughful comment. I like you analogy of a crisis of adolescence for mankind and also of people and the world being a living organism. I agree too that there are no political solutions to what is happening; we just have to get through it and see where we are on the other side. Thanks again and all the best to you!
Rosario,
You are absolutely correct. When things get out of hand we need to depend on our individual strengths and resources.
I am also optimistic that the American people will eventually become stronger as a result of these hard times. It is true that our mistakes and failures will make us more resilient in the future, and we will be more able to recognize false prophets, whether they are in government or in big business.
This is really a nice hub. I have seen lots of people that were kicked - out from their beloved jobs due to recession. =(
I know that this will eventually move to progression but I'm hoping that it will happen soon.
How does Rifkin propose funding his grassroots social services for people who are out of work? I haven't read his book but he appears to be an alarmist who tries to predict the future without looking at the past. The fact is, the U.S. has seen worse unemployment, and not during the depression, it was worse in 1983 than it is now. In fact unemployment rates have fluctuated between 4 and 9% since 1948. The peaks and valleys happen every 10 years or so. Everybody seems to loose their memory of the last crises when they're in the current crisis. The fact is, nobody can predict the future, but the same things have happening for the last 100 years, which is a much larger sample size than "As I write this"
Pretend that the U.S. auto industry is the blacksmith industry of 100 years ago. People traveled by carriage, the blacksmith industry was a large part of keeping people moving much like cars today. Every point made about the auto industry could be made about the blacksmith industry. There will be no work for unemployed blacksmiths, what industry will absorb them, the loss of blacksmith and associated carriage jobs will ripple throughout the economy, etc. But with the loss of blacksmiths came the auto industry. If you had tried to describe the enormity of the auto industry to a blacksmith circa 1907 he could not have wrapped his mind around it, and thought you a fool. Yet the Model T came out in 1908 and the rest was history. By the way, people in 1908 were just as unhappy with the lack of meaning in their jobs as they are now. Henry Ford had to pay his workers twice what every other factory was paying just to keep them, the work was so mind numbingly boring.
The point is, you cannot predict what industry is going to appear and what jobs are going to be there in the future. Nobody could have predicted the auto industry and its supporting industries 100 years ago. Nobody could have predicted the airline travel industry 90 years ago. Or the computer industry 60 years ago. Or the aerospace industry 50 years ago. Or the bio-engineering industry 40 years ago, or the cell phone industry 20 years ago. New industries have always appeared while old ones disappear, and people have always hated their jobs. The more things change the more they stay the same.
Hi David--Good points all, thank you for making them. It's true, there's always a dimension that's unknowable. I guess we'll find out how it all goes whether we want to or not. Hopefully you are right. :)
@pgrundy, I still convincing myself that you're wrong but to no avail, every single point that you pointed out were correct. hmmmm... By the way, great hub. Cheers.
Thanks Adam, all the best to you.
No problem, keep at the wise words :)
Pam, the idea that you could graduate high school, go on to college and because you proved that you could sit through class 12-20 hours a week for four years and get a piece of paper and it meant something was all a lie. It's like this mania for licensing people in just about anything nowadays. It creates what we call moral hazard.
To contrast look at your job as a writer. There is no license you can get to call yourself a writer, writers write. That's what they do. It's not something you get as a diploma, although education tends to make one a better writer, it's the act of writing itself that makes you one.
Let's look at a physical therapist, for example. Once upon a time it only took a BSPT to become a physical therapist. Then you needed an MPT and now you need a DPT degree. Does the fact that you now need a doctorate instead of a bachelor's degree significant. Is there something about physical therapy that has changed to require eight years of study? Or is it a way to become what is euphemistically known as "value added" without really adding value?
What about plumbers. Joe the plumber was excoriated in the press for not being licensed as a plumber, but what does licensing have to do with it. Isn't plumbing one of those jobs where experience counts more for education. After all aside from some technical schooling, plumbing doesn't require the educational level of say, a doctorate in physics does.
