US workers struggle to cope in new economic reality

[UpInArms]

http://today.reuters.com/news/newsArticle.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2005-08-04T175819Z_01_N04631538_RTRIDST_0_PICKS-BIZECONOMY-MANUFACTURING-DC.XML

ST. LOUIS (Reuters) - Laid off from an auto factory assembly line two weeks before Christmas, Gary Asnell is still jobless and doesn't care to hear about the virtues of retraining as he struggles to keep a roof over his family's head.

"They say it's a great opportunity to go back to school. But I've got to juggle to find a job to pay the bills, make the house payments and feed the children," said Asnell, a 44-year-old father of three.

In the face of rabid global competition and outsourcing of work to cheap-labor countries like China, nearly three million American manufacturing jobs have been lost since 2000.

Those at the sharp end of this process now often face serious pay cuts or retraining to qualify for jobs in industries that have vacancies which may still not pay as much as they were making before.

<snip>

But among people dealing directly with the fallout of this upheaval in the U.S. industrial base, the truth for older workers is that their standards of living may never recover.

<snip>

Still for those who see little prospect of making such a transition, there is a powerful sense of abandonment and anger at a culture that has chewed them up and spat them out.

...more...

[Carolab]

1. Yeah, it's a big bunch of dominoes falling out there....

What will go next?

[Imagevision]

112. Bush has 3 more years left - things can only get worse and this

is coming from an exceptionally optimistic person.

[oneighty]

2. Pity the forties group

job hunting. Any skills and abilities will be grossly under compensated because that is the way it is and is gonna be. Young people should not be saying "Lucky me" your turn is coming.

180

[mcscajun]

27. Forties, hell...take a look at the fifty folks.

We're on the scrap heap, metaphorically speaking.

Not impossible to find work, but very difficult. Unspoken assumptions about how long we'll be around, whether we'll be comfortable working for younger managers, couched in phrases like "we're looking for energetic (read Young) highly motivated (will work incredibly long hours) with diverse skill sets (every tech skill known to man) to join our team (you'll have no authority and you'll work for peanuts, and be grateful for 'em.)"

[Daphne08]

34. Yes, I'm about to go back to work

and am too old and tired to return to teaching high school.

The last time I looked for work outside the teaching field, I was 45 and it was very discouraging. :(

[Imagevision]

107. Can the hike in gas be tax deductable for costs incurred going to work?

[hollowdweller]

122. Hey! There's a good thing for the Dems to push!

[oneighty]

39. You are right about that

I said forties because I had experience job hunting in my forties. And yes the older one gets the worse it gets.

180

[Media_Lies_Daily]

62. I'm in the "fifty" group, and I've exhausted all possible opportunities...

...where I currently live. In fact, I recently thought I had joined a legitimate company involved in selling smoke and heat alarms and paying their sales force a salary. It turns out they were just milking us for as many names as possible for their personal list of leads. It was a con game. I should have known better, but sometimes desperation causes people to take chances.

Yep..."scrap heap" describes exactly what I'm lying under these days.

I'm now looking at several Internet-based businesses...I've tried enough of them at this point to feel more comfortable in that environment than I ever will again working for a corporate structure.

[leftofthedial]

111. in two years (just about 200 resumes)

I've not had one in-person interview.

[Okiesoldier]

83. Amen

I am 49 and living from paycheck to paycheck thanks to Bush*. I was laid off after 9/11, which I say could have been prevented, but think PNAC got its way. The jobs that are out there are lower pay, less benefits, when ya find one. I was off work 9 months, using credit cards to live on and now I am barely able to eat or have money to buy gas to go to work.
So thanks Bush*, I know you will have a place in Hell ready for you. You lieing sack of cheney!

[SlavesandBulldozers]

90. hang in there man.

nt

[HockeyMom]

3. Job Trends

In looking for a job this is what I am finding. Do you want a full time job WITHOUT Benefits? Or are you willing to take a Part Time Job WITH Benefits?

Talk about being caught between a rock and a hard place.

[okieinpain]

5. a couple I know recently both quit there jobs, and became real

estate brokers. I'm beginning to believe that having your own business is going to be the only way to survive.

[pitohui]

20. having yr own biz means no health insurance in my state

i don't call that surviving, when you get sick you lose everything

people in their 40s and 50s can't get affordable health insurance

my mother is a realtor

the field is overcrowded, most people fail and actually lose $$$, if you don't have a contractor who will give you a condo building or neighborhood to represent, i don't recommend

leave it to the professionals

[okieinpain]

56. I think that's what they are calling themselves. they have small

children so I can't imagine them doing it without some type of insurance.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

64. Oh, really? There are tons of us out here with small children and no....

...health insurance.

[okieinpain]

109. I don't think they would do it on purpose. the husband was working

for the same company I do, so if they are now without insurance, which I don't see it would have been voluntary.

[MountainLaurel]

57. Part-time jobs with bennies?

Where are you finding this mythical creature?

This is becoming a huge controversy in the library world: There's all this talk at the meta-level about this probably shortage of librarians in future years, yet many jobseekers report that libraries are splitting open positions into multiple part-time slots. (And, they're hiring paraprofessionals for tasks that have normally been done by Masters-degree-holding librarians, but that's another issue.)

[xxqqqzme]

61. I was disabled when I was 47.

Even though, I was @ the top of my career, I knew no one was going 2 hire a 47 yr old paralegal who could only use one hand on a computer keyboard.

[hollowdweller]

124. Disability will fill the gap as the retirement age gets older

Lots of people won't make it to 70 before health forces retirement. For them disability will be it. Fastest growing part of Social Security is the SSDI and SSI parts.

[Orion The Hunter]

4. Sadly as I see this news...

All I can think is, out of those who are hurting financially or medically with no health insurance, how many of them voted for the Republicans?

[Upfront]

6. How Many

Now get it?

[PunkPop]

7. Actually

Clinton was one of the biggest "free trade" cheerleaders around. That's when outsourcing started picking up steam. Of course, it's gone into overdrive under chimpie.

[Dogmudgeon]

13. Clinton also pushed to create jobs

And was largely successful at it.

Clinton wanted a growing economy, and world-wide; Bush wants a static, or contracting, economy. A growing economy is optimistic and can deal with "free" trade; a contracting economy can't deal with change at all. It is difficult to control people in a growing economy; in a contracting one, it is "necessary".

These are two fundamentally opposite philosophies of leadership and statecraft. It also explains why Clinton could mouth so many conservative mantras and still be so progressive. Clinton is still beloved by millions of Americans and non-Americans alike, and will be for years to come. On the other hand, Bush will be hated for a long, long time.

--p!

[MadHound]

55. Yet, just like the man who replaced him,

Many of the jobs created in Clinton's boom-boom economy were low paying McJobs. Many, many blue collar workers have been suffering for a long time. After having their good paying blue collar job outsourced in the ninties, they retrained for the next big thing, high tech jobs. Meanwhile, they got to watch as Clinton began outsourcing those in the late ninties, and Bush completing the damage in the '00s.

Both men were reading from the same corporate playbook friend.

[Megahurtz]

59. Yeah, BAD MOVE on his part. n/t

[newswolf56]

77. The class betrayals implicit in many of Clinton's policies --

zealous support for free trade, further destruction of the New Deal safety net, opposition to the private ownership of firearms -- all this prompted many "lifelong" Democrats to vote Republican ("the GOPorkers won't take my guns, and there's otherwise no difference") and it prompted many many more people to abandon the political process in despair. In fact if there were truly adequate polling, I think we'd learn that's also what happened to the widely heralded "youth vote" in 2004: yes it promised much, but on second thought concluded "why bother."

[mbperrin]

8. NO NO NO! Check the Kool-Aid!! Millions of jobs

have been CREATED by * and things couldn't be better!!!


Right? :crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy::crazy:

[Robert Oak]

9. retraining: insult to injury

Firstly, we've been there, done that. Remember all of those people who
retrained to do computer work and get with the "skills of tomorrow"?

Guess what, those jobs are offshore outsourced.

You cannot "retrain" someone with a Masters degree in community college, it's bogus.

This is just another red herring BS propaganda crap to justify this massive labor arbitrage they are putting the American people in.

[EVDebs]

21. It's more overconcentrating wealth

Kevin Phillip's Wealth and Democracy shows this as a final stage in ecomomic empires. The wealthiest 1% clean up, for awhile, and then the countries slide downhill...taking everyone else with them.

[Robert Oak]

37. one of the reasons for the great depression

wealth disparity.

I just put this book on hold at the library, thx EVDebs I haven't read this and want to check this one out.

Also, this story is now on DU front page in a separate thread.

[shrike]

43. You got it

All those Detroit autoworkers, the ones no one had any sympathy for because they sucked ... a lot of them trained for CAD (Computer Assisted Drawing/Design.) Guess where those jobs are?

[Imagevision]

113. plus the 20,000 getting cut in Detroit next year.

[Megahurtz]

131. True, this "retraining" buzzword is

just a crock of bullshit they're trying to feed us.:grr:

[newswolf56]

10. Three angry comments and a hopeful question:

(1)-Note this statement, which is pure BS, a flat-out corporate-media lie: "Officials from President Bush on down somberly acknowledge the process of globalization is sometimes painful and demands a national effort to improve education and skill development." The truth is that in public Bush doesn't give a damn -- he shrugs the crisis off, he venomously opposes any federal funding for retraining or jobs programs, he babbles about how wonderful the marketplace is, and he fanatically holds to the line that "market forces" will eventually "stabilize" the U.S. economy. In private, it's much worse: Bush is obscenely gleeful, as are all his cronies whether in the administration or out: more money for their fat-cat-plutocrat selves, far less money for us the workers, poverty and the fear of poverty as an ever more vicious flail with which to beat us into a frantic rat race and keep us ever more divided from ourselves.

(2)-What is happening is precisely what Marx predicted 150 years ago: the ultimate, irrevocable division of all capitalist society into two classes: a tiny, ever-wealthier, ever-more-powerful, ever-more-ruthless oligarchy, and all the rest of us -- ever more impoverished, ever more oppressed, ever more terrified. Which makes Marx again relevant -- in fact more relevant now than at any time in history. The question is the viability of the U.S. Left: plagued by ruinous factionalism, dumbed down by corporate-run public schools and kept in ignorance by corporate media, further crippled by a vicious and self-defeating anti-intellectuality that is the bitter legacy of its bourgeois (and often therefore reactionary) origins, can the U.S. Left find the clarity and will to build on the double foundation of Marx and the U.S. Constitution? More to the point, can the U.S. Left evolve a genuinely radical, genuinely humanitarian political analysis based on the now-undeniable reality of class warfare? Can it pose a real alternative to the metastasizing oligarchic fascism that is the essence of both Republican ideology and DLC collaborationism?

(3)-The probability, of course, is that -- even if the U.S. Left as it now exists is able to transform itself (which I profoundly doubt) -- the corporate media will promptly strangle any effort to counteract the fascist onslaught. Note the fate of Howard Dean, who has attempted no such new analysis at all but merely tries to point out today's political and economic realities: despite the fact he speaks for an ever-growing majority of true Democrats, he is already effectively marginalized. But the very means Dean uses best to get out his message -- the Internet -- is perfectly suited to the development and dissemination of a new analysis based on a hybrid of Marx and American liberty: not "dictatorship of the proletariat" but "constitutional governance by the proletariat" -- i.e., a New Deal. Another vastly promising constituency is the union breakaway movement, workers who are themselves acutely aware of the malicious consolidation of oligarchic wealth and plutocratic power. Maybe -- especially with the labor movement once again aboil -- there truly is hope.

