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The Jobs Crunch

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."

66 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 Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Funny

      Ah, the old saying:

      A recession is when someone you know is out of work.
      A depression is when you are out of work.

    2. 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.

    3. Re:All I know is... by FauxPasIII · · Score: 4, Informative

      > And I don't remember Bush ever saying that these are good times

      The economy is strong, it's getting stronger

      --
      25% Funny, 25% Insightful, 25% Informative, 25% Troll
    4. Re:All I know is... by maxpublic · · Score: 4, Insightful

      5.4 are the latest numbers, the lowest since Oct 2001.

      These figures are inaccurate. They don't count people who're no longer collecting unemployment and have simply given up. Many households which formerly had two parents working now only have one parent employed but the government, in it's infinite wisdom, doesn't count these folks as being unemployed.

      This is nothing short of 'voodoo unemployment numbers': pretending that people who can't find a job prefer not to work, and therefore don't need to be counted.

      We should also note that of the jobs created (about half of those lost so far) the average pay is almost $9,000 lower than the jobs lost. Things are much, much grimmer than our government would lead us to believe.

      This isn't new, though. The government did the exact same thing during the Reagan Era depression, declaring that things were looking up despite the fact that, for example, nearly one in three people in Oregon were unemployed and that the few jobs created paid about *one-half the wage* of the timber jobs lost.

      Don't trust the government for unbiased numbers; you won't get them.

      Max

      --
      My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
    5. Re:All I know is... by Awptimus+Prime · · Score: 4, Interesting

      And the problems with these times are a carryover from the Clinton administration's disastrous policies. There is only so much recovery one president can do in one term, despite how good Bush is.

      I can guarantee you if a Democrat gets in again you'll be sliding deeper and deeper.


      You know, your post would be much more impressive if it showed a single policy of Clinton's which Bush changed in the name of fiscal responsibility. I have not heard about any, myself.

      On that note, where were the Republican votes stopping Clinton's policies? Looking back, I remember the Republicans in congress being pretty quiet those 8 years, except when the whole Monica thing came out.

      I'm not going to debate beliefs, just throwing in my 2 cents. I don't like either party. I especially don't like paying over $200 Billion dollars to invade Iraq and make everyone hate us at the same time.

      Being hated globally is not condusive to future peace and prosperity at home.

    6. Re:All I know is... by helix400 · · Score: 5, Informative

      They don't count people who're no longer collecting unemployment and have simply given up.

      That's not correct. From http://www.snopes.com/science/stats/unemploy.htm

      Although this belief is widespread and has at times been reported as factual in the mainstream media, the truth of the matter is that unemployment statistics are gathered through a process of sampling a representative number of households; they are not arrived by counting the number of unemployment insurance claims made during a particular month. Data collected in the Current Population Survey (CPS), a monthly survey of over 60,000 households, is used for this purpose. From this data, an extrapolation is made about the unemployment status of the country as a whole.

    7. Re:All I know is... by maxpublic · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Take a look at how the survey is conducted. The people who're part of it don't get to decide whether or not they're 'unemployed' or 'not part of the work force'; the GOVERNMENT makes that determination. Which means that the government can fuck with the numbers any way it pleases.

      Forgive me if I don't believe the government unbiased.

      Max

      --
      My god carries a hammer. Your god died nailed to a tree. Any questions?
    8. Re:All I know is... by Awptimus+Prime · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The people who want to die, are going to die. They have given up and want me to take care of them, I do not care about these people. I am worried about the people TRYING to find work.

      Please do not be a tool. The "given up" remark is something getting said a lot in the media regarding some people who are married and have a spouse who gets laid off and can't find work. The household then learns to get by on a single income, then the pressure to find work is much less. This works and has been popular for the families who will sacrifice that Lexus and drive a Honda instead. This means nothing for the masses across middle america who's factory jobs are gone. So are all the Walmart and McDonalds jobs in many areas.

      The men and women who are trying to support families who have had their unemployement benefits dry up do not just "give up" on getting a job. They do anything and everything they can to keep their kids and spouse fed. The only thing they don't do is count towards the damn numbers our government is trying to pass off on us as "getting better". If nobody noticed, more people matured to legal working age than jobs created this year.

    9. Re:All I know is... by dlelash · · Score: 5, Insightful

      ...and a recovery is when George Bush is out of work.

