Mind the discouraged workers aren’t even counted and sure are too young for social security – THEY did not choose to “retire”. For far too many, finding the next job is about survival, folks, not what age to collect social security. Per this article
Given the increasing claims of age discrimination in this recession, older Americans suffering longer bouts of joblessness may not in itself be so surprising. That education seemingly works against anyone in this older cohort is. Nearly half of the long-term unemployed who are 45 or older have “some college,” a bachelor’s degree, or more. By contrast, those with no education at all make up just 15 percent of this older category. In other words, if you’re older and well educated, the outlook is truly grim.
Again, my mother’s counsel to me back in 1964 comes to mind:
It isn’t good enough to have a profession. You need to know a trade or have a skill other folks will pay for, just in case.
It may be pointless to go back and forth about social security, because really, if you are 55 or 62 and laid off, the outlook is incredibly grim as far as finding another “W2” job:
There simply aren’t enough jobs. Before the Great Recession, there were 1.5 workers in the US for every job slot; today, that ratio is 4.8 to one. Put another way, with normal growth instead of a recession, we’d have 10 million more jobs than we currently do. Closing that gap would require adding 300,000 jobs every month for the next five years. In August 2010, the economy shed 54,000 jobs. You do the math.
Worse yet, if you imagine five workers queued up for that single position, the longer you’re unemployed, the farther back you stand. Economists have found that long-term unemployment dims a worker’s prospects with each passing day. “This pattern suggests that the very-long-term unemployed will be the last group to benefit from an economic recovery,” Michael Reich, an economist at the University of California-Berkeley, told Congress in June.
So if you were laid off, maybe it is time to run for office, start a business, take early social security and move to Costa Rica or some place you can live on what you receive, or even research and use part of your 401k (if you have one) to seriously start a business or learn a trade that cannot be outsourced. The quality of life you save may be your own…and this fear and the reality of “too few jobs” may be the engine really driving the debate over social security.
So, guess what, it really is about “jobs, jobs, jobs” and for some of us, creating those jobs one at a time – and for those who can, and should, creating those jobs for others and being proud to make a reasonable, sustainable profit rather than squeezing every last dime out of someone else.
Anybody 50+ would be well advised to put the energy that was placed into resumes into creating a business.
<
p>It disturbs me that younger people think that somebody must GIVE them a job. The big cry for government to CREATE jobs is part of this. It’s too bad we don’t do micro-loans, like are done in India, for job creation.
<
p>Your mother was a smart woman.
…strikes me as requiring a very specific skill set and money to invest which I wouldn’t assume everybody has.
Money to invest? What, you think every JOB has to be the next MicroSoft?
<
p>It’s about supporting yourself, not being a plutocrat.
<
p>The high water mark in my life for W-2 wages was $40,000. And that high is gone, and my W-2 wages are receeding. But I have always had other sources of income, and those are creeping up on the W-2.
<
p>I pretty much AM a senior – been collecting discounts at some overly generous donut chains for a couple of years. I will never be rich, but I will never depend on a sole source of income either. This didn’t used to be an unusual life style, and I recommend it to anyone in hard(er) times.
The problem is the republican party and conservatives believes everyone must OWN a business to be successful.
<
p>Too many Chiefs not enough Indians.
Ray – read THIS COMMENT from Amber.
<
p>Now, do you feel she is nothing but a ‘business owner’ because she worked to make herself a success?
<
p>Democrats believe that nobody SHOULD own a business unless they have a degree from Harvard. Too many Indians ‘unworthy’ to be Chiefs.
No PP, but I also believe you do not have to be a business owner in order to be successful.
<
p>A good wage and a middle class lifestyle should be reachable for all who put in the work, YES even at Wal-Mart.
I’m sorry, Ray, but this is patently unsustainable in today’s world. It just won’t happen. It won’t happen because it can’t happen. We couldn’t possibly consume the resulting flood of goods and services, and we would further wreck the planet with the resulting explosion in energy consumption needed to manufacture and then use all the resulting schlock.
<
p>The world where “putting in the work” resulted in a “good wage” and a “middle class lifestyle” ended somewhere around the time that we figured out how to replace a hundred workers in a steel mill with one robot and one highly skilled operator. That genie is out of the bottle and isn’t going back in.
<
p>Yet, the American economy still produces more wealth than any single nation in the history of humanity. The issue is not our ability to create wealth, the issue is how we distribute that wealth. A nation of workers punching time-clocks is not the answer.
<
p>In the same way that the GOP must bring something better than the “cutting taxes” to the table, so also do we Democrats need to bring something more creative than “jobs jobs jobs”.