QUESTION: What about DU as the center of a discussion group dedicated to finding the new political analysis that is now so desperately needed? I have no idea of the protocols involved here, and if my question metaphorically steps on someone's proverbial toes, my apology: that is surely not my intent. I am merely raising the question -- and saying that I would leap to participate were such a DU group to evolve.

[geckosfeet]

11. I am not intending to speak for the management, but I think thats

what DU is here for. There are a lot of specialized forums and if one does not fill your bill,,, maybe they can fire one up for you.

In reference to observation #2: Once the concentration of wealth reaches a singular point or several marginally networked points, won't the economy simply sputter, stall and choke? How can an economy survive with a single wealth concentration? It ceases to be an economy. I am not sure what you would call it but its an entity other than an economy as we know them.

Lets also assume that liberals and the left are intelligent enough to survive independently of the singular wealth points. In fact, lets assume that the singular wealth points are rejected and ignored as irrelevant , corrupt and something to avoid as much as possible. It seems to me that the singular points of wealth would strive to be inaccessible. That seems to be a fundamental tenet of the super rich: keep the cash resources away from everyone else.

[newswolf56]

14. Today is totally different. The "sputter, stall and choke" paradigm...

worked in the past because (1) economic reality encouraged the oligarchy to allow the betterment of American workers and (2) political reality -- the threat of Communist revolution backed by the Red Army and the peerless Soviet intelligence apparatus -- compelled it: i.e., the original New Deal. (We forget what a huge debt we owe the Soviets for imposing the fear that forced enactment of the New Deal reforms here at home; it is no coincidence that the death of the U.S.S.R. was also the death of any capitalist pretense at humanitarianism.)

Hence today is indeed very different. The bottom line of globalization is (and always has been) reducing the American worker (and eventually the European worker too) to the status of obsolete machinery -- flung in a Dumpster or hauled to the dump and abandoned. Thanks to outsourcing, the American worker is no longer essential -- which means in truth that the American economy has already been reduced to the status of a Third World economy. Note in this context the exact parallel between the burgeoning U.S. oligarchy and all Third World or banana-republic oligarchies: the plutocrats control such a huge chunk of their national wealth, they are insulated from any and all economic disaster. They remain smug, snug and obscenely comfortable regardless of how many people are starving to death in the streets or freezing to death in unheated homeless camps. Like it or not, that is the new (and steadily worsening) paradigm of America -- and no matter how much the economy may seem to "sputter, stall and choke," the plutocrats simply don't care -- as long as the proletariat can be kept from successful rebellion. Think of the new United States as akin to some fascist dictatorship in Latin America -- with the Christofascist mob as the recruiting ground for the new death squads -- and you have the new national paradigm in all its horrific detail.

In this context, the DLC claim of "renewing the American Dream" is simply more collaborationist propaganda intended to avert the public's eyes from the fact the American dream is not only dead but forever beyond resurrection. Hence the desperate need for a new analysis: the fact the very survival of most Americans now depends on recognition of both the need for forcible redistribution of wealth (a la the original New Deal but on a much more radical basis), and the historical mandate the redistribution be accomplished without abolishing constitutional governance -- as the Soviet Union proved, totalitarianism is eventually self-defeating, even when it is imposed for the most humanitarian of motives. (Bush -- not only NOT an idiot but the most diabolically cunning tyrant in American history -- clearly sees the class-war that is coming. Which is precisely why he is packing the Supreme Court with fascist tools -- justices chosen specifically on how zealously they will protect the oligarchy {including allowing the suspension of Constitutional rights to suppress labor unrest or economic protest}.) Once again, the new relevance of Marx and Marxism: not as an endpoint -- the great Soviet error -- but as a beginning.

[geckosfeet]

47. Not sure what you mean by "totally different". To me, that seems a

convenient generalization that serves to frighten and confuse. There is some political history, but it is not economic reality that encourages self and cultural improvement. It is the human spirit and the desire to grow and survive. We do so within the framework of our cultural confines, and that includes our economic systems.

Your points about the Red Army, the Soviets, the New Deal reforms and the current Christofascist mobs, point up that cultural and economic trends and perspectives come and go but that humanity (at least thus far) survives.

I do agree with your point regarding the class struggle and coming conflict. But I disagree that it is fundamentally about a re-distribution of wealth. That again is the canard of the corporate elite. The struggle is about freedom and power and control. Always has been, always will be.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

65. How sadly and utterly naive.

[geckosfeet]

76. Would you mind elaborating a bit? nt

[newswolf56]

69. "Totally different" because, as never before, class warfare is now...

undeniably the biggest part of the U.S. socioeconomic equation: the oligarchy has declared all-out war on America's workers not only by outsourcing and downsizing but by methodically destroying the New Deal safety net. In the past -- as when striking textile workers were machine-gunned in the streets of Boston or when hundreds were killed in the Coal Creek War -- the atrocities could be blamed on a specific industry, and America could therefore continue its one monumental lie: that of a "classless," equal-opportunity society. But the economic realities of today not only expose that lie and its liars; these same realities are so ever-more grotesque, they make it impossible for all but the hopelessly deluded (or the viciously reactionary) to deny what is happening.

There is another total, 180-degree difference too. While the Great Depression certainly awakened many Americans to economic reality, there was also (from 1932 onward) a strong sense that the government (especially in the person of FDR) was doing everything possible to restrict the greed of the oligarchy and thereby -- via the redistribution of wealth (which is precisely what the New Deal was about) -- alleviate the suffering. Americans thus took heart and became hopeful. Today the conditions are the diametrical opposite: a government and its president brazenly aligned with the oligarchy and openly, maliciously hostile to social services (unless the services can be turned into additional profit-centers for the oligarchy a la the Medicare prescription drug-lord benefit); a Democratic Party itself solidly aligned with the oligarchy via the Democratic Leadership Council and therefore utterly devoid of genuine radical leadership; the few radicals (like Howard Dean) marginalized by corporate media and DLC intrigue. Bottom line, the total betrayal of the American worker. In other words, the only choice we voters have is which sort of slave-master we elect over us: more savage (Republican) or euphemistical but ultimately just as savage (Democratic). Factor in the petroleum-price crisis -- as terminal a crisis as any human economy has ever faced -- and you have a time unlike any other period in U.S. history: absolutely NO rational reason to believe the economy will EVER again improve (that is, without radical intervention), and -- increasingly -- not one scintilla of hope among the ever-growing ranks of the dispossessed and ever-more-desperately impoverished workers.

A third radical (i.e. total) difference is the growing awareness of ALL workers -- blue-collar, white-collar, pink-collar, professional, skilled, unskilled, service employee, whatever -- of the infinitely greedy malignance that is intrinsic to capitalism. We are realizing that, in the eyes of the oligarchy, we were NEVER anything but throw-away personnel, "human capital" to be exploited, spent and discarded at will, exactly as if we were machines. Again, the common denominator here is utter hopelessness: the death of the American dream, never again to be resurrected. The obvious answer is a revitalized labor movement, but frankly I believe the U.S. workforce is so methodically oppressed -- so incurably dumbed-down -- that such a notion is probably as much pie-in-the-sky as the idiotic belief gasoline and fuel oil will ever again be affordable to lower-income Americans.

As to the real-world relationship between "economic reality" and "self and cultural improvement," I suggest you go directly to the source: ask any former college student whose education has been terminated by dwindling loans or grants and is now forced to contemplate spending the remainder of life in some bottomlessly boring minimum wage non-union McJob -- that or military enlistment, which at least promises occasional excitement. And in the military, you might even get the chance to go back to school; you also get lots of time to read: some of the best read people I've ever known were senior non-coms in the old Vietnam-Era/Cold-War army. But the McJob world is utterly deadly to "self and cultural improvement." You don't have the time or energy for poetry and art or even comic books when your feet scream and your brains are benumbed after enduring a seemingly endless 10-hour day in some fast-food sweatshop. The implicit cruelty and waste are shameful and without precedent: the U.S. is the only industrialized nation in the world that determines one's suitability for higher education solely on the basis of one's ability to pay. That's why we have bright but uneducated youth squandering their lives in prison even as we have stupid but over-educated politicians and bureaucrats running our lives and country for the plutocrats who own both. I don't know about where you live, but down here below the salt, where I live, "economic reality" is in fact the ONLY key to "self and cultural improvement": without adequate income and the time that income buys, "self and cultural improvement" is impossible -- that is, unless you are fortunate enough to be a working intellectual, in which case "self and cultural improvement" are merely part of your job description. But that's an aside. The point here is that in the new America, no amount of erudition is sufficient to guarantee you protection from the ultimate horrors of outsourcing, downsizing and homelessness. Gary Snyder said it best in Myths and Texts: "The book's in the crappier/ they're up to the part on Ethics now..."

[geckosfeet]

78. Ok, ok. You have a historical framework that I accept at

face value as my knowledge of national economic history is quite poor. My perspective is more from street level.

I recall during the Nixon and Regan presidencies, having the realization that labor was being transformed into a commodity and was being stripped of all humanity. Indeed, after WWII is when it began. Anyway, it became clear to me that the corporate entities (my word for oligarchy) did not care on whit about the people that they enslaved. And yes of course they sought the support, legitimization and complicity of the political process by buying it outright. This process was about gaining more control and power over peoples lives. Its about being able to extract work and labor for the lowest possible cost. But it goes beyond that.

Its not only education that this country has put up for the highest bidder. (Although I do believe that education/learning is not a function of money, but you can buy and MBA from Harvard if you want to.) The political process, your security, gas for your car, your health and indeed your very life if you are forced to serve in the military or you are a target of aggression, are all available subject to your ability to pay.

That puts us all on the treadmill,,, competing with eachother for a tighter finger hold, crawling up the ladder another inch, for another buck or two or another meal. Thats exactly what the corporate entities want, because it distracts us from their power grabs and produces a disorganized populace that is not able to effectively challenge them.

So for me the question has become is that a game that I want to play? Do I want to scramble over you, the guy next door, and everyone else for another raise, more food, gas for my car ? Well no, of course not. And who would? Hmm,, well maybe some folks,, but not me. I know now that I don't need to grovel for the corporate entities to make a living, although for a long time I did. I now know how to make a living for myself. Indeed, I can survive on my own.

No its not easy and takes a realignment of the values and "realities" that have been drummed into our heads since infancy. But I would never go back to working for the corporate entities again. Thats for you young lions to take on. I wish you luck. When you're ready to take them down let me know!

[Megahurtz]

63. Good Posts. n/t

[Zorra]

18. "How can an economy survive with a single wealth concentration?"

It reverts back to an old system that (in Europe) was known as "Feudalism", which is characterized by a political, social and "economic" system based on vassalage, which is essentially the wealthy controlling and exploiting the poor, often keeping them in some form of ultra-dependent state such as in slavery or in indentured servitude.

I'd say that we are heading toward some twisted manifestation of 21st century feudalism unless we effectively revolt in some manner, and very soon.

[Marthe48]

23. and reality shows are preparing our heads to sell our bodies

how much $$$ would it take to sell some aspect of your self-respect? from eating a bug to starring in a porn movie, we're getting set up to think that we all have a price. And take away our financial freedom by taking away our jobs, our savings, our prospects, what is not for sale to put food on the table?

[lolly]

94. Reality Shows=Dance Marathons

Anybody ever see "They Shoot Horses, Don't They?"

Dance marathons are sort of romanticized as vaguely "kooky" and fun now, but they were vicious, cut-throat spectacles much like reality shows.

Desperate people subjected themselves to humiliation, degradation, and pain in hopes of being the one couple to survive and get a small windfall.

Everybody else went home empty handed after all their suffering.

Sort of a microcosm of the ideal Republican economy.

[barb162]

97. good connection

And the reality shows are sicker than that movie

[raccoon]

105. Great post. I saw that movie.

I never thought of reality shows being like the dance marathons, but they are.