    10. Re:All I know is... by yo303 · · Score: 5, Informative
      A recession is when someone you know loses his job.
      A depression is when you lose yours.

      Yeah, good saying.

      Let me add what Reagan said in 1980: "A recovery is when Jimmy Carter loses his." (sorry, I'm really a Democrat.)

      But just so you know, there is actually a big difference. In a recession, the value of the dollar in your pocket goes DOWN. In a depression, the value of the dollar in your pocket goes UP. It's astounding how few [people|economists] know this.

      You think inflation is bad? Try deflation, the oppostite, when prices go down.

      Loans are defaulted, because people suddenly owe more, and can't pay. Interest rates go up, since cash itself is more likely to increase in value than an investment. You're used to getting raises, to keep up with inflation... how would you like it if your boss gave you a timely drop in salary, to keep up with the drop in the cost of living? That's deflation, and it happened during the last US depression in the 30s. There has not been a depressed economy since then (possibly excepting New Zealand and Finland.)

      A recession is not a small depression.

      yo.

    11. Re:All I know is... by fmaxwell · · Score: 4, Insightful

      You and i know it only takes like 2 days to set up a profitable business that can employ others.

      Then do it. Every two days, set up a profitable business employing others. You will be incredibly wealthy and give many people who want jobs a place to work. Or was that just more right-wing bullshit -- the kind of unsubstantiated thing that Rush Limbaugh or Bill O'Reilly says because it sounds good but isn't really true at all?

    12. Re:All I know is... by mankey+wanker · · Score: 5, Insightful

      Check the date on that one. IIRC Bush changed how the government collects it's data by purposefully underfunding and cutting certain unemployment tracking programs.

      Let's face it - the gang in power is just a bunch of "Cheap Labor Republicans." They are gunning for your job because it can be done cheaper somewhere else. These guys make money by keeping labor costs down, not by a a booming economy that benefits you or yours. Catch a clue.

      Political Reality Redacted

      Several months ago I watched Joe Hough, President of the Faculty and William E. Dodge Professor of Social Ethics at the Union Theological Seminary, speak on Bill Moyers "Now" and I was immediately impressed by both his passion as well as the following statement that he made:

      HOUGH: The growing gap between the rich and the poor which has become almost obscene by anybody's standards, and the stated intentional policy of bankrupting the government so that in the future there'll be no money for anything the federal government would decide to do. http://www.pbs.org/now/printable/transc...print.ht ml

      Now some of you may be thinking that the above statement is somewhat extreme, and I used to wonder about that myself. But the statement haunted me. The reality is that some of what our current government is doing only makes sense if you consider "bankrupting the government" their actual goal. Have they not reduced taxes for the top 1%? Have they not also run a record deficit? When is a tax cut not a tax cut? When you run a deficit.

      The bottom line is that it seems to be okay to run a deficit paying off federal war contracts to Halliburton, but god forbid they should run a deficit supporting job creation programs. And you'll forgive me if I don't consider the expansion of our military "true" job creation.

      So what are they really doing? Why are they doing it? You have to ask those questions because it would be a mistake to assume that anyone, esp. an apparent imbecile like Bush, acts without purpose. The appearance of the dolt just might be the mask of a sly con man.

      So who has the answers? There's this one guy that has it completely nailed. His stuff is so savvy, so on point that it is frankly scary in it's simplicity and clarity. So don't hesitate - go read it. If you can't handle it all at once, pace yourself - but read it, all of it. It's just four pages: two long, two short. And the rest of the site is excellent too if you still need more.

      "CHEAP-LABOR CONSERVATIVE" ISSUES GUIDE
      http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/blurbs.htm

      CATALOGUE OF BOGUS CONSERVATIVE IDEAS
      http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/bogusideas.htm

      "PERSONAL RESPONSIBILITY" AND WAGES
      http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/wages...bility.h tm

      THE WRATH OF THE MILLIONAIRE WANNABE'S
      http://www.conceptualguerilla.com/milli...nnabes.h tm

      What's all this about in a few short sentences?

      Labor is the true engine of any economy, wealth is not (it is the mere distribution of the results of labor). A boom economy benefits anyone that works for a living because labor is then scarce and labor is valued more highly. Those at the top require cheap labor to maximize their profits - so they hate boom economies. Everything our government is doing right now is intended to devalue labor. The unequal distribution of vast amounts of wealth into the hands of non-laborers makes democracy almost impossible (which is why the founders favored limits on almost everything that concentrated wealth into too few hands).