One of the things licenses do is to restrict the number of contenders in a particular field. Economics 101 tells us that whenever you restrict the supply of something, the price goes up. In this case the wages of the licensee. The second thing requiring a specific type of education does is to allow an end run around the Equal Opportunity Act. Since employers risk being sued if they test for certain skills people need for a position, they use a degree as a fast and dirty fix to the problem. That's one of the reasons we get people with less than stellar problem solving skills at the top of most large companies.
Hi ldt--I've heard that argument plenty.
I'm not sorry I dragged myself though college. I liked it. I think college has value beyond job training or just giving someone a leg up in the job market. In that regard it was more like writing for me.
I also don't miss having a job. I hated my last two jobs.
Beyond that, I don't think we will agree on much in terms of politics or economics. But I like you personally. Thanks for stopping by. :)
Don't get me wrong Pam, I don't regret my education, it has after all, educated me. I just think that people's actions spread louder than their words. You are something when you do it, not when you read about it or think about it, it takes doing. After all I really didn't get a handle on history or economics until I'd been out of school for several years. Education gave me a foundation, I still had to build the library, so to speak.
In any event, you're correct. We are in a period of adjustment and that can be painful and scary. I'm just greatful I have a lot of time ahead of me to prepare and meet these challenges. I mean this could go on as long at the debacle of the 1970's or, heaven forbid, the 1930's. I recently read an article from an economist that says that rather than stagflation of the 1970's, we're likely to see inflation coupled with a depression. The implications of that don't bear too much thinking upon. It's too scary.
Still that's all in the future and we can always choose the right way today. It may happen, it may not, the important thing is to prepare.
Small business is not welcome if it challanges big business.New technology always challanges the old technologies.Have you noticed these oil company commercials lately touting green energy technologies,like solar, wind,and bio technologies.Yet at the end of the commercial they of course are still promoting drilling as one of those green technologies.Which is the furthest from the truth.Oil out of the ground is the least green technology there is.it comes from a time on earth when the atmoshere was not compatible with life that exists now.Growing the fuels you burn makes a lot of sense from an ecological point of view compared to getting it out of the ground from a source that if left there sequesters carbon dioxide and other pollutents that would contribute to global warming.After all,we are wasting much of the fuel that is almost freely available such as grasses and dead wood in our public and private lands and forests .Even large trees that are dead in some cities,which sometimes exist in peoples yards front and back ,that we ignore as possible energy sources.I personaly had three huge Elm trees im my backyard that were infested with Dutch Elm disease.It cost me 200 dollars thirty years ago to have them cut down.I even gave the wood away to the business that cut them down for firewood.Then there are those imfamous California fires ,and others around the country we hear about every so often.
Is my commentary making sense,or not? If there was a public works program that is needed clearing the landscape of much of this dead wood,and creating firewalls for areas where fires are a danger to life and property seems logical.It's a win -win for people who need work and for government protection of life and property.At least some insurance companies would be for this proposal don't you think?
Acutally coal is the least green technology out there. Nuclear is far cleaner and if we could find a way to dispose the byproducts, it would be the greenest tech out there. The only problem with growing your fuel, is that you then have less food to eat. That might not be a good idea right about now. I wrote a hub about it, want to hear it? Here it go: http://tinyurl.com/mrdjp8
As for the work programs, if you look at the numbers from the Depression, they soon enough just became a "pick up your check" kind of deal. At first they did some good. After all the Conservation department still used firewatch and cabins first made during the Depression, but for the most part the wealth spent on those projects was wasted. The worst part is that we could have created a much stronger foundation for recovery by allowing small busineses to thrive. The only way to do that is to loosen restructions on businessnesses and allowing them to compete. Only then will you have a strong economic footing.