[Donailin]

24. September 24th

Washington DC
http://unitedforpeace.org/article.php?list=type&type=91
Should be mandatory assignment for all DU activists and everyone should enlist at least three others to go.

It IS that kind of emergency.

On edit, even though the issue is narrow, the organization of a half million people or more is necessary to mobilize for subsequent protests.

[Marthe48]

28. I'd love to join in

but I care for my mom, who is almost bedridden and who lives with us. The timing of this whole lousy deal seems to take advantage of the situation our generation is in now -- when we are caring for older loved ones which makes it pretty hard to do anything else.

[kestrel91316]

36. Yeah, but this time the serfs have guns.

[shrike]

49. A wealthy man I know made a comment about "future revolution"

He believes there will be an armed revolt in this country, as do his friends. The erosion of the middle class erodes a stable society, he agrees, and he is deeply worried about Bush's policies.

"I used to believe America was the best country in the world to live in," he said. "Now I'm not so sure."

[reprobate]

54. That is one smart man.

And Robert Reich agrees. He says that at some point in the concentration of wealth there will come a snapping point. Isn't that what the wealthy man you know meant?

[shrike]

85. Basically, yes

Plus there are other factors: the cost of energy, the Iraq War, the threats of using military force elsewhere, yes.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

66. My 85-yr-old Dad's not wealthy, but he has stated the exact same thing....

...since the NeoCons seized power in December 2000. He believes that we are very quickly heading toward a "snapping point" that will be brought about by some terrible domestic event that will result in the deaths of a lot of Americans.

That event may have already taken place...but it will take a majority of American people to believe that the NeoCons were responsible for 911. In the meantime, what I call the "misery quotient" has been rising daily among those of us who find themselves on the short end of the stick.

At what point will we collectively decide that enough is enough? What future event will push us completely, and irrevocably, over the edge?

[barb162]

96. Did he give you any examples of what he meant

like another 9-11?

[barb162]

98. Yeah, I don't know how you have stability without a strong

middle. I don't think you can

[Old sixties guy]

117. Wishful thinking on your friend's part

because in no way is the working class I am a part of even slightly thinking about"armed revolt"The ARE very concerned about paying the huge mortgage on their new Bay Area home in the burbs and filling up that SUV with gas!
When I was in college I hung out with a lot of SDS people who extolled the working class as the vanguard of the revolution.Ya know what?I am IN that working class while the vast majority of them went into academia or the professions and making quite a bit more money than working class me.
No regrets,really.I have made a great diverse group of friends from all over the world.Most of my former cohorts live in the exclusive areas they used to condemn as"white racist"
Life to me has three main components-irony,alienation and absurdity.With special emphasis on absurdity!

[shrike]

118. Well, I wouldn't exactly call it wishful thinking

More like growing, disquieting fear.

[lostinacause]

30. Regarding point 1

There is some basis for the "pro market" points listed. It can be expected that the economy will stabilize and reallocate workers. There is of course the question of what it will stabilize to. The doom and gloom theories generally exaggerate the problem and don't take into account the reallocation of labour and many other things. There is of course the opportunity for well placed intervention; In my opinion mostly in education/skill development and in infrastructure/information transfer. If both of these are done effectively there is no reason why the standard of living can't increase.

[lostinacause]

31. Regarding point 2:

While the concentration of wealth has increased lately, I don’t think it is to a point where it would be worth while doing what Marx suggested; namely a violent revolution. Seeing as you obviously have access to a computer and the time to make these posts you likely have the resources to food and house yourself. Saying that Marx is more relevant now then any time in history is an exaggeration especially given the conditions that brought out the ideology. Those who believe that communism offers salvation from oppression have forgotten the lessons learned from failed attempts in the past. Power gaps get filled and when they do it is rarely by a nice leader that cares for the people. Generally people who are ruthless rise to the ranks as a nicer candidate would do the same type of things to get power.

[newswolf56]

38. Do not put criminally seditious words in my mouth. Note what I said:

not "violent revolution" (your words) but 'a new analysis based on a hybrid of Marx and American liberty: not "dictatorship of the proletariat" but "constitutional governance by the proletariat" -- i.e., a New Deal' (#10:3). '(C)an the U.S. Left find the clarity and will to build on the double foundation of Marx and the U.S. Constitution' (#10:2)? Plus, 'Hence the desperate need for a new analysis: the fact the very survival of most Americans now depends on recognition of both the need for forcible redistribution of wealth (a la the original New Deal but on a much more radical basis), and the historical mandate the redistribution be accomplished without abolishing constitutional governance -- as the Soviet Union proved, totalitarianism is eventually self-defeating, even when it is imposed for the most humanitarian of motives' (#14).

What is useful is the Marxist analysis of class struggle; what has the potential to bring Marxist humanitarianism to fruition WITHOUT violence or tyranny is the U.S. Constitution -- the most radical political document in human history. Pure Marxism is probably impossible, but a modified Marxism is essential to a humanitarian society -- the diametrical opposite of the unspeakably vicious capitalist horror that is now manifesting itself in the U.S. Hence the new and unprecedented relevance of Marx: only class-struggle explains what is now happening. With constitutional governance plus Marxist analysis, we have precisely the hybrid that forged the New Deal. It is this hybrid that can liberate us again, are we but perceptive enough to (A) develop the proper analysis and (B) elect the correct representatives. The ultimate question is therefore whether the oligarchy will allow us to do what is necessary, including to conduct such free elections.

[lostinacause]

48. Fair enough. Though you were a little vague in detail I should not have

come to that conclusion.

I disagree with the usefulness of the "class struggle". To me class struggle only seems to lead to an "us vs. them" attitude. Classes also don't represent the way the world is. There are a variety of income ranges. There is no such divider as the poor and the rich it is only a human construct used to create division or classify people. This is one of the problems that I see with the modern Marxists movements. Marxists economics seems to imply that there is some sort of collaboration among the rich to keep workers wages and by extension their wealth down so the rich can have it all for them selves. All neoclassical economists and most institutionalists would disagree with this. Competition keeps wages in check. (There is of course one major exception to this rule, that is CEOs of public companies.)

"Class struggles" suggest, at least implicitly, that there is a constant amount of output to be split between everybody. Wealth distribution, however, is not a zero sum game. Comparing America to the former Soviet Union provides evidence to suggest that this is the case. The level of growth in all nations gives further evidence. When examining the impact of various policies you will find that policy has a great deal of influence on growth and productivity. This suggests that the goal of economic equality may not be the most desirable. There are policies that can be developed which lead to greater inequality but have both parties as well off or better off. (Taxing to create a Pareto efficiency from a Hicks-Kaldor is one such way). Because of this there are other things that have to be considered. My belief is that there is ideal combination of four economic goals that have to be considered; growth, equality, opportunity, and economic freedom.

"Electing the correct representatives" would prove difficult even if the elections were "free". Various restrictions prevent ideal voting behavior because of lack of information and issues that arise with voting on multiple issues. Direct democracy would prove just as troublesome due to lack of information.

[newswolf56]

73. I believe an "us vs. them" attitude is the ONLY attitude...

that adequately explains the forces now afoot in the world. In fact, denying this grim new reality seems to me dangerously close to identification with the oppressor -- that is, excusing the oppressor based on some foolish, ever-more-disproven belief in his humanitarianism: that he is "really just like us." Which is fine for the cotton-candy world of the New Age optimist, or Neville Chamberlain returning from Munich, but in the real world of the workplace there is increasingly only the oligarchy -- "them" -- anyone with sufficient wealth and power to participate in (or at the very least insulate themselves from) the unprecedented concentration of wealth that is victimizing everyone else. Wealth distribution is indeed becoming a "zero-sum game" -- that is, the distribution of a finite sum, with an ever-larger share hogged by the plutocrats, leaving that much less for all the rest of us. There is therefore (and specifically because of the oligarchy's malevolently greedy excesses) also the newly emergent "us" -- not merely the old strictly defined proletariat of industrial workers, but literally anyone who is subject to economic ruination by the concentration of wealth: close to 95 percent of the U.S. population. For the first time ever it is not only as Marx foretold, but also as the International Workers of the World (IWW) stated (if I remember correctly) in their own constitution: workers and bosses have absolutely nothing in common; in other words, we have absolutely nothing in common with the oligarchy, and the oligarchy has absolutely nothing in common with the rest of us. Or as I would put it in my own words: the ultimate reality is that we as workers are to the oligarchy precisely as lambs are to cougars -- and when the shepherd of protective government abandons us or is slain (as is happening now in the methodical destruction of New Deal protections), all is lost.

[lostinacause]

80. Who would you describe is them? I know a number of farily weathy people.

I respect most of them but not for the reasons pertaining to their wealth. One of them is considering buying a house that is worth more money then I will probably make in my lifetime. He has been my dad's friend since high school. My dad is a heavy duty mechanic at my mom has a job that makes a similar income. So as you can probably tell that while the do enjoy a comfortable lifestyle they don't make much money. My dad's friend made a fair bit of money early in his life (he's around 50). He decided he had made enough money and decided to go back to school and get a teaching degree. Just the other day I was talking to someone who is friends with an individual who donate 5 million to a post secondary institute. They described him as a "great guy" and it was clear that this statement goes beyond the amount he donates to community. These are just a few of the reasons why I don't see it as an "us vs. them".

[newswolf56]

86. I can tell you identify with the wealthy...

just by your tone and reasoning. Indeed I would not be surprised if you were one of the wealthy yourself. What you are doing is claiming exceptionalism and thereby defending the oligarchy -- so at the very least, the oligarchy is surely the class with which you identify.

The extent to which it is difficult to distinguish "us" from "them" in the American economic equation is merely part of the diabolical cleverness by which capitalism has protected itself: by repeating the Big Lie that class is meaningless, thereby maliciously encouraging an entire nation to identify with its oppressor -- and at the very least allowing apologists for the oligarchy to hopelessly muddy the conceptual waters. But now we are in the midst of a great albeit excruciatingly painful awakening: the nation is rapidly being divided into victims (us) and exploiters (them), proletarians (us) and plutocrats (them), and more and more Americans thus realize that anyone with $5 million to give away (A) got at least part of the fortune by robbing the proletariat, whether in this country or elsewhere, and is now (B) merely trying to bribe his community and his conscience. Try selling your "I know a plutocrat and he really is a good guy" argument to a union-hall full of workers who have just been Enroned into permanent and inescapable poverty, complete with loss of pensions, and I think you'll see what I mean by awakening.

As to charity itself -- the amount some plutocrat donates to a given community -- this does nothing whatsoever to address the inherent viciousness of capitalism: it merely softens its blows (and thereby enables the plutocrats to ensure the impregnability of their position even as they assuage their alleged consciences). In my opinion, private charity is therefore an obscenity: its ultimate function is not to help anyone escape poverty and oppression but rather to perpetuate the status quo. If the plutocrats truly wanted progressive social change, they would finance it with increased taxes, and foster change accordingly -- just as they did during the New Deal. But never again: now the oligarchy prefers the charade of charity because it not only allows them to keep that much more wealth for themselves but further insulates them against any sort of rebellion. A citizen receiving governmental social services is still a citizen, however marginalized; a recipient of private charity is but a serf -- totally beholden to his benefactors and therefore scarcely better than a slave.

As to defining "us and them," I believe my original definition is wholly adequate: "them" -- anyone with sufficient wealth and power to participate in (or at the very least insulate themselves from) the unprecedented concentration of wealth that is victimizing everyone else; and "us" -- not merely the old strictly defined proletariat of industrial workers, but literally anyone who is subject to economic ruination by the concentration of wealth: close to 95 percent of the U.S. population. As it says in a favorite song of the Labor and Civil Rights movements, never more appropriate than now: "Which side are you on, O which side are you on..."