      Let it sit with you a while and you will begin to realize that it explains everything from bad schools, pri

    13. Re:All I know is... by fmaxwell · · Score: 4, Insightful

      If what you used to do doesn't earn the living you want, be creative, be an American and "change" your output into creating something other people want to buy.

      Stop feeling sorry for yourself - get over it, AND do something different until you are employed.


      Ah, the vague tripe of the right-wing. Chest-pounding patriotism backed up with hollow, unspecific recommendations, based on the false premise that changing careers has zero cost and can be done overnight.

      Some guy who's worked on an assembly line for 26 years or some woman who's been employed as a customer service rep at a phone bank for 12 probably can't afford to start their own business or even go to school to learn some new skill. Perhaps you think that their families should live in refrigerator boxes under bridges while the ex-breadwinners get the training to change careers. Even if they did change careers, they'd be back that the bottom rung of the ladder in their new field, probably making very little money and facing tuition loans on top of that.

      Then you ignore the fact that most people don't have the intelligence to quickly change careers, start their own businesses, and learn a whole new set of skills. Any economic plan that requires that everyone be of above average intelligense is destined to fail.

    14. Re:All I know is... by Mouse42 · · Score: 5, Insightful

      All right! Really? So by Tuesday I'll have a nice profitable business?

      Oh wait. First I need money to pay for an office to hold my new employees. Plus, I'll need money to pay for the employees. And I'll need money for whatever supplies are needed for these employees to do their jobs (computers, products, etc).

      Oh, and then I'll need time finding the place to rent, supplies and employees. In addition, I'll need time to plan out what business I'm going into, as well as strategy to make it profitable.

      Hm. Yeah, that ain't happening in 2 business days even given my full weekend head start. I might be able to muster up enough grocery money in 2 days, not enough money to start a business.

      Did you really think about this comment before you posted it? I think you meant it takes two days for a rich person to set up a profitable business, with the previous months spent in planning.

    15. Re:All I know is... by xigxag · · Score: 5, Insightful
      Why go to snopes when you can go to the source?

      http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_faq.htm#Ques5

      Who is counted as unemployed?

      Persons are classified as unemployed if they do not have a job, have actively looked for work in the prior 4 weeks, and are currently available for work.

      Now, if you look at the qualifications for collecting unemployment, you'll see that unemployment eligible people are a proper subset of "unemployed" people. If you're unemployment benefits ineligible, you're not considered "unemployed." So the poster you were disagreeing with was exactly right in saying that the figures "don't count people who're no longer collecting unemployment and have simply given up.."

      --
      There are two kinds of people: 1) those who start arrays with one and 1) those who start them with zero.
    16. Re:All I know is... by sporktoast · · Score: 4, Funny

      Step 1: Set up business.
      Step 2: Wait 2 days.
      Step 3: ????
      Step 4: Profit!!

      --
      In a related story, the IRS has recently ruled that the cost of Windows upgrades can NOT be deducted as a gambling loss.
    17. Re:All I know is... by nyri · · Score: 5, Informative

      That's deflation, and it happened during the last US depression in the 30s. There has not been a depressed economy since then (possibly excepting New Zealand and Finland.)

      Japan was depressed economy just a few years ago. Here is a brief of Japan's economy from the economist:

      Japan's economic slump began with a stockmarket crash in 1989; persistent deflation then lowered wages and discouraged investment. For years the Bank of Japan took a passive approach before aggressively boosting the money supply to keep the yen weak in February 2003. That, combined with cost-cutting by Japanese exporters, has led to a rise in business profits and in the stockmarket. The government now believes it can halt deflation by 2006 (the OECD disagrees). Some companies have been able to clean up their debt, banks are looking healthier, and there are even signs that consumer spending, low during the slump, might rise again.

      In the long run, however, Japan needs reforms: an ageing population will shrink productivity, raise health-care costs and further burden the costly public pension system (though some economists have argued that Japan's public debt--161% of GDP in 2003--is not as crippling as it looks). Junichiro Koizumi, the prime minister, promised painful economic reforms in 2001, but his efforts have been half-hearted. Reformed and galvanised, Japan's unproductive service industries could take up the slack of future economic slowdowns and lessen the burden on export-led manufacturing.