Hi ltd--I hear ya. Its going to be rough no matter what any of our opinions are. On the up side, I think it will make people more self-reliant, and that's a very good thing. We've gotten to where we don't DO anything, and now we will have to learn how again. I know I work on that every day--How can I help our household be more self-sufficient? How can I make money without depending on a job? How can I get us what we need without money (there are ways--barter, coops, homegrown, homemade, etc). It won't be boring, that's for sure.
someonewhoknows--You are making perfect sense. Up here heat is getting very expensive no matter whether it's gas or oil, but people are installing stoves that burn compressed sawgrass or wood shavings, or even corn or fruit pits. Michigan is the fruit belt of the Midwest, so fruit pits we got. Last year I thought, wow, why don't we help some of these elderly people and poor people get pellet stoves? You can buy and install one for $1500, and a ton of pellets has been running about $250. Some small homes could get by on a ton for the whole winter. Instead they rush for subsidies in the summer, the subsidies run out, and somebody freezes to death every year, and many more die in house or apartment fires.
Now I know pellet stoves need maintenance and care, and wherever there's fire there is a potential fire hazard, but most of these fires start when people use kerosene heaters or gas grills or even their cooking stoves for heat. They're not pellet stove fires.
I don't know--i think there's so many more sensible things we could easily do if we took the time and thought it through. I totally know what you are saying. The electric company cut down several large trees on our property least year and we kept, split, and stacked all the wood. We have a pellet stove, not a wood stove, but like you we thought, this is wood, we might need it. It's stupid to throw it out. More and more we think like that instead of the older, more wasteful way.
It sounds like you live out in the boonies a bit Pam, I envy you. Do you remember much of the 1970's? I'm curious because I'd like to hear from people who lived through that era, how things were in 1970 and how things were in 1979, I've talked to my parents, but my dad was in the Marines so he was a bit insulated from the economic effects of stagflation becuase he had free base housing, subsidized food via the comissary and PX, etc. I do remember him saying that he stayed in mostly because the economy was bad, but other than that it really didn't effect us all that much. I turned 5 in 1980, so I remember nothing of that decade. I was just wondering what people who lived through it thought.
Hi ltd--Actually we live on the outskirts of the city of Kalamazoo, not really in the country, more of a suburban neighborhood. We have an acre, that's all, but we've managed to do a lot with it and have plans for lots more. I planted two apple trees last year, two pear trees, and we doubled our vegetable garden this year. We installed a pellet stove last summer and quit burning oil, and now we are working on getting our electricity use down. It's possible to become much more self-sufficient than most people think, even close in, but it all takes time and lots of work.
My daughter was born in 1979. I was living in D.C. at the time with my husband of that era, who was an FBI agent. Before that, from 71 to 78, I was working all kinds of odd jobs, mostly waitressing and retail. I remember stagflation well and the bad job market, but I muddled through and even paid my own way through school mostly because rent was cheap (my share of a four bedroom house was $50 a month!), food was free (at work), and I didn't own a car.
Now, I don't know how kids do it. Around here, a one bedroom not-so-hot apartment is around $500 without utilities. Lots of folks are moving back in with relatives, they just can't afford to live on their own in these economic conditions. But in the 70s, as much as people scream about how horrible it was, nothing was expensive except gas. That made a HUGE difference. You didn't need to make lots of money to be independent.
Prices rose, yes. But they started out low. So hamburger went from .59 a pound (for example, I don't remember exactly what it cost but it was around that much) to .89 a pound. That stung but relatively speaking food was still cheap, housing was cheap, education was cheap. Not so much now.
But all prices did rise. A dinner for example cost more in 1979 than a comparable one in 1970, right? Inflation really is a killer when it comes to wealth and how far you can stretch your dollar. I'm sure that in 1970 I could have put myself through school, but in the 1990's I had to take out loans. I wish that I could have afforded to stay at Maryville University in St. Louis, although I was in the business school, all of there programs were top notch.
It's interesting that you should mention how kids are moving back with their parents to help with the bills, much like women entered the workforce in the 1970's to help make ends meet. Sooner or later we'll run out of family members to bring in to help out and then where will we be. Like I said inflation is a beast. That's what most people were screaming about. It seemed like no matter what they did, they just couldn't get ahead.
Also when did things turn around for you? When were you able to start getting ahead and get things like a car and house and stuff? Why do you think you were able to do so?