[lostinacause]

102. I have already made my choices and they are not leading in

the direction of a high degree wealth. I figure the decision to pursue theoretical economics instead of an engineering/economics has lowered my expected future income by $20,000 a year (in real terms) and has eliminated the possibility of making over a million dollars a year (again in real terms). As is becoming evident I am still in university and perhaps will spend the rest of my life there, hopefully not as a student. I am also currently running a small business which I started in high school. I am in the process of selling it so I can reapply my self towards my studies. I have had to deal with some of the problems that the wealthy face but on a much smaller scale and I don't envy their position. I do agree that many of the CEO types are overpaid but that is largely due to the shareholders not understanding the decisions they are making or want to be "sure" that the returns will be good.

Whether or not I have had these experiences is largely irrelevant. The "us" vs. "them" attitude generally leads substandard outcomes as decisions are often made with the desire to hurt the other party. This desire could, and with imperfect rationality will, lead to a substandard choice of policy (SEE response to zero sum game). People instead should look to the systems in place and see what changes would best bring about the ideal outcome.

(Your ideas about charity fail to address some of the characteristics of charitable giving such as why people give when they are older rather then when they are younger and why people with lower incomes give)

[newswolf56]

108. When one is attacked, "us versus them" is the only paradigm...

possible. Whether you are a Polish soldier under attack by the Nazis on 1 September 1939, a U.S. sailor under attack by the Japanese at Pearl Harbor on 7 December 1941, or an American worker under attack by the oligarchy in the late 20th and early 21st centuries, you don't give a damn about anything except how to fight back -- how to smite the enemy at least as ruinously as the enemy is smiting you. In this savage context, everything is reduced to its least common denominator: it is either part of the problem or part of the solution. Us versus them.

That's why the vagaries and obfuscations of theoretical economics are ultimately irrelevant save for what they do: they create confusion (and therefore division) among the aggrieved and afflicted and thereby protect the oligarchy. As always, the medium is the message. Which is precisely why I won't waste my time debating theoretical economics. Even if I possessed the requisite education (which I do not: my academic background is history and sociology), debating a theoretical economist like trying to box with a phantom: you swing, but there's nothing there to hit. Better to ignore the diversionary tactics and target tangible foes: the malevolently greedy oligarchy that is maliciously inflicting this ruination on America, the venomously tyrannical oligarchy that -- aided by skyrocketing fuel prices -- is ensuring the American workforce will never again escape from the Third World cesspool into which we are all being flung (that is, all of us who are neither plutocrats nor their allies). No matter how disguised: us versus them.

The fury of the American worker over being in competition with slave labor was one of the factors that led to the Civil War. Competition with slave labor was precisely the outrage that sparked the Coal Creek War: the state of Tennessee was leasing convicts -- slaves -- to the mine operators to break the Mine Workers' Union. That is exactly what is happening today: capitalism and its plutocrats once again exhibiting their infinite greed by waging the economic equivalent of another Coal Creek War -- this time on a global scale and specifically against the entire American workforce. Us versus them.

Class warfare is therefore not only the one undeniable fact of today's economy, but the sole cause of the permanent and inescapable impoverishment of American workers -- the very fact that makes Marx again relevant. However you attempt to rationalize or explain away that class warfare is meaningless to those of us who live on the brink of homelessness and starvation. Indeed I would argue that in this context, economic theory is esoteric meaninglessness personified -- a schoolmans's debating of pinhead cosmologies and the numbers of angels theoretically dancing thereupon -- unless of course one's job is defense of the oligarchy and the unspeakably wretched status quo. Again, us versus them.

And that is of course the ultimate difference between us. You make it clear -- not quite with an aristocratic sneer -- that you will always be among the economically comfortable. Which, in this economic war, ranks you among the rear-echelon troops if not among the oligarchy itself. But I am on the very front lines, living from hand to mouth like so many millions of other Americans and therefore in constant terror of the inevitable disaster that will leave me forever without transportation or finally (and therefore forever) without sufficient money to pay my bills. Forever: due to the wage-slave realities of professional journalism plus a couple of major (and totally unforeseeable) economic disasters, I have no pension save Social Security. Forever: my age (mid-60s) means I will NEVER be allowed back into the workforce in ANY full-time capacity related to my talent, skills and experience. Forever: despite good health in general, the standard afflictions of increasing age (arthritis and bad back) mean I will never again be able to do any of the physically demanding minimum-wage McJobs that might (if I were able to humble myself to appear suitably brown-nose servile) be available. Irrevocably and terminally: us versus them.

For I am indeed one of capitalism's victims. I am doomed by economic reality; there is no hope whatsoever for my economic improvement. For me, terms like "economic adjustment" and "wage stabilization" are obscene oligarchic euphemisms for bottomless horror. But -- having at last understood the real meaning of the feminist adage that "the personal is political" -- I do not intend to go silently into the darkening night.

[lostinacause]

125. Regarding your situation:

Your situation is the most unfortunate and I do understand why you believe as you do. It seems it is one problem after another after another. People like yourself do not deserve to fall victim to these situations. Government and Society have done a poor job preparing for the inevitable transition and I hope stories such as yours will serve is a lesson.

[newswolf56]

128. I too hope such stories will serve as lessons. For what they prove...

is the fact that under capitalism, anyone who is not part of the protected oligarchy is never more than a potential victim. Under capitalism, anyone who is not insulated by great wealth -- anyone no matter how determined, skilled, talented, vigilant, cautious etc. -- can be cast aside and flung into inescapable poverty. To believe otherwise is sheer folly: the dumbed-down idiocy of identifying with one's oppressor.

[lostinacause]

132. Regarding "When one is attacked, "us versus them" is the only paradigm..."

Perhaps we could bring that analogy to the war on terror. My guess is that given that you post on DU you don’t support the War on Terror. Perhaps you remember Bush saying something along the lines of “If you’re not with use, you’re against us”. This is of course very close to what you say regarding the class conflict that you suppose there is. Further more Bush could very easily say that the war is “us vs. them”. Even if he hasn’t, I have debated conservatives who have tried to characterize the war as an “us vs. them” war.

First I am going to destroy the “If your not with us, your against us” because it is the weaker argument of the two. Now this at the very least implies that being “with us” and “against us” are two mutually exclusive states. Now consider an individual who believes both groups are wrong but doesn’t want people from either party to die. They can hardly be described as either with or against the individual. Unfortunately people may see inaction as being against the cause as they are allowing others to take control. Also someone who proposes a different idea to how terrorism should be fought presumably under the assumption that their idea is better is trying to do what they can to help. If being “against us” is from an intention point of view. The individual does not conform to the standards of the group so is not technically with the group but they do want improvement. Thus they cannot be rightfully characterized as against the group by the criteria given. The same can be said if being “against us” is based on the effectiveness of the proposed ideas and actions using similar logic and the premise that the individual has an idea that is at least as good. This would mean that only one with the best idea could say such a thing appropriately. Given our finite capacities of thought no one can say this appropriately, with the exception of an omnipotent God if such a god exists. Even if god exists the statement looses meaning. I could go on but the statement is either wrong or has lost all of its meaning. Either is suitable to make it so neither you nor Bush should say such a thing.

Now for the more difficult task of characterizing the weaknesses that sometimes occur in the “us vs. them” argument. Now presumably you believe when you are attacked you should attack back. The idea that when you are attacked you should attack back is foolish and sometimes only leads to conflict and everybody body being worse off because of it. You only have to look at the death that occurred in the conflict between Catholics and Protestants in Great Britain to see this. In continuing the fighting you inevitably lead to the suffering of your own. If you don’t believe that the “us vs. them” attitude” should lead to attacking back then the “us vs. them” attitude only serves to establish that there are two sides and that one should not help the other. The problem with this is that groups will not act to help one another when it is mutually beneficial. In a sense to hurt the other you are hurting yourself.

[lostinacause]

143. Regarding the nature of theoretical economics.

Your assertion about theoretical economics is at the very least misguided. The tools there are in theoretical economics, though they have to sometimes be adjusted to account for assumptions that do not hold, provide a good framework to analyze individual decisions and group decisions.

[lostinacause]

81. Also; there are responsible corperations. My girlfriend works for one of

them. If you could be so kind to bump this. I am going to be away for the next day and a half.

[newswolf56]

87. All corporations are responsible to their shareholders. That's how...

they stay in business. I assume what you mean by "responsible corporation" is one that is socially responsible -- perhaps based on the fact your girlfriend's paycheck hasn't yet bounced and she has not yet been locked into her office and forced to work off-the-clock overtime. But if I were you, I would withhold judgment until she retires: the real question is whether she will then learn to her abject horror she has one of those vanishing pensions that have become today's norm of corporate responsibility -- that is, responsibility to the share-holders and their demand for profit by any means necessary.

But then I'm biased: as far as I'm concerned, the notion of a "socially responsible corporation" is a contradiction in terms, rather like "Nazi humanitarianism" or "Fundamentalist tolerance." (Though I fully understand it's the viciously rabid capitalist ethos that makes American and/or global monopoly corporations so malevolent -- not anything inherent in the corporate structure itself {which is in fact a kind of financial collective}. Note in this context for example the nonprofit Corporation for Public Broadcasting.)

And note too how dreadfully easy it is for a defender of the oligarchy to distract us from vital economic issues merely by interjecting semantic interruptions.

[lostinacause]

95. Most of their policies deal with human capital and ethical issues.

There are some advantages to making these policies important especially when it comes to recruiting potential employees and dealing with sensitive regions. If done correctly the cost can be minimal and it can even prove to be profitable. (I believe the push for these policies is coming from the CEO)

[lostinacause]

101. The idea that economics is a zero sum game is leading to your

acceptance and promotion of an ideology that doesn’t take into account the current situation and the consequences of the decisions being made nor does it take into account the temporal considerations. There is a general trade off between equality (share of wealth) and efficiency (total output) when one is maximized with respect to another¹. Also equality is not the only thing that is important it is a combination of wealth and equality. Under a zero sum game² complete equality is preferred since there is no tradeoff and more equality is preferable. In reality wealth generation is important in how equality is to be pursued. Thus from an economic standpoint Marxist economics is a substandard ideology. (Pure Capitalism is also a substandard ideology since it does not maximize wealth generation³).

¹ This implies that there are many substandard positions that can be had but there existence is irrelevant. This is under the assumption that more wealth is better then less wealth and more equality is better then less when there is no tradeoff between equality and efficiency. Thus nations should aim to be on this curve.

² Constant wealth

³ Based on the existence of market failure

[Media_Lies_Daily]

67. I find it interesting in my study of history that so many people....

...apparently think just like you shortly before revolutions are launched.

By the way, not all revolutions have been launched by Marxists and/or communists. In fact, they occupy a distinct minority among all groups that have overthrown governments by force.

[lostinacause]

71. I'm sure all people use a neoclassical framework with adjustments for

irrationality in their day to day decisions. Even in the developed world it is uncommon that an individual can combine philosophy and economics the way I do.

Do you understand what a revolution entails? Do you expect you neighbors to be willing to sacrifice the standard of living and risk there lives for an outcome that would likely be worse then it was before the revolution? Things have to get a whole lot worse before a revolution is going to happen.

[Frederik]

75. You're misinformed about Marx

Marx never advocated the dictarship of the "proletariat", or what has come to be known as communism. He didn't even advocate armed revolution, in fact he didn't advocate much at all. He was primarily an economist and an analyst. He simply claimed that it was inevitable that a violent revolution would happen when capitalism had reached a certain point. Of course, he also claimed that what would follow would be "communism", meaning a state-less and class-less society, which is the naïve or utopic part of his thinking.