A liveable wage for the working classes means:
<
p>1. You can rent a safe and kempt apartment with heat, light, water, no leaks, functioning appliances, and sufficient space for you and your family.
<
p>2. Food, sufficient and healthful, for you and your family prepared in your own home by you.
<
p>3. Clothing.
<
p>4. Public k-12 education and child care, if needed.
<
p>5. Able to afford public transportation, if this suffices for employment and to get your kids to school where you live, and a modest vehicle and gas and insurance, if public transportation does not suffice.
<
p>6. Median payments into social security.
<
p>The Hyatt Housekeepers, at $20 an hour could do 1-5 — their replacements at $8.50 an hour cannot. Ergo – my term of “Hyattization of jobs” for corporate greed where earning a sustainable profit has been replaced by earning maximum profits even if the earning of that maximum profit renders life barren and unbearable for your fellow citizens and your own profit not sustainable.
<
p>A liveable wage does not mean: Home ownership, a new vehicle, private school educations for your kids, and a fat 401k.
<
p>Middle class lifestyle means;
<
p>1-6 above, plus:
<
p>1. Ability to purchase and maintain a home through home ownership
<
p>2. Ability to eat in restaurants as desired, certainly at least once a week;
<
p>3. Clothing, often designer or upscale;
<
p>4. Can choose between private or public education without relying on scholarships;
<
p>5. Able to afford a new or used vehicle as one chooses;
<
p>6. Social security plus a pension or 401k
<
p>Ray – retail had been sufficient for working class lifestyles, but not middle class; good manufacturing and skilled trade jobs once provided middle class lifestyles as did public employment such as teaching or public works.
<
p>Retail employment, domestic employment (maids, housekeeping, yard work, landscaping) never provided a middle class lifestyle unless one worked multiple full time jobs, say, and both parents did so. Self employment can yield the middle class lifestyle but often requires years of working 60 or more hours a week to do so. Examples include restaurant owners, yard work company owners, home improvement businesses, lawyers (yes that is a long hours worked profession),hairdressers, musicians, doctors (another long hours worked profession actually), accountants or book keepers.
I agree with you. I believe we the people need to start making things in this country again. Wealth is created and added to a society when you take raw material and make something useful from it.(IE sand to glass)
(cotton to cloth)
We have gotten away from that over the last 30 years and have looked toward wealth distribution, such as the financial sector,health insurance sector and service sector.
<
p>
I fundamentally disagree with the dichotomy you attempt to create. I suppose we are perhaps quibbling over the meaning of “wealth”.
<
p>Let’s use your example of cotton-to-cloth. Suppose a team of engineers and technicians has invented a robot that takes in cotton and produces not just “cloth”, but full pieces of pre-cut cloth ready for another robot to assemble into shirts, jeans, and jackets. A robot that is fed, through software, a sequence of desired patterns, colors, and shapes — each different, each created by a different designer using a CAD tool at a workstation somewhere else in the world. A robot that is ultimately driven by consumers who log into a web-site and point-and-click their way to the specific jeans they want. Think this is far-fetched? Check out this:
<
p>
<
p>Consumers are still buying shirts, jeans, and jackets. The company that owns the robot, together with the various corporate players in the supply chain from cotton-field to consumer are all making money.
<
p>That robot, however, takes one person to operate. It works around the clock, doesn’t need overtime, doesn’t take vacations, and doesn’t need a health-care plan.
<
p>Who creates the “wealth” in this scenario? Is it the designers and engineers who create the robot? But they don’t know ANYTHING about shirts, jeans, and jackets. Is it the farmers who grow the cotton in the first place? Is it the designers, who create the patterns from which the robot produces its goods? But they don’t “make” anything — they are squarely in the “service sector” that you denigrate. What about that supply chain? Somebody has to create it. Somebody has to keep it working. Are you suggesting that those “service sector” contributions aren’t creating wealth?
<
p>You can believe what you like, but we left the industrial age behind decades ago, for a set of very good reasons. Demanding that we create wealth by “making things in this country again” is as anachronistic in its own way as those who similarly demand that we return to the gold standard.
<
p>If we, as Democrats, stay stuck on this, we will lose, just as surely as John Henry lost his battle with the “steam drill”.
<
p>
they are needed in our workforce also.(wal-mar can not make a profit if the store doesnt open or if the shelves arent stocked)
<
p>The fact remains is this country needs to bring back the protections that we had up until Reagan in 1980. Tarriffs protected our jobs from being outsourced to country with less regulations and less living wages than the USA has.
