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Down and Out in White-Collar America
XorNand writes "Fortune has a pretty sobering article on the employment situation for white-collar workers. By many accounts, we've never had it harder--the slump in the 80's primarily hit blue-collar workers. While bleak, things might be inching towards the light; as my econ professor says, jobs are the last thing to recover after a recession."
Linux is growing but unfortunately all of those people who got their msce's and then IT jobs 4 years ago are now looking at different career paths. maybe they can use visualbasic to write a job search client?
Dada ended art.
It is official -- The UN is now confirming: The USA is dying
.9 of a Euro. Coming on the heels of a recent Usenet survey which plainly states that The American Economy is in a recession, this news serves to
One more crippling bombshell crushed the already beleaguered American economy
when x-rates.com confirmed that the American Dollar has dropped yet again,
now down to
reinforce what we've known all along. The USA is collapsing in complete disarray, as fittingly exemplified by failing dead last [samag.com] in the recent Sys Admin comprehensive networking test.
You don't need to be a Kreskin to predict the USA's future. The hand writing is on the wall: The USA faces a bleak future. In fact there won't
be any future at all for the USA because it is dying. Things are looking very bad for America. As many of us are already aware, the US continues to lose relevence. Red ink flows like a river of blood.
The IT industry is the most endangered of them all, having lost 93% of its core
developers. The sudden and unpleasant departures of long time IT jobs to india only serve to underscore the point more clearly. There can no longer be any doubt: The American IT Industry is dying.
Let's keep to the facts and look at the numbers.
Microsoft Encarta states that there are 291,065,636 people in America. What is the US's national debt? Let's see. According to the The Debt clock the USA's National Debt is 6,465,271,811,559.14. Therefore each American
is $22,212.42. in debt. In fact, the USA's national debt has continued to
increase an average of $992 million per day since September 30, 2002. Indeed,
it can clearly be seen the the US is going broke faster then the Soviet Union did
Due to the troubles of American Meddling, An Capitalist Gorvernment and so on,
South Vietnam was attacked was taken over by North Vietnam who sell another
a more compassionate government. Now Iraq is also dead, its corpse turned over
to feed the US media.
All major surveys show that the USA has steadily declined in the world economy.
America is very sick and its long term survival prospects are very dim. If
the USA is to survive at all it will be among a broken collection of warring
factions. America continues to decay. Nothing short of a miracle could save
it at this point in time. For all practical purposes, the United States of America is dead.
Fact: The USA is dying
How we arrived at the present situation:
The Supreme Court elected George Bush. As Alan Dershowitz said, it was an unprecedented abandonment of judicial principle.
New president George Bush put a man in charge of foreign policy who had lived his entire life with the idea that the way to solve problems is to kill people and destroy their property. This sent another very clear message to Arabs that the U.S. government support for killing Arabs would increase.
Arabs and Muslims are prevented from having a voice in their government partly by the U.S. government presence in Saudi Arabia.
Arabs and Muslims are prevented from living in peace by the violent Jewish occupation of the land that was theirs (now known as Israel).
The U.S. government pays between 3.5 and 5.5 billion dollars every year to Jews in Israel. This money is used to buy helicopter gunships and other high-profit American-made weapons. The weapons are used to kill Arabs.
Arab and Muslim cultures are not particularly good at communicating. They tend to feel that getting attention through violence is their only option. (It would be better if they could start their own influential newspaper in the U.S., as the Jewish people have in the New York Times.) The Jewish cultures are far better than the Arab cultures in teaching their children to be intellectual. To be influential by communicating, it is first necessary to learn to be intellectual.
Since the U.S. government is actively involved in killing Arabs, and the Israeli government is actively involved in killing Arabs, the Arabs decided to fight violence with violence and kill a few Americans. Numerous Arabs were willing to sacrifice their lives for this.
Using techniques the CIA taught them in Afghanistan, the Arabs planned and executed the destruction in the U.S. on September 11, 2001.
The uncertainty that violence brings causes leaders not to want to invest. The Bush administration has already incurred a huge U.S. government debt. The cost of pretending that the terrorists are sacrificing their lives for no reason is huge.
The uncertain political and financial climate (constant, never-ending war) and bankrupt government causes job loss and loss of opportunity.
When you actually read the article you will notice that these laid off guys have all low-level academic titles like bachlors. There is a MBA mentioned but everyone knows that you get these things for a few business seminars and they are nothing to do with real science. Not even economical sciences.
I wouldn't consider these guys as white-collar workers. evryone knows that knowledge standards are raising rapidly and with a BS you are still a blue-collar worker. White-collar starts at least with a MS or a PhD.
So, I wonder if real white-collar workers really have these problems.
Owner of a Mensa membership card.
One little thing you forgot: Things like Gas prices and products where cheap for the US because they printed the money they PAID in. The money always came back.
Imagine what would happen if all the delivery contracts all of the sudden would be charged in Euros instead of USD? Or if the OPEC would decide that they rather get paid in Euros? (And that is something they think about loud already).
Another not so well known fact is that:
1. Iraq had stopped asking for USD in their Oil for Food program sometime last year and rather wanted to be paid in Euros.