Marx would probably not have approved of the revolution in Russia, as it was not really a worker's revolution and because it happened in a country that was barely industrialized, not in a mature capitalist country.

[lostinacause]

79. I'll keep that in mind. It's been a while since I have read up on Marx.

Prehaps a refresher would be in order.

[ckramer]

104. Yes, he did.

Have you read his "The Communist Manifesto"?

I think he did advocate that - use force to overthrow the then capitalistic system.

[lostinacause]

33. Regarding point 3:

Most everything else has been addressed at some point or another but feelings about Dean's political beliefs aside; he gets caught saying things the get support from the base but generally pushes "the centrists" (for lack of a better term) away. In a duopoly it is generally not a good policy. I don’t believe that he has the leadership skill that the Democrats need.

[Frederik]

72. I'm currently reading a book

you might find interesting. It's "Marx's Revenge" by British-Indian economist Meghnad Desai. He points out that Marx never advocated any of the things that are often attributed to him, state planning, protectionism etc. In fact, Desai writes, were Marx alive today he would have advocated free trade and neo-liberal policies - because they are hastening the final, inevitable demise of capitalism, just as Marx predicted.

He sees the economic policies of the last 20 years, thatcherism, reaganism, free trade agreements, wto, offshore outsourcing, privatization as a response to a capitalist crisis in profitability which was the real problem behind the "stagflation" of the 70s. Pure marxist analysis, which is kind of refreshing these days.

Marx is one of only a few economists and philosophers who have really understood capitalism.

[newswolf56]

74. I reasoned this out for myself but would love to read this book.

Can you please supply the bibliographical information?

[newswolf56]

127. Got Desai's book yesterday and began reading it immediately:

extremely thought-provoking, plus already teaching me a few things I didn't know. Thank you very much. (Bought it with John Bellamy Foster's Marx's Ecology, which I will read next or maybe in concert with Desai.)

[rocktivity]

12. Candidate for this month's "You Call This NEWS?" award

Congratulations, Reuters--you've finally noticed that the U.S. has an economic problem! But it doesn't affect YOU--just those gritty blue collar types, right? And how many layoffs do YOU have planned?

:eyes:
rocknation

[Disturbed]

15. Is the Dem Party going to change?

Seems to me that the Dems as an entity no longer represent the Working Class. Dems have been mostly complicit with Outsourcing, relocation of Mfg. and In-Sourcing. Unions are moving in the direction on no longer pouring money into the Dem party. It would be nice if they started pouring money into the Green Party and all Progressives would join the Greens.

[wrlwnd]

40. Don't forget NAFTA n/t

[barb162]

99. This is so important. Democrats understand job loss

but they don't understand peripheral issues connected to it. It is a huge failing of this party. Nafta, Cafta, not screaming about offshoring, etc., it's as if the Democrats have lost touch with their worker constituents. THE WORKERS / voters want good jobs here in this country.

[Dyedinthewoolliberal]

16. I make half,

half, 50% less, take home one half, of what I did ten years ago. And it will never go back to the way it was.
Re-training is always offered as an option by someone who does not have to worry about money.
This is why government regulation of business came about in the first place. They have been gnawing away at it ever since Roosevelt initiated the New Deal.
A true capitalist cares not for anything except the bottom line. They will stick it to us time and again as long as we accept it. I still cannot understand the lack of unity and solidarity amongst working people. EVERY working person ought to be in a union. But we have been divided and brainwashed. How many times have you heard people say "unions were good in their day"? or 'why should I support a union, I don't get anything from it?"
They can't see the forest for the trees.......
:shrug:

[brook]

46. When I had

a decent, unionized job I would ask the younger folks why they didn't attend union meetings. They said 'the union doesn't do anything but take my dues'. I pointed out that making $19 an hour plus benefits, time and a half after 8, etc. when they had no particular expertise was a damned good deal for a 20 year old.

I know how flawed unions are as well. I served on the Board. If the younger crowd had bothered to be active, they would recognize corruption when they see it and would, at some point, have enough of a presence to remove the officers who abuse their power. But it's almost impossible to 'motivate' someone who is comfortable today and unconscious about what tomorrow may bring.

Now at 72 I have a part time contract job with low pay, no benies. I vacillate between being grateful - and anger/despair because it's the best I can expect.

edited:spelling

[UncleSepp]

52. I make almost twice!

I'm grossing just about twice what I did working full time five years ago. I'm doing great!

...

...

I also work twice the hours, salaried, no overtime, no flex time. Last month I put in at least 90 hours over eight days, which doesn't sound so bad - 11 hour days are pretty normal, right? Heck, on Sunday, I came in at noonish and left at 5:30 in the afternoon ... on Monday.

Earlier this week I was told along with the rest of my team not to get sick. Then I was told to get control over my personal life because it was a distraction - hm, I'll work harder next to be sure that I don't have two medical emergencies, a marriage fall apart, and a parent get cancer next year. Yesterday I found out that I will be getting neither raise nor bonus nor lottery tickets/stock grants for the fourth year in a row because I'm not available enough. If I can't do better by next year, I will probably be fired.

That might be a big relief - I'm already planning for it, scaling back so that I can save up and so that I can get through on a lot less - but it would be great to have some extra jack and some stability. See, my dad's self employed, and never recovered from the Dallas collapse in the 80s. He has no health insurance. If he needs and decides to get chemotherapy, it's going to have to be paid in cash, at the non discounted rate. My job is my parents' health plan and retirement plan for now. Later, my sister will step up to help do what kids do for their parents once kids grow up and parents get old, but she has to get through her bankruptcy first...

Oh yeah. This economy's just great.

[barb162]

100. I have been arguing this point with a friend for 20 years.

I tell him we need white collar unions in this country and unions up and down the line. We also need laws that companies cannot offshore or they will be given huge tax increases. We have to get corporations back in the game where they once were,that they have a duty to their workforce. It has become a one-way street, loyalty expected only one way.

[Lorien]

138. Ten years ago; $152,000, last year: $24,000

my income has always been directly tied to the disposable incomes of America's middle class, which explains exactly why my personal income has dropped so dramatically.

[Marthe48]

17. we're living the reality

husband retired from ORMET 3 yrs ago, under a contract including a pension and very low cost medical benefits. ORMET declared Chapter 11 bancruptcy and the judge Barbara Sellers (or Sellout) agreed to allow ORMET to breach the contract and take away the benefits people in our age group agreed to accept IN LIEU OF higher wages at the time. So we are both working our rearends off, and I guess we should be thankful that we have jobs. I know I am thankful that ORMET came out of Chapter 11 before UNITED breached their contract, or we wouldn't have the pension--as it is, we have gone to paying under 1000.00 annually for our medical needs to well over 12,000.00, which takes about all the pension.

Our active guys have been on strike since Thanksgiving, vowing not to return to work until the company returned the medical benefits to retirees. I so appreciate their effort and I wish they didn't have to suffer for us.

Please don't tell me that unions are bad--I heard about a book some Australian wrote about the unrelenting bad press unions have gotten since the 40's and how all of us in the working class think unions are bad, even though without unions we are up a creek with no oars.

The only way the working class in the world is going to come out even is to UNITE and force the powerful to be fair. They sure don't want to be fair, they have no concept of love thy neighbor, or compassion or anything, just nasty little power games.

If I get a fatal disease, I am going to go to a public spot and kill myself in the most 'if it bleeds it leads' sort of way and leave a letter blaming the corporate bastards who used up the best years of our lives for their profit and then ruined what we had left.

[Mizmoon]

41. Sadly, many unions have become corrupt

A family member of mine negotiates with a certain well known union on a regular basis. It's all about how much power and money the folks at the top can get. The members are secondary.

Unions need to evolve in some way - I'm not sure how, but they do need to change.

[Marthe48]

42. anything human will become corrupt

from the people who embezzle money from organizations or businesses they work for, to government, to unions. That is an unfortunate reality. The only way I can think of evolving the unions is to make every position in leadership voluntary and have fund-raisers only for specific events. Where my husband worked, anyone who holds a union position, like committeeman and officers, gets 1 paid day off each week for union business--you think anyone is going to pass up an opportunity to go do 5 minutes of union business on an off day and then go fishing? So no perks from either side, it justs adds temptation.

The strike funds should be handled by an independent external group, like the Red Cross. I remember during a 2 month strike while Reagan was in office (thanks again, Ron, love the way you screwed the working families)we couldn't get strike funds even though there were millions sitting in the fund--I still don't know why.

Since the unions have funds, they should offer health insurance to their members. This would encourage people to join unions just to get some kind of health coverage. The companies sure aren't offering their employees anything but a short brutish life. By offering health companies to union members, this huge bargaining chip/whip would be taken off the table right now, and the unions could negogiate higher wages rather than perks that can disappear when anti-labor forces have the upper hand.

Our US unions should also try to unionize our off-shore brothers and sisters. Even if their work efforts are ruining our job outlook, if we brought all workers into an international union, and that improved the overall standard of living for the people in developing countries, all workers would have more clout and we might reverse the plummetting payrolls for a lot of people. If the companies can extend their influence abroad, the unions can and should too.

Since we are human and our current culture encourages us to get or take as much as we can, I don't hold out much hope of anything changing. However, any union is better than no union at all. United we stand, divided we fall.

[shrike]

50. God bless our union local

They fixed it so that the pension funds are out of the hands of the company -- no matter what they do, the bigwigs can't get their hands on our money. And we've had a very savvy investment advisor, who's kept the fund solvent through some very wild times. The fund used to be wildly over-funded, but the Bush economy took care of that. However, it is still enough in the black that we don't spend much time worrying about it -- though you never know.

[PassingFair]

119. Seems to me that that process has already begun...

seismic changes in the union world lately...

[EVDebs]

19. Immigrants have been getting most new jobs not native-born

NEW REPORT REVEALS NATION'S GROWING DEPENDENCE ON FOREIGN IMMIGRANTS SINCE 2000--After a historical high in the 1990s, the foreign-born make up at least 60 percent of labor force growth between 2000 and 2004
http://www.nupr.neu.edu/7-04/immigration_july04.shtml

And before you jump on me about immigrant-bashing, please read

The Hard Truth of Immigration--No society has a boundless capacity to accept newcomers, especially when many of them are poor or unskilled workers, by Robert Samuelson of Newsweek
www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8100266/site/newsweek/

The Center for American Progress report on Bush's Job Deficits
http://www.americanprogress.org/site/pp.asp?c=biJRJ8OVF&b=736493

shows 'net' new jobs haven't been created since he took office (net would be jobs growth greater than population growth).

I think HomeDepot is hiring older workers, but I don't know how this guy in St Louis will be come out of this...keep us posted.

[Mountainman]

22. The economy is helping me stay employed but I am not happy about

what is happening to others around me.

I am an accountant and pretty good at cost accounting and managing the accounting dept. I quit a job last January because my boss was criminally abusive to me and also I would have to commit fraud to keep him happy.

I took a job paying $20,000 less per yr and could not pay my bills so I sold some of my hobby stuff on ebay to make a little more money.

Next week I start a new job as an accounting manager at a medical clinic. I got the job because I am good a implementing new computer systems and they need me to design a method of cost accounting for their practices so they can exist with the cuts in government medical reimbursements. The thing I like is that I asked for more money than I was making in the job I quit and I got it. I do have to live about 100 miles away from my home during the week but it will cost me the same as if I commuted and bought all that gasoline. Also I am 59 years old.

I feel lucky and hope more people can see that we need a change in the political leadership if we are ever to turn this country around.

[Media_Lies_Daily]

68. I have a friend who is a bankruptcy lawyer. He has been thinking....

...a good bit about retiring from the business because of the toll his work is taking on him spiritually. He sees the misery every day in the people he helps file for bankruptcy, and he has seen that misery grow since December 2000.

