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The Jobs Crunch

Posted by michael on from the not-steve-jobs dept.

randall_burns writes "Neither major party is accurately describing or combatting the Jobs Crunch that Americans are facing. Bad immigration policy-and bad trade deals are combining to decimate the middle class in America."

4 of 1,307 comments (clear)

  1. All I know is... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Interesting

    For the first time in my life, within 4 weeks of one another, my sister lost her job, my friend lost his job, and his wife lost her job.
    These are NOT good times...although Bush would have us believe otherwise.

    1. Re:All I know is... by Jeff+DeMaagd · · Score: 5, Interesting

      Personal anecdotes may suffice for a lot of people, but for it to be a reasoned argument, personal anecdotes alone don't cut it as it falls under the fallacy of insufficient sample. This is because it could be explained as horrible luck for a small group of people, you need national stats to make such a case, and of course, an alternative canidate with a clear plan.

      Being jobless is rough though, and very unfortunate if it hits both wage earners in a household.

      Personally, I think Kerry needs to give out specifics on how he expects to fix things. It just seems to me that he's hedging, he still hasn't offered real solutions during his campaign. I do seriously want to vote Kerry, but it seems that the best argument for doing so is that he's "not Bush".

      If someone does have a clear statement on Kerry's proposed economic policy, I'd like to read it. Seriously.

  2. Indeed So... by MMMDI · · Score: 5, Interesting

    The job market in this particular state (Delaware) is completely shot to hell and back. In February of 2002, the local DuPont plant laid off almost half of the entire work-force, including myself. I have been unemployed since then, and those unemployment benefits ran out back in November 2002... not fun. At first, I was a bit picky about my next job, I'll admit; having just lost a $15/hour job (with no college education, which is another rant for another time), I really didn't want to drop down to a McDonalds job due to the obvious decrease in the weekly check. After I realized that finding a similar-paying job wasn't going to happen, I went out to the usual teenie-employers to try my luck... Wal*Mart, Burger King, etc etc. I've been unsuccessful even with these places, and have been since I've started my job-hunting two and a half years ago. For the record, there's nothing about me that would lead someone to not hire me, such as criminal records, disability, race, any of that nonsense. (Obviously, those aren't supposed to matter, but speaking for this state, it does). Wrapping up my sob-story, moving to a new state is out of the question due to personal reasons involving my daughter, so we're stuck here. Always nice to hear Bush on TV saying that the economy is great, hah.

  3. Re:Ohio is a mess... by killjoe · · Score: 5, Interesting

    There was a study done recently that showed the people in the worst economic conditions tended to vote republican even though the bad economic conditions were caused by republicans. So places like Montana which have been controlled by republicans for over a decade and still have the some of the lowest wages and worst economies continue to vote for republicans overwhelminly.

    The author thought that it was due to cultural issues. I guess if somebody is doing bad you can always blame the homosexuals and the fornicators.

    --
    evil is as evil does