Things began to turn around for me when I left my parents home at 18 and started working and putting myself through school. The inflation of the 1970s just wasn't that bad. People made a lot of noise about it because no one likes to see prices rise, but the U.S. still had a manufacturing base, and as I said, prices rose from levels that were unthinkablly low by today's standards.
The way the consumer price index is calculated today is very deceptive. I'm sure you know this. The era after Reagan, at least from my own experience was much tougher than the 70s, because wages dropped and the price of necessities--food, housing, medical care--skyrocketed. I bought a house in 81 at 17% interest and could afford it because housing prices were still relatively low. When we were looking for a house two years ago up here we could barely find anything we could afford on two incomes at 7% interest.
It's all relative, and much of how it feels depends on variables that don't really come across in a text. In the 70s working people looked forward to prosperity--they griped about the price of hamburger but jobs paid living wages and most households had at least one person with a good job. The mood of the country wasn't as dark as it is now. I only made $1.75 an hour at my first factory job, but tuition for one class was only $60. Now, at the same institution, it's over $400.
You should ask around though. Other people might remember it differently. I'd never claim to be the definitive voice on that era. I'm just sharing my own perceptions.
Energy costs were starting to go up,and I'm sure you know about what happened in 1979 when the energy crisis happened people were waiting in long lines at the gas stations because of the Iran oil embargo.Inflation was high then I had too pay 12 percent interest on a three year car loan.I lost my job in 1980 because of the recession that started that year.I had a job testing auto switches.Headlight,turn signals ,ajustable seat switches window switches,vacuum switches for the heater controls.Solinoids for the starter ,ignition switches, you name it.When I saw what was happening during the comming decades when the auto companies were going overseas with some of their production and imports were starting to import as well as manufacture more vehicles here in the united states.I could see the writing on the wall long ago.Even Chrysler was bailed out in the early eighties by the government. I couldn't for the life of me figure out why the unions would put up with what was going on since they were losing jobs.But then I can understand the reasoning of the union leadership to some extent saw that the competition from overseas companies were hiring American workers.Still with the exchange rate being what it was they should have known it was only a matter of time before their wages would have to come down to compete with the competition unless something drastic happened to make American vehicles more competitive.Which never happened of course.
It seems people are complacent about things they think they have no control over.The way I see it those at the top are trying to move money into countries that have a younger workforce.Our workforce is getting older now ,and retirement costs are going to be our downfall unless something changes things quick.The only thing I can think of that will help is if the government starts paying for elderly care using their savior the federal reserve with their unlimited resources ,I.E. their printing presses.After all People will be working for their money.Just think of it as another kind of government bailout.Then seeing as how the government seems to be acting like Abbott and Costello (Democrats and republicans)The joke is on us.
Of course that never happened. Wages would have to go down to make cars more competitive and unions would never allow that to happen, which violated on of Henry Ford's fist rules. A manager must be able to adjust his workforce to meed the demand of customers. He was also the guy, mind you, who raised the daily wages of workers from 2 dollars a day to 5 dollars a day. So you don't really need unions to get pay increases.
What I don't understand is why the Big Three continued to sell to Americans, let's face it the US market is saturated with care. A better idea would have been to find out what the Chinese will buy and sell to htem, you can't beat having a billion customers. But with the current nonsene about American cars for American citizens, we're not going to be smart about it.
What about 1970, someone, how were things different cost-wise? When did you first notice the spike in prices? 1972? 1973? 1979?
MINIMUM WAGE went up from about 80 cents an hour arouind 1970 to 1.20 in 1973 to 3,25 between 1979 and the early 1980's stayed there until about the late 1980's or early nineties when it went to 4.25
China didn't start producing a lot of our merchandise until about the mid eighties to early nineties so their people didn't have a lot of money to spend on things like cars especially since they weren't paid hardly anything for what they produced.The difference in the exchange rate was Huge.