<
p>My point was banks do not create wealth, they just distribute it, same with health insurance companies(SERVICE SECTOR) These two sectors are the fastest growing in our economy.
<
p>The robot that you speak of was manufactured,(hopefully here in the USA.) Yes times have changed, but that doesnt mean we cant still manufacture goods in this country.
<
p>Adding value to something is what we need to get back to as a Country. Banking and insurance do not add value.
<
p>Taking raw material and adding value creates wealth because the item you manufacture is more valuable in its finished form than it was in its raw form.
You wrote:
<
p>The point is that we have been working for decades to accomplish this (turn raw material into finished goods) without labor, and we have largely succeeded — beyond the wildest expectations of 1950s America. The path to prosperity for all of us (which is different from “jobs jobs jobs”) lies in changing how we distribute the astronomical wealth that already create.
<
p>We have already solved the wealth-creation problem. We have miserably failed to solve the resulting wealth-distribution problem.
<
p>It’s true that the robot was manufactured — the few dozens of jobs sustained by that manufacture destroyed thousands or tens of thousands of jobs in the textile industry. The steam drill was built by a few workers as well — and destroyed the jobs of thousands of track workers. We have been successfully applying this ten-to-one or hundred-to-one “productivity increase” for decades. We have not as of yet recognized the unintended consequences of that success.
<
p>It is not as though there is a shortage of things to be done in America. The very fabric of our economy is premised upon unsustainably cheap energy, and that fabric must be rebuilt literally from the ground up to reflect the true cost of energy. Our public infrastructure is crumbling from decades of neglect, and needs to be rebuilt (after being redesigned in light of the above).
<
p>All of this takes wealth, wealth that we in fact have, and all of this serves to put that wealth to use in a way that benefits all of us. This is the fundamental flaw in the premise that we should be “reducing government” — we should be doing just the opposite.
<
p>All of this is adamantly opposed by those who currently hold the wealth.
that people in their 50s are in the worst position during periods of high unemployment such as this one, since employers are very cautious in hiring older (and probably more expensive) employees and because it’s not like people in their 50s are going to go through job re-training at this stage of their careers.
<
p>However, I doubt that it’s not getting Social Security that most people in this age group are worried about — it’s not having health care coverage! Not only do they not yet qualify for Medicare, but due to our employer-based health care system, unemployed folks have another reason to panic when they lose their jobs.
<
p>This is yet another argument for wholesale changes to the health care system — separating employment from health care coverage would not only mean not losing your coverage when you lose your job in a tough economy, but it would free additional money for employers to put into creating jobs. But that’s obviously a much bigger issue.
Even worse is that an employer can choose a carrier that employees don’t like or want, and has then discharged that ‘obligation’.
<
p>Health insurance and employement got married during WWII as a way of getting around wage and price controls. The time has long since passed when the divorce should have been filed. Let a thousand flowers bloom, and let each consumer choose what comapny they want.
And I’d add that I’d be happy when the debate between liberals and conservatives becomes one in which both sides can agree employer-based health care is a poor model.
<
p>The debate would then become about what the alternative should be. It would be one in which liberals (like me) argue for single-payer and conservatives (like you, PP) would argue as you do here for allowing “each consumer choose what company they want.” In either case, the divorce between employer and health insurance would be complete. There’s little reason now for any company — from big auto-maker down to small craft shops — should be in the business of health care.
I’ve noticed Social Security and the deficit are still the big talking points around Washington DC and in the media. Once again, jobs and the economy are on the back burner.
And THAT is why the economy is in trouble. Using incarceration and foster care as engines for economic activity is economic cannibalism.
<
p>If all the incarcerated folks were released – just the nonviolent offenders AND all the “discouraged unemployed” who have given up and are taking early social security or living on someone’s couch, the true number would be well over 20% of nonproductive, drifting adults. Not acceptable.
<
p>Also, I believe, not sustainable if this state is to maintain its status, and this country is to avoid becoming a second tier economy.
…the underemployed and anyone else like me who is looking, but not receiving unemployment. I substitute teach, which I like to call being “gainfully unemployed”.
Good pun Christopher. Gotta agree jobs should be the most important thing. Also disagree Porcupine that young people want to be handed a job. I applied to over 180 jobs over a eight month period before I was hired, three of those months were after I graduated and was forced to couch surf and really save my money to get by. We are not expecting hand outs. In many cases its because schools, even colleges, poorly prepare us for the job world and how to enter the market. The other case is that there are very few good jobs for people just out of school, and that we are immediately saddled with debt as well. Good entry level jobs are hard to come by as well and we got to compete with the laid off over 50 year olds who usually get picked over us because of their experience.