    18. Re:All I know is... by jbolden · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The level of economic activity is not the whole problem. The problem is shifting wealth away from the middle classes and lower classes and towards the wealthy. Liberal H1B laws do not help the American people but they do help American businesses. Low taxes on capital gains, dividends... while there are very high taxes on wages (combining income tax and social security) means the American tax system is anti-progressive.

    19. Re:All I know is... by LookSharp · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Then do us all a favor and stop pretending that you're an American.

      This is the rhetoric we've come to. "If you support outsourcing, you're not an American," and others... "If you criticize the government..." "...if you don't submit to a full body-cavity search and background investigation before boarding a plane..." etc. etc. you are not an American.

      I SWEAR that I am not deliberately invoking Godwin's law here, but think about it. Getting the country afraid of unseen enemies, and promoting unquestioned nationalistic mindset is exactly how, over the course of a few years, Nazi Germany came about. I would HOPE that American society is intelligent enough to stand up and see what is happening, and stop it, before all civil liberties are lost. I don't think Bush is a dictator in waiting, I don't think we're sitting here compacently waiting to become a fascist state. However there can be no question that as we go down this avenue of language and mindset, bigger and bigger breeches of freedom will be justified in the name of security or patriotism.

      THAT IS A BAD THING.

    20. Re:All I know is... by Artful+Codger · · Score: 4, Insightful

      I totally agree with your measure of "worth" as how long you have to work to get something.

      But you have to compare apples to apples - same timeframe, and same relative framework. it's not helpful to compare a 1st world economy to a 3rd world economy (except to remind oneself how good we currently have it in North America).

      A better comparison might be cost of shelter - how many days one has to work for a month's rent (or a month of mortgage, utilities, property taxes)

      But two very key things;

      First, we only have to work a couple hours to buy shoes... because we don't make them anymore. We get the 3rd world and to make them. ditto for alot of consumer goods. The price we pay is artificially LOW and we are going to get it between the eyes when we run out of cheap labour to exploit.

      And second... since we still do have it relatively good... we should be INVESTING AS A SOCIETY in things that will insure future well-being - eg education and research. As a class, the thing rich people are mostly good at is staying rich. Giving them more wealth via tax cuts in this day and age... makes them wealthier, period. They are not reinvesting in things that produce jobs.

      So I agree that we have it good, but we're on the wrong course for keeping it good... unless the intent is to maintain our wealth through world domination and intimidation by force (military and capital). Which doesn't seem to be working so well, lately.

      --

      ... plans that either come to naught, or half a page of scribbled lines...
    21. Re:All I know is... by fmaxwell · · Score: 4, Informative

      That's right. If there is any rick of failure, don't even think about doing it.

      That seems to be George Bush's thoughts on stem cell research. But, again, I ask for someone to show me profitable businesses that are started in two days that employ people.

      Prove that Bill O'Reilly is a liar.

      That's easy. Here's one: O'Reilly Lied About Canada Being Bankrupt

      "Canada can't help us anyway. They have no military to speak of. And the socialistic system they have there has nearly bankrupted them. So Chretien is history. A new administration is upcoming. We should be trying to work things out with Canada."

      Quote from the Bill O'Reilly's December 11, 2003 factor talking points memo.

      From the Canadian Broadcasting Company website.

      Budget surplus

      Justin Thompson, CBC News Online | October 22, 2003

      Finance Minister John Manley announced that Canada's budget surplus for the fiscal year 2002-2003 was a whopping $7 billion. The entire amount, he said, will go toward paying down the national debt - keeping it to a projected $510.6 billion by the end of the fiscal year. A noble decision, indeed.

      On the other hand, this is Canada's sixth straight budget surplus, and debt payments aren't the most exciting way to spend $7 billion.

      And as for Rush, why don't you say the same thing about your Hollywood heroes and sports heroes; ever heard of Daryl Strawberry? And I hear that Ted Kennedy has had a drink or two.

      Because Daryly Strawberry was not calling for imprisoning drug users. Neither was Ted Kennedy. They, unlike Rush Limbaugh, are not hypocrites.

      Whiner = liberal
      Mama's boy = liberal


      Say it to my face, coward.

    22. Re:All I know is... by fmaxwell · · Score: 4, Interesting
      Like, Hong Kong, Singapore, Dubai, Oman, Bahrain, Bemuda - all countries with very high living standards and small "progressive" taxation.