Japan was different,their workers made more than china's and they made electronics for us long before china started to.Now China and india and other former third world countries are all catching up with the other industrializzed countries ,so competition is more likely now than it has ever been
That means that we'll have to get more competitive and lower the wages our workers make. One of the more interesting fallacies we make about wages is that as long as production goes up, wages can go down and it doesn't matter. What usually happens is that when production goes up, wages follow. Because there's been an increase in the supply of something, the price falls increasing demand. That's what's wrong with all of this intervention nonsense from the government. They want to keep wages high in the belief that high wages insure full employement. What high wages ensure is inflation and that's going to start ravaging us again soon. Wages have to fall for us to become more competitive. Once we do that and start making things again, wages will go up.
I understand what your saying by supply and demand.The problem is the fact that we are competing with other countries as well as other states within our oum country that have different cost structures.There are some places in the rural united states where the cost of living is lower than other parts of the country.Fresh locally grown Food is fresher and cheaper in the countryside ,than it is in the cities Especially if you add in transportation and middlemen costs.Even organically grown food which costs more will still cost less where you don't have to figure in those added costs.I would think the same goes for manufactured goods.The cost of transporting them to the customers has to be accounted for in the cost.You may say that cost can be averaged out so the cost would be minimized for everyone which is reasonable but they are still there.The biggest problem with our economic system is Interest,especially compound interest costs,and labor costs.Even if the profit motives of the companies and their investors is minimal which is never the case.The only legal motive of a corporation is to make the corporation profitable.Unfortunately this idea has come to mean that not only should it be profitable ,but it should be profitable to the point where no matter what needs to be done moral or not ethical or not ,the stockholder's especially the prefered stockholders should always get an increase in profit year after year.This is not sustainable indefinitely as they would have you believe.Adding Compound interest and fluctuations in interest rates up or down can as well as market conditions in general and do seriously affect the economy.The federal reserve system was promoted by certain interests as being a stablizing influence on the economy.The fact is it never has and never will .The government as well as the economy is controlled by the federal reserve banks and those who own those private banks.The buck stops at the federal reserve not the president,or even the congress.He who controls the money controls the nation,and the world for that matter.When it comes right down to the bottom line the banks that loan out our money have the last word.
Do we think we are getting ahead when we get pay increases to keep up with inflation.Even the unions know that inflation just makes things cost more that's why they have a clause in their contracts that they automatically get an increase in their wages to companste for an increase not only in inflation in general ,but ebven if the minimum wage goes up.The people who get
hurt by the increase in the minimum wage are those who aren't in union jobs and if they get a raise it usually doesen't keep up with inflation.So why all this continual increase in wages and costs ,when in the end we all lose eventually? Just look at the money denominations they use in other countries I understand that in Africa they have a billion dollar note.That's probably worth a billionth of a dollar in our money .Don't be fooled our money is going the way all currencies down the tubes if things don't get better soon.
The biggest problem with our system is that some industries are subsidized at the costs of others. It's strange that in Third World countries real food is less expensive than processed food. Here it's just the opposite.
The different economic conditions like standards of living are not a bad thing. What that means is that different places are better for some sorts of industry and work while other areas are better for other sorts of industry and work. This is the basis for trade. By specializing in what you're good at you maximize your income. You can then use that income to get what you need throgugh trade. Trade makes everyone better off.
You're dead on about the Fed, but think about this. Who appoints the Fed Chairman and do you think the rest of the Board goes against the Chairman? It's a political appointment and the politicians control it. At least some of them do. The Fed was set up the way it was to give us a central bank and cause confusion about what it really was. At the time Americans were dead set against central banking, for reasons we're seeing today, and would not have accepted a Bank of the United States for a third time. So they had to set it up in such a way that it would pass under the radar of most Americans. That's why they chose a public-private entity. But rest assured the public part takes precidence. The private do get some benefits, but the public part controls.
Well I hope it turns out that your right.I for one would like to see a more stable economy.If the economy gets better ,meaning we get a true increase in income ,without the inflation.That would mean a dollar would buy more goods and services than it formally did.However that is highly unlikely ,unless energy costs come down dramatically,which is also unlikely.Seeing how the oil interests like things the way they are.They know even with the push for more energy production,it's not likely that we will overcome the hugh demand that's coming in the near future for gasoline and oil based furtilizer for food production.There is a glimmer of hope though from what I see online.Certain groups are trying to get the world to produce more efficiently using new technologies. Hope is still there.
