Special Report: Blue-collar, unemployed and seeing red

[steve2470]

http://www.reuters.com/article/idUSTRE68E2HH20100915

(Reuters) - Scott Stevenson was only 10 years old when he first heard grown-ups voice the gloomy words that, in retrospect, predicted the disappointing arc his life has taken.

"I remember them actually telling us that our generation would be the first not to be better off than our parents," said the 39-year-old Stevenson. "It was fifth grade and I remember thinking, 'How do you know?'"

Three decades later, the pessimistic prognostication he was so quick to dismiss as a boy now seems, as he put it, "like a prophecy."

Stevenson is one of the 14.9 million U.S. workers who are officially jobless, according to the latest statistics from the U.S. Department of Labor. More depressingly, he is also among the 6.2 million unfortunate enough to have been that way for 27 weeks or more -- a beleaguered cohort that the government dubs the "long-term unemployed."

Long article, but worth reading.

[rfranklin]

1. Because Scott, the "Reagan Democrats" voted your future down the toilet...

That was the beginning of the downward spiral for working people.

[HughBeaumont]

2. 30 years of Corporate Takeover of Everything + The Great Risk Shift will do that to a country.

30 years of Faith Based Crap-o-nomics should have taught Dumbercia NOT to vote against their best interests.

Yet, here we are . .. in danger of losing the House. All because the UHmerican voter has no such thing as patience and the American corporation has no such thing as empathy or unselfishness.

One of the people voting Republican that day will be Stevenson's mom, 63-year-old Joan Stevenson. The daughter of a machinist and a self-described "Jack Kennedy Democrat," she voted for Obama in 2008 but has been disappointed by how little his administration's polices have helped unemployed workers like her son.

"The Democratic Party isn't what it used to be for us," she said. "The philosophy used to be if the Democratic Party was in power everybody got a piece of the pie, and if the Republicans were in power the rich got a piece of the pie. Now, nobody is getting a piece of the pie."


Slooooooooooooow learners, we appear to be.

[Warpy]

3. Gen X really had the rug pulled out from under them

They came of age during Reagan and thought that was how the country was supposed to be. Too many of them self identified as conservatives and voted that way to change the direction in time. Now they're suffering for it, along with the very young and the oldest workers. It doesn't matter if they did the right things according to the conservative playbook. They're all out in the cold with the rest of us now.

Unfortunately, he'll be sabotaged by Mom, whose need to punish the Democrats might well foreshadow a Republican resurgence that will be worse than useless, it will be downright damaging.

Let's hope Mom wakes up in time and that all the people just like her do, too. It's marginally better to have a paralyzed party that doesn't get much done to a party that does all the wrong things.

In the meantime, nothing urges me to homicide more than some suit prancing around and smugly intoning, "We all have to do more with less."

Start with executive pay, Binky.

[HughBeaumont]

7. Er . . . he'll be sabotaging himself also.

See post 6. Scott is apparently drinking the same Laissez-FAIL Kool-Aid his mom is drinking.

Zero patience. 30 years of Reaganomics isn't going to be cured in 5 years, let alone 2.

[FirstLight]

4. This is my generation,

...and yes, I am not better off than my parents. In fact, if it wasn;t for them, my kids wouldn;t have shoes, bikes, or other things we used to take for granted growing up...

I am beginning to think I will never own my own home, much less ever be able to buy a new car or have any kind of 'middle class life'

and now GenX is reaching their 40s, and we are seeing firsthand what the greed of reagan and the bushs and the general ME generation has done to us. I only hope that as my generation comes into its 'power' (age-wise and politically speaking) that we lean more progressively and can turn some things around...

meanwhile my children's generation is poised to be dumpster divers, and environmental refugees...

[tjwash]

5. Are we finally figuring out rampant consumerism and corporate whoring is not the way to go?

And the subjects of this "report" are the same crowd that we used to call "reagan democrats" in the 80's. They didn't want to hear any of Carter's warnings about rampant overspending, banking and corporate whoring, and the dangers of basing our entire economy around middle eastern oil and non renewable energy.

They all gravitated to the senile old bastard that convinced them that greed is good, we can cut taxes and deficit spend like crazy, and trickle down deregulation economics is the way to go. What we have 30 years later is the result of the eventual deregulation of everything that benefited the top 1 percent. Looks like the rising tide that Reagan talked about didn't lift all boats, it just cleared the way in the harbor for the biggest ones to sail off to different countries with their jobs.

[HughBeaumont]

6. Siiiiiiiiiigggghhhh . . . Jesus CHRIST . . .

Read further . . .

Stevenson insists he holds no grudge against the business community for its unwillingness to hire. "I understand they have to hoard the money because they don't know what's coming around the corner," he said. "They wonder what DC's going to do. ... They know healthcare reform is around the corner. Everybody's real tentative."

And even though he's been forced to move back in with his parents and has virtually no income, he opposes Obama's proposal to let some tax cuts for the wealthy, dating back to George W. Bush's presidency, expire at year's end in order to raise revenue and reduce the deficit.

"How is more people, keeping more of the money they earn, bad for the economy?" he said. "The answer is -- it's not."

Perhaps most surprisingly, Stevenson says he's worried Obama and the Democratic Congress may move to extend unemployment benefits past 99 weeks early this fall in an effort to curry popular support ahead of the midterm vote.

Then Scotty . . . you're getting EXACTLY the America YOU DESERVE!!! :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad:

[Brickbat]

8. And yet another opportunity to bring "Reagan Democrats" back into the fold is lost.

That's OK -- Democrats can ALWAYS depend on labor money, volunteers and GOTV efforts in November. So frustrating.