Just in case anyone thinks this guy is a Republican, let me assure you that he is a Democrat, and that he spent $40,000 of his own money to try to get Kerry elected. I can't even print the comments this guy makes about the NeoCons.

Oh, by the way...he's a former Army JAG Corps officer and has been in two combat zones, as have his three partners, all of whom believe the same way he does.

[area51]

25. economy

I really believe we're in the 2nd Great Depression. People who lose their jobs are shocked at how difficult it is to land another (just like in the 1st Great Depression). The republinazi-biased media isn't talking about how bad the economy is. :mad:

[raccoon]

44. I wonder if you're right about that.

In my neck of the woods, it's hard to get even a low-paying, no benefits job. As for a good-paying, benefitted job, unless you've got some connections, most likely somebody else will get it.

One thing for sure: the corporate media will never, never use the "D" word, no matter how many people are out of work, or how much the stock market might fall.

[VegasWolf]

26. Bush say's he feels their pain! nt

[lostinacause]

29. Unfortunatly change is part of a trade based economy.

Like many others, this individual has to struggle with change and there is an issue arising with skills not matching the labor market. America, as a nation, needs to figure out ways to quickly respond to changes in the labour market and reallocate human resources appropriately to benefit both the individual and society as a whole. (All of what I have said rides on the premise that America is better off when the borders are open. I have no problem having that discussion if anyone is interested.)

[ryanmuegge]

88. Well, there is one problem with that premise...

And that is THERE IS NO FUCKING LABOR MARKET! What the fuck are you talking about when you say "skills match the labor market"? Any idiot can flip a hamburger. I'd say our labor market is skilled enough to meet the demands of the available jobs in the US. The "labor market" is approaching a state of three alternatives for workers (well, at least in the US): 1) someone is either a CEO, or in a similar upper managment position; 2) owns their own business; or, 3) works a minimum-wage "McJob."

I believe the "retraining" talk (touted by, among others, Alan Greenspan) is just more right-wing, individual-level, it's-all-your-fault-and-policy-makers-share-no-responsibility shit that we heard about people on welfare ("they just don't want to work and they don't have the right 'values'") to deflect accountability.
Anyway, how fucking feasible is it for someone who is middle-aged, has a mortgage and children, to just go back to school and then just pack up and leave after a new job is found, especiall in rural areas (and go to school part-time, no less - because bills don't stop coming in the real world - for god knows how many years)?

Jobs are offshored because the labor is cheaper, and environmental standards are less stringent (spare me all of the arguments about demographic transition theory and influencing domestic policy in totalitarian governments talk). Period. How does one compete with Asian slave labor without compromising our standard of living? I'd like answer to that. I thought capitalism was supposed to be about equal competition and fair play. I'd like a little capitalism. I'd like to be able to compete with 8-year-old Chinese kids making the same livable wage and the same good benefits. Countries should also have the same enviornmental laws.

Businesses exist to make a fucking profit. We cannot fault them for oppressing and abusing anyone they can to generate higher numbers, so long as it is legal. However, it is the governments that are to blame for not regulating trade to protect jobs and worker's rights.

As you say, the problem is not that the market isn't adjusting to "free" trade in numerical terms, but it is WHERE labor is being reallocated to. Highly accessible, decent paying jobs are a thing of the past in this country (I'm talking about in general terms here, so please don't tell me about your mother's brother's cousin who has a good manufacturing job). They're never coming back. This is a fact. Regardless of your view on government in society, America is supposed to be a democracy. Markets are inherently anti-democratic (regardless of what Friedman says about the essence of democracy). I am not arguing that capitalism (and, therefore, the innovations associated with a market system and modernity) is not the best system, so please don't pigenhole me as a raving Marxist communist. However, I am saying that government should be the mediary between the necessary evil of an inherently anti-democratic economic system in a democratic society. Government should be friendly to business, as it always has, but it should recognize that labor and corporations often have competing interests, and should therefore balance the two. There has been little balance.

I know there is depth to this issue, but it is very frustrating to see a market fundamentalist, in effect, defending the destruction of social responsibility to workers. This more than just this issue of free-trade; it is whether or not the neo-liberal political ideology that has had a stranglehold on American politics for the past 25 years is taking us down the right path.

And, because of the dominance of neo-liberalism over the past quarter-century, I would say that Marx's view of universally dichtomous class and the idea of base-superstructure are very relevant today. Do you have a team of lobbyists? Do you have enough money to pour into an economic think tank? No? Well, don't expect this type of democracy to work for you. Look at the tax code in this country. Look at how it has changed over the past 40-50 years. It's fucking criminal. Read Perfectly Legal for some rather eye-opening evidence as to what I'm talking about.

The erosion of the industrial base and the New Deal safety net is about unchecked corporate power and its threat to democracy and human rights. It is about business elites making policies with no influence from the masses (have you SEEN the fucking public opinion data regarding NAFTA and CAFTA?) and campaign financing. This is a much larger isssue.

Anyway, I'm sorry for the angry tone and rant-like structure of this post.

[lostinacause]

106. Thank you for the apology. This is an emotional issue.

"And that is THERE IS NO FUCKING LABOR MARKET! What the fuck are you talking about when you say "skills match the labor market"? Any idiot can flip a hamburger. I'd say our labor market is skilled enough to meet the demands of the available jobs in the US. The "labor market" is approaching a state of three alternatives for workers (well, at least in the US): 1) someone is either a CEO, or in a similar upper managment position; 2) owns their own business; or, 3) works a minimum-wage "McJob.""

There is a labour market. Americas labour is too highly priced to compete in some of the areas. For America to regain some of those industries either the wages have to go down or productivity has to go up. This may not be feasible and likely America will have to look to other industries to find appropriate jobs. In the end everything will balance.

“I believe the "retraining" talk (touted by, among others, Alan Greenspan) is just more right-wing, individual-level, it's-all-your-fault-and-policy-makers-share-no-responsibility shit that we heard about people on welfare ("they just don't want to work and they don't have the right 'values'") to deflect accountability.
Anyway, how fucking feasible is it for someone who is middle-aged, has a mortgage and children, to just go back to school and then just pack up and leave after a new job is found, especiall in rural areas (and go to school part-time, no less - because bills don't stop coming in the real world - for god knows how many years)?”

Given Greenspan’s record I would expect his statements to have the usual integrity behind them. The natural market response to retrain workers is inevitable, though this does not guarantee that it will be done in an efficient and effective way nor does it guarantee that it will be done with human interest in mind. This is one of those places I believe that the governments have the opportunity and responsibility to intervene. (I can’t offer suggestions as to how because it is not in my area of knowledge.)

“Jobs are offshored because the labor is cheaper, and environmental standards are less stringent (spare me all of the arguments about demographic transition theory and influencing domestic policy in totalitarian governments talk). Period. How does one compete with Asian slave labor without compromising our standard of living? I'd like answer to that. I thought capitalism was supposed to be about equal competition and fair play. I'd like a little capitalism. I'd like to be able to compete with 8-year-old Chinese kids making the same livable wage and the same good benefits.”

One competes with “slave labour” by being more productive and more innovative or finding areas one can be more productive in. One also encourages there governments to adopt policies that allow them to be more competitive without sacrificing the standard of living. Reform in the legal structure, infrastructure, and education system will all help with this. You shouldn’t be making the same wages as an “8-year-old Chinese kid”. You are more productive and your cost of living is higher. Your opportunity cost of working at a low wage job is also higher.

“Countries should also have the same enviornmental laws.”

Do you want the environmental standards that China has? I would say that the answer is no. Would you want the environmental standards to be raised to a point were the environmental controls lead to your starvation? Again I would expect the same answer; no. Raising the environmental standards in these countries is not always worth while for the citizens as they would sometimes rather have the damage because of the income gained from the production. (The benefit from pollution is greater then the damage done by it.) Different laws actually allocate pollution more effectively and benefit countries by reducing pollution and preventing industry from passing on high abatement costs. (You can tell you favorite conservative that it may be better to increase pollution laws given recent free trade agreements)

I have a lot more to say; however, currently I lack the time. I will continue when I am less busy.

[lostinacause]

121. continued

“Businesses exist to make a fucking profit. We cannot fault them for oppressing and abusing anyone they can to generate higher numbers, so long as it is legal.”

Businesses are not oppressors. Any time someone has a job they are better off because it. They have made this choice understanding the benefits and costs of working the job so if they knowingly enter the job market they benefit from it. If anything the government is the oppressor. However, who is in the government is decided by the people. So if people are being oppressed it is ultimately their own fault.

“However, it is the governments that are to blame for not regulating trade to protect jobs and worker's rights.”

Protecting jobs is a very dangerous game to play and often the efforts only prove to be harmful to the economy and the workers. Protecting jobs should not be the goal of any government. The goal should be to create an atmosphere where jobs are there for the people and people are adequately trained to take these jobs. Progress is happening too fast to have certain sectors protected.

“As you say, the problem is not that the market isn't adjusting to "free" trade in numerical terms, but it is WHERE labor is being reallocated to. Highly accessible, decent paying jobs are a thing of the past in this country (I'm talking about in general terms here, so please don't tell me about your mother's brother's cousin who has a good manufacturing job). They're never coming back. This is a fact. Regardless of your view on government in society, America is supposed to be a democracy. Markets are inherently anti-democratic (regardless of what Friedman says about the essence of democracy). I am not arguing that capitalism (and, therefore, the innovations associated with a market system and modernity) is not the best system, so please don't pigenhole me as a raving Marxist communist. However, I am saying that government should be the mediary between the necessary evil of an inherently anti-democratic economic system in a democratic society. Government should be friendly to business, as it always has, but it should recognize that labor and corporations often have competing interests, and should therefore balance the two. There has been little balance.”

An economic system is used to accomplish societal goals. It does not have to be democratic is just has to accomplish the desired goals. I do agree with the idea of somewhat rebalancing the system. Personally I believe we have to work on optimizing our goals (equality and efficiency), as mush as we worry about them individually.

“I know there is depth to this issue, but it is very frustrating to see a market fundamentalist, in effect, defending the destruction of social responsibility to workers. This more than just this issue of free-trade; it is whether or not the neo-liberal political ideology that has had a stranglehold on American politics for the past 25 years is taking us down the right path.”

Unfortunately given the current reality, businesses cannot compete unless they do things such as outsource. It is up to individuals and governments to choose how to respond to this new reality. Most of this will need to be done through government action of some sort or another and cultural shifts regarding attitudes towards education and employment.

“And, because of the dominance of neo-liberalism over the past quarter-century, I would say that Marx's view of universally dichtomous class and the idea of base-superstructure are very relevant today. Do you have a team of lobbyists? Do you have enough money to pour into an economic think tank? No? Well, don't expect this type of democracy to work for you. Look at the tax code in this country. Look at how it has changed over the past 40-50 years. It's fucking criminal. Read Perfectly Legal for some rather eye-opening evidence as to what I'm talking about.

The erosion of the industrial base and the New Deal safety net is about unchecked corporate power and its threat to democracy and human rights. It is about business elites making policies with no influence from the masses (have you SEEN the fucking public opinion data regarding NAFTA and CAFTA?) and campaign financing. This is a much larger isssue.”

I believe that the New Deal policies are outdated and people need to look for better solutions to pursue equality given the global economy. Marxist policies are only an exaggeration of those beliefs and they weren’t even solutions. Many of the problems that you speak of and others that you don’t know of would be fixed through responsible growth policies. I don’t see the possibility of conservatives implementing such policies so they have to come from liberals. Unfortunately liberals generally do not have the background in economics to solve these problems.