One of the first ways to ensure a stable currency is to adopt a gold standard. I think Pam mentioned something in one of your discussions about the dollar being backed by oil. In many ways she's right about that. The problem with oil backed dollars is that while oil is a commodity it can be used up. Unlike gold. When Regan and Bush co-opted the Saudis, they began to back the dollar with oil, that's one of the reasons the price of oil is pegged in dollars. It helps give a reference point for the value of a dollar.
The reason central bankers don't like gold is because you can't make more of it. It has to be mined. This keeps inflation in check. You can clip coins and debase a currency then, but then you find that bad money chases out good money. People will use the clipped currency and hoard the good currency. So it's really pointless to clip metal coins. It's funny but over the last century an ounce of gold would buy a good suit in 1900 and today an ounce of gold will buy you a good suit. Even with all the inflation in the twentieth century, gold still retains it's purchasing power.
That's also why the fed had F.D.R. declare a so-called 'Bank Holiday" in 1933 passing a law that required every American to turn in all Minted Gold currency as well as all Unitedstates Gold certificates to be exchanged for Federal Reserve Notes ,which were never backed by Gold.It was claimed that American were hording Gold.How can you horde something that is legally yours? Unless they knew something the general public didn't? I do know that our Federal Government has borrowed money from other countries and that their was a treaty we had with those countries that states that all debts between our countries had to be paid in Gold .That could very well be why we went off the Gold standard .Because of that treaty,as well as the debt our Federal Government officials had to pay.Then there is the commitment made by the private bankers who made up the federal reserve to continue to lend whatever amount our country needed ,as long as the full faith and credit of the people of these Unitedstates paid the interest on the debt.Which we had been doing ever since.Never the pricipal ,but the interest only.Which increased exponentially every year,as it is compounded yearly,just like a mortgage loan on our homes.The amount owed in interest alone is mind boggling.The same goes for the social security fund.We never funded the principal paid out in actual social security payments.We have only been paying the compounded interest on all of the trillions in loans we have borrowed all these years to fund social security. Does this come as any surprise to you?
It wasn't the Fed who ordered FDR to do it, FDR hated private enterprise, he was a Progressive through and through. Cause and effect again. This was also the guy who had the IRS investigate Lindbergh because the questioned the President on his increasingly militant posture towards Japan and Germany.
Actually during the 1920's we gave massive amounts of credit to the British to keep the pound from crumbling. Thery were in a position very much like we're in today. With their progressives in power, they began creating much of the welfare state that exists in Britian today. The began printing more money an skewing the value of the pound. When they went off of the gold standard, that pretty much sounded the death knell of the hands-off economic crowd. So we were in the position of China is today, lending money to the biggest debtor nation in the world. By going off the standard, the Brits basically told us that we were not going to see our money back. Just as we will have to do to the Chinese.
No I'm not surprised. In fact when I think about how Social Security is run, I thnk Ponzi scheme. When benefits are paid out to people and the money comes from people working today, sooner or later that arrangement will fail. It's been able to go on as long as it has because government, which has a monopoly on force, makes people contribute, we don't have a choice. What really gets funny, sad funny not funny funny, is that the American people were told that the government had to save for them because they were not responsible enough to do it themselves. Well they promptly began using Social Security money on their own pet projects, showing the American people what they system was all about, another way to fleece the American people without raising taxes.
By your comments concerning the Federal Reserve I take it you think the Fed takes orders from the president.I don't think so myself.I think the Fed or who ever controls the Fed is likely the Rockerfellers,Rothchilds,and some other superwealthy families around the world.
Take a look at these webpages.Let me know what you think about them.