I don’t mean hand outs. But there is an attitude that a person must go to work FOR somebody instead of working for yourself. During that 8 months – did you try to market yourself? As a delivery person/messenger, or a PCA/handyman? Doing odd jobs or sellling stuff you made, or a direct seller program? Like you said, you needed money – there are companies like SnapOn and ManCave that have direct selling geared at men, and are meant to be part time. Hell, get a paper delivery route!
<
p>Of course, you have debt, you have a profession, you have a dream. That’s a good thing – but as the saying goes, the perfect is the enemy of the good. And he who does not work does not eat. An entry level JOB can be exactly that – not an entry level CAREER, but work.
When my husband and I moved to Massachusetts, I had completed law school, and taken the bar and passed it in Michigan and was waiting to pass in Massachusetts. But I type about 120 words per minute, and worked my way through law school, including as a hearing transcriber for the State of Michigan. In fact, at one point while in law school and raising a one year old I had five jobs, three of which were self employment income.
<
p>As you may have guessed, I am NOT a trust fund baby.
<
p>As that was 1983, personal computers and printers were not as common as they are now, so I created a flyer, got my name out there, and opened a typing business while waiting for my bar results, and before “hanging out my shingle” – in fact I ran both a newbie law office and a typing service for many years, as well as doing commission jewelry and jewelry repair.
<
p>That all being said, there remains a market for resume creating, term papers, editing, etc.
Eventually the phone call would come. The phone would ring and GM would order everyone back to work; Dad would go back to work the next Monday. We would breathe a little easier, eat a little better, scrimp a little less.
<
p>That was back when we made things in this country. Pittsburgh made the steel, Toledo made the glass, Akron made the tires; Detroit put it all together, stuck on tailfins and chrome and shipped ’em out. Texas made the gas and oil that drove it all.
<
p>We had big companies, many of which dominated the global economy. GM, Ford, Chrysler, US Steel, Bethleham Steel, and others. Big Three, Big Steel, Big Oil. Big companies. Rich companies.
<
p>We had – with a few timeouts along the way for a recession or two- lifetime employment. We had company healthcare, pensions, supplemental unemployment, cost-of-living wage increases. Many many children of the depression clawed their way out of poverty working these jobs.
<
p>The companies’ profits and the employees wages were taxed to create social benefits, like education. Education that got us kids of Depression kids up over the hump into the middle class.
<
p>It was a helluva life.
<
p>That phone call doesn’t come anymore. Those big companies, companies we thought would always be there, are gone – or shells of themselves. That economy is not coming back. This recession is not going to end when GM, and the others, call back hundreds of thousands of workers with one phone call. GM can’t do that anymore.
<
p>Those benefits – and some really crappy cars – helped bankrupt GM. If we are going to move to the next economy, a greener economy, we need to move to the next social benefits system. And come up with better ways to fund them.
<
p>We progressives and Democrats can do this in a way that maintains the safety net and recognize the reality of the new economy. Or we can let the very uncompassionate conservatives take us back to the 1890’s dog-eat-dog social Darwinism.
<
p>Peter’s right that we need to divorce benefits from employment. Especially healthcare. It may have been a way to avoid WWII wage controls, but it was also attractive to businesses because it gave them more control over their employees- “can’t quit, I need the health insurance”.
<
p>A public option for health insurance would do that to a great extent, just as public options for education make it affordable for most people to go to college. And just like social security and medicare make healthcare possible for a segment of the population. It would be a lot easier to move to Peter’s 1099 world with a public option.
<
p>We could, as Peter says, create a finance system that helps finance 1099 businesses. Microlending does work in India. No reason it can’t work here. There are other ideas. The same support for kids becoming plumbers and electricians as the kids going to Harvard, anyone? Put our public money into our community banks and credit unions instead of bailing out big banks, anyone?
<
p>The economy that emerges from this recession is going to rest on small and individual businesses more than our economy has for decades. We need to move from Industrial Progressivism to a New Progressivism, a progressivism that supports the little businesses.
<
p>Peter’s not completely wrong here.
<
p>
Ooops, sorry, I was trying Republican bipartisanship.
<
p>;-)
<
p>JK!!
<
p>But, you’re right. It could be. Coulda woulda shoulda. Road to hell and all that.
Ever notice how the big prize on Top Chef and Project Runway is $100,000 to start your own business?
<
p>Why couldn’t the state do something like that? Set aside $200,00 for a competition, design the rules, let people vote, and give all of them exposure?