[idlisambar]

126. questions

Americas labour is too highly priced to compete in some of the areas. For America to regain some of those industries either the wages have to go down or productivity has to go up. This may not be feasible and likely America will have to look to other industries to find appropriate jobs. In the end everything will balance.

The question to ask is why U.S. labor is now "too highly priced" given that (according to official figures) median wage levels have barely risen since the early 70's.? The next question is why, despite this lack of wage growth, U.S. industry has fared so poorly in the international marketplace? How much lower do U.S. wages have to be for U.S. industry to compete effectively? Finally, if wages are destined to decrease further to "balance" things out what does this say about our political economy -- can it really be serving our interests if we are facing this reduction in our standard of living?

I'll await your responses.

[lostinacause]

129. The idea is that the wages are too highly priced in some areas.

Wages are relative to the wages of others in a global economy. When competing with low wage earners jobs that are labour intensive and are unskilled the unit cost will be less for the low wage earners. This makes it so that Americans cannot be competitive in certain industries. Transportation costs for both information and goods have been reduced and various trade agreements have been signed causing it so Americans are in competition with nations where competition would have not existed even ten years ago. I am in the process of reading "The World is Flat" (sorry can't remember the author) which gives a fairly good outline of the factors leading to this. The median wage is they way it is because of they way American policy is designed and is partially influenced by things that go on outside of America.

I believe the primary reasons why America has fared so poorly internationally are because of the nature of the education system, regulations and Americans attitudes towards work. Being a Canadian, I have not been through the education system and don't fully understand the shortcomings of it. However any time they compare the achievement of students America is not at the top and if I'm not mistaken the rankings continue to fall. Americans seem to have the wrong attitudes about lifelong learning (Canadians fall into this trap too). The main problem I see with regulations is the high legal costs that companies face. Punitive damages and high lawyer costs are the main reasons why this is the case. Reducing the or even eliminating punitive damages would work to solve these problems. Talking with industry and seeing what can be done to reduce regulations that do not provide sufficient benefits would also be a good step to take. Things like pollution standards, while they are costly to industry, should remain because of the benefits it provides the average citizen. Americans and Canadians seem to have the wrong attitude towards work. Satisfying, shirking, theft and not showing up to interviews are a few of the problems that I have either seen as an employer (small business) or employee.

I don’t believe it the wages will necessarily fall in the long run though it seems inevitable given the current policies of both parties. Certain measures, such as measures dealing with the shortcomings previously mentioned, can be taken by the governments and individuals to increase America’s global competitiveness and thereby stabilize wages. I also believe that if the necessary steps are taken productivity gains though outsourcing and “insourcing” will decrease the cost of goods relative to American wages.

[shrike]

134. Too high for whom?

Sorry, I just don't buy this argument, and I hear it a lot. Not when corporate profits (though not all) are reaching record levels and tax breaks -- for some industries like energy -- continue. And companies continue to sit on these profits, or so we're told. What happened to trickle-down? Reinvestment? Profit-creating-jobs, which I've heard all my life.

Too high for whom? An American should make $9 an hour instead of $20 so that so-and-so can replace his Lear jet on schedule?

I'd also like to point out that globalization has not yet delivered in terms of raising living standards and wages elsewhere in the world. Case in point: some companies are now leaving Mexico -- Mexico! -- for greener pastures: they can now pay even lower wages in Eastern Europe and get away with it.

A case in point for all of this is Indonesia. Outsourcing reached Indonesia some time ago. Texaco (although I may have the wrong oil company), Nike, etc. All that outsourcing seems to have done is raise the daily caloric intake of the average Indonesian resident (if you don't believe me, read back issues of Paul Krugman; he lays it out very well, and Krugman himself is a globalist.) Sorry, that's not good enough. Not when that country's forests are being depleted by Big Lumber and its resources by Big Oil/Big-everything else.

BTW, being a Canadian you should have recognized another factor in this whole mess: the high cost of health care. We have no national health plan here, and Americans either pick it up themselves (price a few plans and you'll see what that's like) or employers do. If I'm not mistaken we've lost some jobs in recent years to Canada, and health care costs -- AND educational standards, granted -- were cited among other things.

[lostinacause]

139. Globalization has atleast benefited Canada, China and India.

China is the nation that has likely benefited the most both economically and non-economically.

As for the prices being too high. If the labour costs are not competitive with other nations then companies will inevitably move some of the operations to other countries to remain competitive. If they don't (whether it is by choice or through intervention) then companies from other countries will have a competitive advantage and take market share resulting in the jobs being lost anyway.

Ideally an American should find a way to become more productive or relocate to an industry/profession where America is able to compete more effectively. As I have said and continue to repeat; the government should have some sort of roll in this especially if education and skill development is not being done elsewhere.

I believe that companies are going to eventually stop moving to the lowest bidder. There are hidden costs associated with that behavior in the long run. Cheap labour does not diminish the importance of human resources.

Yes, something should be done about health care costs. Privatizing it would prove difficult and even if it were possible problems with the high cost of prescription drugs would still exist.

[shrike]

142. That's all well and good but ...

I like Canada quite well, first of all, and am glad it has benefited.
But, there are some real-life considerations here.

You're obviously very bright and well-schooled. But figures, theories, methodologies, et. al. often don't take into consideration the intangibles: suffering. Pain. Despair. Anger.

It's no secret that the world's poorest countries are among its most unstable. Strong-arm political tactics only work for so long. The U.S. is hardly a third-world country at this point but I can tell you, having lived here all my life, a growing number of Americans now vacillate between anger and uncertainty. They grow less trustful every day that the future will be good, and more unsure of what to do about it.

There are so many aspects to this issue it can be hard to target just one. Let's look at the re-training question, though. Re-training sounds good in theory, and I myself am a proponent of lifelong learning. I think it's healthy for a lot of reasons and no worker should expect to do the same job the same way his/her entire life.

The trouble is -- who has the money to be retrained? It's very expensive to go back to school, and the middle-aged worker usually has a family to support and a mortgage to pay. Loans, grants (if you can get them) are fine, but the time comes when that financial assistance must be repaid. Yet there is no guarantee that training will result in a good job: indeed, many "retrained" folks make much less than they used to. There are no guarantees in life, of course, but more than a few folks have re-entered the market only to find that the jobs they "trained" for have gone overseas. Case in point: CAD, computer-aided design. There was a big push to train displayed Detroit autoworkers in CAD in the late '80s. Guess where a lot of those jobs went? Meanwhile, the once-again displaced worker has more debt, bills to pay, and the same old situation to deal with.

Then there is the age factor. Workers, even degreed professionals, are passed over once they get a few gray hairs. I know a woman, in her 50s, tri-lingual, years of experience in banking, marketing, advertising, etc. She was downsized when the financial institution she worked for was bought out by a competitor. No one wanted her. The best she could manage was consulting assignments that would end after one year and force her to live temporarily in different countries, in different parts of the world. She didn't want that. Luckily, she had the financial wherewithal to start her own (successful) business. Other people, though, have not been so fortunate.

There is a human cost to all this change; human costs cause pain, pain causes trouble, and trouble rips the social fabric. Nothing drastic has happened in this country, but who says it couldn't? Our unions, after all, were born from blood.

This is why I believe there must also be social responsibility factored into capitalism's relentless drive for profits.

[idlisambar]

144. reasons for lack of competitiveness

You have given three good ones, but they are not enough on their own to give the full picture.

The education system is indeed mediocre (more broadly speaking our cultural framework is not conducive to academic achievement, it is not simply a matter of poor schools). Nonetheless, the achievement gap is not as hurtful as it may seem. For one, the gap significantly broadens only at the high school level. In terms of basic literacy and basic skills that are required for most jobs, the vast majority of Americans have the requisite qualifications or are able to acquire them in a short time. Granted, there is a significant underclass of low achievers, but the pool of labor is large enough so that any internationally competitive firm needing literate and competent employees will be able to find them. However, one major difference between the U.S. and Canada and many of their competitors (Japan, Germany) is the lack of on the job training and/or apprenticeships. This is a critical disadvantage that is better attributed to the nature of the labor markets than the education system per se.

Where basic education really makes a difference is in higher education, and here the disadvantages present in American high school education are somewhat mitigated by the high quality and high availability of post-secondary education. Our universities and junior colleges do a more than adequate job of providing the necessary qualifications to the labor pool; that is, except in the hard sciences and engineering, which is where the other major factor comes in -- the U.S.'s ability to attract the some of the brightest products of other education systems around the world.

The upshot is that education is something of a scapegoat. While certainly a factor, our continued strength in basic science and in knowledge-intensive industries like software and pharmaceuticals demonstrates that the U.S. does not suffer noticeably from a lack of brainpower. Granted the U.S. is dependent on an influx of foreigners to fill its upper echelon science and technology positions, and this bodes further ill down the road, but the crucial point is that the U.S. has lost competitiveness despite a general abundance of brainpower over the last 30 years.

Your second point was that regulations are holding U.S. firms back, particularly the high legal costs. Generally speaking it is in a society's interest to ensure that firms are not engaging in behavior that is harmful to it. There are two general approaches to doing so -- regulation and litigation. A well-designed regulatory framework provides the right carrots and sticks to keep firms in line with the interests of society. The current U.S. system is one that emphasizes litigation over regulation, and these high legal costs that you attribute to regulation are actually associated with litigation.

In a light-regulation heavy-litigation system like the U.S. has, firms are basically allowed complete freedom to do what they please until the problem becomes so bad and so noticeable that someone brings up a lawsuit. Generally speaking, once a problem gets into the legal system costs are much greater than they might have been had the problem been prevented in the first place through adequate regulation. The litigation system also has the unfortunate side effect of creating a strong "legal industry" that becomes a drain on society -- instigating "frivolous lawsuits" for example.

The upshot is that it is not really too much regulation, indeed our chief competitors operate in much more regulated environments, but the general poor quality of the regulations and the corresponding over-reliance on litigation that hurts us in competition.

Your last point regarding American and Canadian attitudes toward work is difficult to pin down, but there is truth to it. I would only suggest that such attitudes, where they are present, do not arise in a vacuum and may be symptoms of a larger problem. The Cost-Co, Wal-Mart comparison is illustrative of the fact that worker attitudes are at least partly a function of how they are treated. This is not to say that good employers won't face problems as well because even good employers must operate in a business and labor culture that predisposes individuals to engage in certain behaviors.

None of these however fully explains the lack of competitiveness. The most important single factor for the U.S.'s lack of competitiveness in tradable goods is the low-level of private investment on the part of firms -- particularly but not exclusively in manufacturing. Why U.S. firms invest so little deserves a post of its own, but for now it is enough to recognize that in capital intensive industries such as electronics, autos, machine tools, etc. an adequate level of investment both in infrastructure improvements and R&D are crucial for success, and U.S. firms just don't do enough of either.

[lostinacause]

147. In reponse

Perhaps it may be because of the disparity in education why America is loosing ground to other nations in manufacturing and other industries. From the information I have heard it seems to be the low end jobs that are currently being outsourced. Because of the ease of outsourcing individual parts of the operations America might be loosing these jobs. In the past it is possible that the highly educated made up for some inefficiencies the jobs that required less education.

I believe that America is becomming less appealing for the well educated to relocate to. This is both because of economic and non-economic factors. From an economic standpoint the benefit to relocating to america has fallen. Because of a falling dollar the payoff from moving to America has fallen. When I was studding engineering the payoff for relocating to America was sallary increase that was between 20 and 30 percent higher. Now it is closer to 10 percent. Taxation decreases in other countries, increasing American debt and lower economic expectations are other contributors to the decreasing recruitment of educated foreigners.