JP Morgan actually had a major hand in forming the Federal Reserve. Not that people like the Rockefellers or Rothschilds wouldn't benefit from a central bank. The US didn't have much use for central banks. The First Bank of the US caused the Panic of 1819 and the Second Bank of the US was killed by Jackson, which caused the Panic of 1837. It wasn't until the Repbulicans came to power in 1860 that the part of the party that came from the Whigs tried to create another central bank. By this time, most of the country; North, West and South wanted to have anything to do with a central bank. So the governemnt passed the National Banking Act. While not a central bank, the NBA gave government the ability to decide what was a bank and what wasn't. This paved the way for the creation of the Fed in 1913.
Out of curiosity, do you know why bankers like central banks? The answer isn't as sexy as a conspiracy theory, but the answer has the virtue of being simple. And the simplest things are often the truest things.
Bankers can borrow at least ten times what they have on deposit from their customers ,to be able to loan to their own customers or any one else willing to borrow from them.with funds they borrow from the fed.at a premium or going rate.They pay the fed say one and a half percent .Then lend that money out at say 3 percent or more.
Problem is the fed just prints or loans this fiat money,or on the full faith and credit of the people.Slavery!
Sure but do you understand the elasticity of money? Back when we used gold coins for transactions the king would sometimes confiscate all the money in the land. His mint would then shave a bit off the coin. When he started circulating the coins, they would circulate at their uncut value. Soon enough people would get wise and the currency would lose value or devalue. One of the main reasons a king would do this was to pay for war. He'd get the benefit of the old value of currency before it devalued, so it was in his interest to devalue his coinage. Of course that led to inflation and that could lead to insurrection, so he couldn't do it too much.
Paper money acts the same way. But since you can print it rather than have to mine it, mint it and collect it from your people, it's much easier to increase the supply of money. Bankers like the Fed because they get the first shot at the new money when it circulates at its old value. Not only that, since the Fed manipulates interest rates they can get money at less of a cost than anyone else. It adds a percentage point or two most times, but when you're talking high volumes of money, that can add up quick.
Since they use fractional reserve banking, you're correct, they can create then times the money they get from the Fed to originate loans from. That's why the value of the dollar has lost some 95% of it's value since the inception of the Fed. It's a system set up by bankers for bankers. The funniest part of the whole system is that bankers, over time, have been losing as much wealth as everyone else. It's been at a slower rate because they can make up the losses before anyone else, but guys like JP Morgan benefited the most and screwed their descendants.
A major tenet of Libertarianism seems to be this return to the gold standard. It's a red herring, a canard. I think it's totally off base, even though I understand the surface logic and the emotional appeal. There's nothing wrong with fiat money if the country issuing it is strong. It isn't fiat money that caused this crash, it's the fact that the U.S is in decline and has been since deindustrialization.
You can only have money backed by your reputation if you have a reputation. We used to be the world's factory. Now we are the world's financial industry call center and we're losing that to the Phillipines and India.
At some point loss of industry becomes a matter of national security. Right now we even outsource the building of much of our weaponry to China. How crazy is that? Protectionism will knock us down even farther but at some point we will need some form of it or accept a dangerous vulnerabilty on the world stage. No country will have to attack us, they'll just cut off our supply lines and we're done.
So either way we lose, and this whole busines of gold backing money, I think it's a fetish. It has nothing to do with the real problems. Our biggest problem is we deregulated banking and ditched industry and now all we do is create bubbles and move money around. I'm not going to say I'm pals with Bernanke--I understand why people hate the Fed--but again, I think it's a canard to some degree. Audit the Fed, lynch the Fed, whatever...I don't care. But the Fed is not the problem, it's just a convenient boogeyman.
The problem is, the U.S. is in decline and there's not a lot we can do, plus, much of what we are doing is making it worse.
Our problems started with deregulation of the financial industry, but really, they started way before that, with globalization and the loss of manufacturing. Things change. Globalization can't be stopped IMO and ultimatley it will be for the best, but in the shorter run it will be very hard and our financial system will likely crash and burn again, because it's horribly unstable at this point and all these tweaks and shots of money and sleight of hand tricks are like slapping bandaides on a hemmorhage.
People keep talking like our money needs a fix. No, it's the U.S. itself, we spend more than we make and we no longer make much. That's a problem--especially when you have a fiat money system-- and there isn't an easy solution to it, but people want one. So the boogeymen are everywhere now.