2. North Korea stopped trading in USD and has switched it's international trading to Euros.
3. Iran is on the way to do the same.
Can you imagine how much the US would hurt if people decided to abandon the Dollar (to which they only held on because the US Gov in the past was working for a strong Dollar) and move into the Euro?
All off the sudden the US would need to buy Euros in order to do foreign trade, which in turn would bring the Euro up higher and the USD down even more which in turn would mean higher prices at home, for EVERYTHING. Have a look next time you're shopping where your stuff is coming from and you will realize just how fucked up for the US that would be.
Maybe some more wars anyone? Europe maybe?
M.
If you want to e-mail me, use my PGP Key.
The budget surplus - yeah, that's pretty stupid too. The ability of Congress to curtail spending is pretty much independent of the economic health of the country. Find more money? OH BOY, LET'S SPEND MORE ON WORTHLESS SOCIAL PROGRAMS!
As for outsourcing - why don't you just go back to school and educate yourself into a position that is too specialized to be outsourced? Or at least find a way to capitalize on substandard work churned out by Indian code sweatshops.
--sdem
Managers DONT get it. I was told a couple of days ago: "OK, to complete the project you need time and hardware. I understand this". (The project requires a little more that 600 Mhz PIIIs with 32 meg video card and a half gig of ram. The project is also pointless. And I need another week. Management was told this up front). Response? "For political reasons, you can't have the time you need. Yes, I know you said it would take three weeks working twelve hour days and weekends, but I agreed to two. I can't change that. And I can't buy decent hardware... you'll just have to wait five minutes every time you rotate the model. Maybe you could bring some fast computers from home... we'll just make you a domain admin and let you set up your own subnet. No, I don't know what subnet means, MIS can't do what you need done and said to let you do it yourself." That, unfortunatly, was what happened. In real life. This week. And I'm sure it's not just my company. When managers get in over their heads, bad things happen. Moral of the story? NEVER give a manager a demo solution to a complex problem and let them run with it. You will be buried in consultants (double-buried by IBM, although they at least bury you in competent people who won't let you get your work done). You will get some free lunches out of IBM, but your life will quickly become hell once management starts experimenting with an idea that they don't understand. And when it doesn't work because manangement doesn't understand where the problem areas of implementation are, you will get blamed. Don't stick your neck out, kids. Even if you know the answer, don't raise your hand. Let some other dumbass do it.
Everyone wants to blame everyone and everything but the President when its HIS job to solve this problem.
He ignored the ecnoomy for 4 years, now our economy is absolute shit, its almost a great depression type situation here. Whats Bush going to do about it? Give tax cuts? Microsoft will use the extra money to hire more Indians, Thanks alot Mr. Bush for giving more jobs away using tax money.
If the gov wants to create jobs they need to invest in R&D, and give tax cuts to small businesses who hire a certain percentage of American employees while raising the taxes of businesses who hire mostly overseas.
Why should you give a taxcut to a sellout traitor business? If Microsoft wants to hire 70% Indian workers, they shouldnt get a tax cut, instead restrict tax cuts to companies who hire 90% American workers or above.
If you use Linux, please help development of Autopac
Despite what you wackos still believe, the President WAS elected according to the Constitution.
I'd also like to know what rights you had that were taken away after Bush's election. Remember kids, the evil DMCA was passed under Clinton's watch.
Disproportionate tax cuts? Why not? Since they pay a disproportionate share of the taxes?
Some servants we are, all these people from other countries are still coming in to be join us and be enslaved. You must know something the rest of the world doesn't.
SIG:Slashdot: indymedia for nerds.
If you think that the riots in 1992 were about race, you have never visited south central Los Angeles for any period of time. The povery and hoplessness in these areas in the early '90s was mind-boggling. I'll never forget my first visit to the area and the sense of utter decline and economic hoplelessness in this part of the city.
It doesn't matter what the trigger was. It could have been anything... but the tension that made riots possible was the direct result of the lack of availability any sort of productive activity in which to engage, ecnomic or otherwise.
STOP . AMERICA . NOW
Whilst penning this ode to your favorite socialist paradise you forgot to mention that Sweden's standard of living is below that of the lowest standard of living of any US state.
HTH
Manufacturing is not just about national pride, it is about involving citizens and craft together in a process which improves their own sense of destiny.
America does not make anything any more, because our lazy and stupid CEOs are more worry wart busy bodies than they are the dynamic and visionary leaders they project themselves to be. They send projects overseas, to anyone but their own companies, solely because they do not want to take any risks themselves.
The cure is very simple:
a) Shoot everyone who is a senior level manager or above. If they wanted to really lead, or were really good at it, they would have their own business.
b) Bar sales people and lawyers from becoming CEOs and politicians, respectively.
c) Educate people to realize that buying foreign products is a kind of treason. Really, half the reason the Japanese and Europeans do so well is that they are culturally disinclined to buy foreign stuff. They don't view trade as an equal exchange, they view it as an opportunity to screw America and get rich doing it. So, fuck them and free trade.
This is my sig.