From a non-economic standpoint America has lost much of its reputation due to terrorism and the War on Terror. The chance of a terrorist attack has increased given the horror of September 11. Foreigners are skeptical about the Patriot Act especially if they are of ethnic decent. Bush's lack of desire to cooperate and his approach leading up to Iraq has also compromised America's reputation. America had been inflexible and insistent about yet had not made the case to foreigners that the war was necessary. The rise of the religious right especially in government has further scared people away.

I personally believe that a combination of the two systems should be used. Business to business issues are best settled through litigation. Regulation helps to ensure that consumers have the information and security they need. You do bring up a good point the small damages are often not brought to the courts. Punitive damages, however, seem to be more based on a company’s ability to pay rather then the damages they cause and the chance of them getting away with it. This makes it so that larger companies tend to be taken to court more then small companies and likely for more then the damage they do. Because of this operating costs may be higher because of punitive damages.

I believe the attitudes towards work are cause by factors that goes far beyond how people are treated by their employer. These values are part of the way we view consumption.

(I am out of time but I want to get this bumped so you actually get a chance to see it. If you could be so kind, would you post something in response so that this discussion can be continued? Your response is very thorough; I would like to give it the time to do it justice)

[idlisambar]

148. keeping it going

Perhaps it may be because of the disparity in education why America is losing ground to other nations in manufacturing and other industries.

Granted, this may be one factor but the relationship is not so straightforward. In many ways it may be the other way around -- as U.S. industry (particularly in manufacturing) started to lose competitiveness in the mid-1970's, the premium on a science and engineering education decreased. Manufacturing firms could no longer afford to offer the same job security and salary increases they once had thus reducing the appeal of engineering in relation to other professions requiring comparable expertise (law, finance, medicine) This combined first with cooling down of the space race and second the end of the Cold War further reduced the preminum for scientists and engineers that had been building up rapidly since the end of WWII. What emerged was a vicious circle in which math and science achievement, once prized in the Post-War era, became culturally less important and even discouraged -- which then further hurt American competitiveness prospects.

Even so, despite all of these trends, the U.S. is nonetheless the leader in basic science as it currently stands, and this was even more true when American manufacturing competitiveness was first seriously challenged in the 70's. The trendlines are all pointing down, (relatively speaking) for U.S. science as those who graduated in the high times of the late 50's and 60's are retiring, but the basic point is that the decline started in times when the products of what was once a world-class educational system were at their peak. This article illustrates my point that US science is currently losing ground but from a very high base...
http://daghlian.net/scrapbook/03RESE.html


Your point that the U.S. has become less attractive both in economic and non-economic terms is granted, but 9-11 and dollar-weakness are relatively recent phenomenon so it doesn't play much of a part in a much longer running trend. The real significance of these recent trends is that it makes already weak future prospects look even weaker.

Continuing with my last point of my previous post that much of the lack of compeititiveness in U.S. manufacturing is due to lack of private investment in R&D and infrastructure upgrades, examing just the R&D side...The graphs here briefly illustrate the point...
http://www.creatingtechnology.org/R&D.htm

There are several trends that you can get from these. The first point is that the level of overall R&D, while roughly comparable was exceeded by Germany and Japan during most of the relevent period. Moreover, the much of U.S. R&D was devoted to defense and the life sciences, while R&D devoted to the physical sciences and engineering, fields of more relevence to manufacturing and industrial competitiveness, dropped during the period.

Considering just private investment, notice that historically the U.S. has had strong public investment in R&D and relatively low private investment. While this is changing now, during the relevent period the level of private R&D relative to total R&D is lower than in Germany and Japan. This is significant because non-defense public R&D is generally accessible to private firms of all nationalities and so is not as strong a basis for competitive advantage.

The Japanese pattern of high private R&D investment, concentrated in fields of more impact to industry (chemicals, materials, electronics, energy, robotics, etc.) has been duplicated in the East Asian region as a whole, and is one big reason why the region has enjoyed greater success in manufacturing.

[The_Casual_Observer]

32. He can fucking sell real estate or home loans for a living

like everybody else.

[Joebert]

35. Helping each other out.

Quick anecdote...

I work for a large international company that enjoys outsourcing and laying people off. In fact, if it were a sport, we'd gold medal. Every time.

Normal corporate policy, at any company, is to not answer job-reference or employment history calls.

I've taken the stance, that as long as we're going to keep whacking good people, that I'm going to keep giving references.

3 or 4 people recently have had perspective employers call me. Since I'm the guy that taught them all when they started, I know everybody. I am supposed to direct the caller to corporate HR.

I can't do that. I am always honest, but I make darn sure that they know a good worker is available. That they got whacked due to staff reductions, not ability.

Many of the people I know that have been whacked are coming in at 30-50% of what they made. And the jobs are contract, non-benefits jobs.

I wonder when they'll figure out that the CxO positions don't need 20M a year, and that the people with the actual knowledge that makes the company go should be paid a little better?

What's wild, is that the folks that the jobs are outsourced to still need 2 jobs to be able to pay rent.

Who does this benefit?

[shrike]

45. You're a good man

With cojones, I might add

[Corgigal]

58. I also wanted to say thank you

because my daughter who got fired from Honeywell is going exactly what you wrote about. To get one damn person to answer the phone and tell an employer how shes a good worker and gave an extra 30 minutes a day for free is too impossible to these pricks.

So she starts another job tomorrow, by luck, but its much less then she was being paid. At least her unemployment didn't run out.

[redqueen]

51. Butbutbut... the job market is booming!

:sarcasm:

I hate repukes because they hate the working class.

[Imagevision]

115. Yes!, Bush just said over 200,000 jobs added in July - how many were cut??

[earth mom]

53. It took my dh 10 years to find a job making almost what he was making

10 years ago. We were among the working poor with no end in sight and yeah, he got lucky a year ago, and now we can breathe a bit financially though not much because adjusted for inflation dh's 2005 wages don't equal his 1995 wages. Still shafted, though not as bad. :sarcasm:

TIME FOR A REALITY CHECK

People of this country have been fooled into thinking that these politicians care about them and the people of this country. We all know * doesn't give a rats ass about anyone but himself, and make no mistake, the Clintons don't give a damn either. Face it folks: NONE of em care. (okay, maybe with the exception of Conyers) But seriously,if they really cared, we'd have a living wage, national health care, a clean environment and so on and so forth. The writing is on the wall and it's just going to get worse. It's a class war and they are winning. America is soon to be a 3rd world country. And that's just the way they ALL-the Clintons, *Co, etc-want it.

IT WORKS FOR THEM.

Now doesn't it?! :puke:

[Media_Lies_Daily]

60. But, but, but....the NeoCon economy added so many jobs recently!....

...I really despise the NeoCons.

[SleeplessinSoCal]

70. We've got to force the business community to pay for retraining

If the GOP wants all the money to stay at the top of the economic ladder, they need to prepare the country for the shifting jobs market and pay for proper education.

They have to put more money into high school job training and community colleges.

Instead they are cutting that funding.

Nobody talks about this much in the media and Clinton isn't doing anything at this point. He campaigned in 92 on re-educating for the new economy and then he just blew it off....

[Mari333]

82. Classes cost an enormous amount

I just signed up for 2 classes at the college near me, because even at 54 I can finish college ( I never finished my last semester)..2 crappy classes cost 500 dollars..Im digging into my retirement savings to do it, also..ridiculous!! Companies dont care, its short term profits for them, thats all.

[2Design]

120. student loans - interest is tax deductible

unlike credit cards - students loans are low cost loans.
and the interest is deductible

on your retirement you will pay the government 10% penalty
and you probably can earn more on your money than what you will pay in interest on student loan

And yes the price is high for classes - but go ahead and finish that degree -

I know you can do it - it took me some time but I did finish - and it is for you not for others

You go girl -

[BronxBoy]

92. Retrain for what?

With all of the discussions about retraining, I have been hard pressed to have some one illustrate to me an segment of the economy that is understaffed and is large enough to absorb the massive numbers of displaced workers that we are creating at a livable wage.

I've heard a lot of people parrot that healthcare is now the industry that to go into. But given the steady erosion of healthcare benefits, I don't see how an ecomonic case can be made that this is the new mega-job creator.

If anyone else can think of a understaffed, growing segment of the economy, I'd like to hear about it.

BB

[raccoon]

103. You said it.

That's what I've been wondering too.

Of course I've heard healthcare too, but "the steady erosion of healthcare benefits" may lead to layoffs there too.

Nursing is frequently mentioned as a good field to go into, but I've heard of nurses being recruited from other countries to work in the US.

[hollowdweller]

123. For sure. There's just not that many decent jobs even if you have a degree

[54anickel]

110. Well, you could at least practice "physician heal thyself"

:sarcasm:

[dejaboutique]

84. soon enough we won't have race issues

soon enough there will be no race issues, soon enough it will be rich and poor, skin color will not determine anything, only your net value, those that can live in the fenced in communities and those who cannot regardless of color.

[lovuian]

89. Starving people get angry!!! thats when riots start and crime!!!

can we build enough prisons orphanages and can we keep them passive while they have no hope!!! No they will get angry and desperate!!!

This is where the Republicans are leading this country!!!

[Imagevision]

116. Riots? - that's one way to bring the troops home!

[newswolf56]

145. I believe one of the secret reasons we are in Iraq is training...

U.S. troops in urban warfare so they have the skills (and more importantly the take-no-prisoners mindset) necessary to mercilessly suppress dissent here at home as the economy collapses and the nation deteriorates ever further into the vicious Third World/banana-republic tyranny of oligarchy versus proletariat. Such a motive is especially obvious in the case of the National Guard, which would be the first to be called out to break strikes, smash demonstrations and conduct mass arrests. This is also the reason Bush, the Republicans and their Democratic Leadership Council collaborators are so opposed to re-instating the draft: a draftee army is a people's army, useless for class warfare and the forcible enslavement of its own nation. The precedents for the U.S. use of the military in such a manner are long and bloody: Google "labor violence"; "american labor violence"; "u.s. labor violence". (My apology for the reflexively fascist American-bourgeois lack of class consciousness that prompts this history to be labeled "labor violence" when in fact it should be called "management violence" or "plutocratic violence" -- the Googling of which also yields significant results.)

[cap]

146. yes especially the "private security" forces

you are right on about this.

[Deja Q]

91. Virtues of retraining?! WHAT FOR? The jobs are not there...

or can readily be offshored.

Are the educational institutions making a fast buck in what's going on then?

(Also note, all of those graphic arts commercials seemed to have disappeared from the airwaves too... or the last time I looked, a couple months' back... everyone knows that animation stuff goes to Korea... the rest of it can go to the same places...)

[raccoon]

130. I don't know about a fast buck,

but certainly, any educational institution benefits from increased enrollment. Several years ago, a fellow employee at the community college where I work said that enrollment goes up when the economy is bad and it goes down when the economy is good. IOW, when people can't find jobs, they go to school; when they can, they don't.

[area51]

93. kick (n/t)

[Imagevision]

114. The erosion of the middle class will erode a stable society

[lostinacause]

133. The stability of a system is largely determined by the whether the system

provides a better alternative then the absence of the system.

[shrike]

135. Well, systems can be stable

under a dictatorship, I suppose. Stable by force.

[lostinacause]

136. Yes and with no middle class.

[shrike]

137. And this a good thing? n/t

[lostinacause]

141. I never advocated the "desruction of the middle class".

I just said that it could still be stable even without a middle class.

[Vinca]

140. It makes me furious when I hear the upbeat economic spin.

There are millions of people like the former auto worker and the "great opportunity to go back to school and learn a new profession" crap is idiotic unless someone is going to subsidize the guy's family for the period of training. Kids don't magically stop eating, mortgages aren't paid by the good fairy. It's a shame that rich people run this country because they don't get it and never will.