I'm also weary of the FDR bashing. This has been going on since I was a kid. Was FDR an saint or a scoundrel? I listened to that fight every year at Thanksgiving dinner. It's old, old, old. FDR saved capitalism. Without his evil socialist actions, we would have had revolution. We'd probably be a communist country and we'd have none of these problems, we'd have different horrible problems. It's just rich, to my mind, watching supply side types bash FDR. They're still around to bash FDR because of FDR.
Also--I heard a radio program yesterday on BBC news about some British banks that are now issuing their own local currency. That happened on the gold standard and we may yet see it here, whatever kind of 'official' money we keep or lose. I think we'll see a period of significant confusion and poverty before things settle out. The history of banking is filled with examples of competing currencies--on the gold standard off the gold standard--you'd get a note from one bank, go on your trip, take your note to the next bank and they'd refuse it or give you less than the gold you had on tap to start with--currency wars. So again, it's not like, go back to the gold standard, happy days are here again. But it's an appealing fantasy.
The British are in much worse position than we are, however we are headed there if we don't stop the spending. Daniel Hannan from the British Parliament says about the spending:"You have to be a banker or a politician to think like that" on this youtube video:
Pam, the reason I like the gold standard is because it's sooo much harder to manipulate the currency. Manipulating the currency keeps businesspeople from being able to forecast the future of their business. This increases the chance that you'll make a mistake. Make too many mistakes and you go out of business. Historically gold has kept it's value and not lost it. In 1900 you could use an ounce of gold to buy a good suit. Today with gold at around $900 dollars an ounce you can still buy a good suit. That's even though we've had two world wars, the Great Depression, stagflation, stock boom, housing boom and now the Great Bubble Burst. Gold has kept it's value through all of that. If you used that as a basis for money, you could more accurately forecast the future in your business and make less mistakes, thus you'd stay in business longer.
FDR hated capitalism. He wanted to destroy the capitalist class in this country. Honestly I don't hate the guy that much, what I really hate is the mythology that has grown up around him. His Treasury Secretary in 1937 wrote in his diary that they've tried every trick in the book to try to end the depression and none of it worked. The US was much worse off in 1937 than in 1932. Private in vestment is the only thing that can create a sustainable company. People, after all, want their money back and will be less likely to invest in companies that do stupid things. Government is Other People's Money and you just don't treat OPM money the same as you do your own.
The reason we don't make anything anymore is because the American worker is not competitive with workers around the world anymore. In a way that's good, the world as a whole is getting more educated, standard of living going up etc. We had it too easy for too long and we got lazy. Instead of getting smarter and working harder, we stuck our head in the sand while the world got smarter and better. That's why we're in decline.
British banks are issuing their own currency because they can be sure what the value of their currency is as opposed to the British pound. I think we're heeded for this more and more. Currency is only worth something if that currency has value. The problem with fiat currency is that sooner or later the temptation to print more money becomes unbearable. Short term returns takes the place of long term planning. Basically it becomes a game of let's get as much of a payout as fast as we can because it's all going to come down on our heads anyway.
Most of the bank note problem in the last century was due to banks printing more notes than they had reserves to cover those notes. That's where the term fractional reserve banking comes from. If you want ethical bankers, they have to have full reserves and they then make money charging storage fees to hold money for people. Think of it this way. If you use a monthly storage facility, would you allow them to farm out your stuff for the month and make extra money off those rents? Why is money any different? A money warehouse should only be concerned with keeping your money safe for your use. Nothing else. Now if they want to create a general fund to originate loans and get people to put money into that fund, that's different. It then becomes your choice and you assume the risk.
Still you're right we're in the midst of figuring out what currency is better than fiat. Those are always tumultuous times for anyone. Still I'd invest in gold. You won't be sorry.
Headstrong Farm says:
6 months ago
I'm coming to the same conclusion more and more every single day. I can't really see working a job where I can't see what I've done. It's a very frustrating thing as I love working with my hands and building/fixing things. Great Hub. Thank you.