      In Dubai, Oman, and Bahrain, money flows out of the ground in the form of oil. That you would even suggest that their standard of living is related to their taxes is laughable. Rich people from all over the world vacation in Bermuda. Of course the standard of living is great there. That's not much of an economic model for someone living in Pittsburgh, Cleveland, or Fargo, is it? Despite your attempt at picking absurdly skewed models, you still failed.

      Per capita GDP ranking:
      USA: #2
      Bermuda: #4
      Hong Kong: #15
      Bahrain: #53
      Oman: #63
      Source: http://www.worldfactsandfigures.com/gdp_country_de sc.php

      You right-wingers really aren't very good with getting your facts straight, are you?

      The pattern is that countries without what is laughably called "progressive" taxation perform economic miracles, whereas other countries, whether rich or poor in natural resources, whether starting from high living standards or low, all *stagnate* under "progressive" taxation's ruinious economic burden.

      That's why people from all over the world are desperate to live here. Move to Sudan if you think that lower taxes will provide you some kind of economic nirvana.

    23. Re:All I know is... by OoSync · · Score: 4, Interesting

      I seriously suggest you check out the 10-15% long term unemplyment and microscopic growth rates in France and Germany.

      IIRC, the unemployment rates in France include measurement of discouraged workers. The number that gets flashed on TV in the US does not include such persons. If you compare fairly, our current unemployment rate is 9.4%, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

      So, doesn't look like such a good comparison after all, does it?

      --

      I always get the shakes before a drop.
  2. Outsourcing by b0lt · · Score: 5, Informative

    What about the state sponsored outsourcing? The US government is actively supporting outsourcing, examples here, here, and

    --
    got sig?
    1. Re:Outsourcing by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 4, Interesting

      Now what he might do about it I dont know

      Believe it or not, he's actually got a plan for this. Unlike so many of his other proposals, this one doesn't revolve around ludicrously jacked revenue projections or unfunded mandates. Kerry's plan is to get Congress to pass a tax penalty on companies that send jobs overseas.

      Might sound good to some, but the net result will be increased labor costs (or increased tax and tax-compliance costs) for business, which will have the net effect of putting the breaks on an economy which right now is growing at a nice, sustainable rate. Since Kerry's spending plan already calls for nothing less than a wildly unsustainable 12.5% GDP growth per year for 10 years, the additional labor and compliance costs will make little difference in terms of tax revenues and a balanced budget. But it will mean that those businesses are generating less overall economic activity, which will have a net negative effect on domestic job growth.

      "Backfire," I think is the word I'm looking for here.

      --

      I write in my journal
    2. Re:Outsourcing by Iffy+Bonzoolie · · Score: 5, Insightful

      I was gonna mod you up, but I decided to post a response instead. Lucky you! I don't entirely agree with your post, so I wanted to blab on about my silly ideas.

      I take serious issue with anyone who wants to try and suppress outsourcing or "globalization" in any way. Not because I think it's good for me personally - it's bad for me personally, as a software engineer in the Silicon Valley... at least in the short term. But this attitude is similar to the attitude of the RIAA who wants to fight the inevitable. The world is changing, national economies are becoming one global economy. You can try and fight it, but we will just be damaging our position in this new global economy. It's going to happen, whether we like it or not. The ubiquity of the Internet that gave us such prosperity in the late 90's has also helped to ensure the inexorable approach of globalization.

      The question we has to ask ourselves is not "How do we stop outsourcing/globalization?" The question is "How do we make sure we have a strong position in the new global economy?"

      Unfortunately, I don't have any firm answer I can beat people around the head with. It's a hard problem. I have some ideas, though (of course). I think what will keep us fiscally healthy as certain types of jobs become more efficient to export is innovation, pure and simple. We need to encourage innovation and entrepreneurialism, which will not only create new jobs, but new TYPES of jobs, new fields, and new skills that we will have a distinct advantage in possessing.

      Assuming you buy that idea at all, the question then becomes, how do we promote that? We already have a culture that encourages individualism, creativity, and risk-taking. I think that's a good start. But we need to focus more heavily on education. We should be more aggressive about the expectations of our children. Perhaps have some government subsidy of pre-schooling. More education about education - make sure kids know what their options are. Anyone that can finish high school can go to a university or a vocational school and get some basic knowledge about a field where there is a chance they will innovate. There's all sorts of loans or scholarships available for people who don't have the money. There are some exceptional people that will be revolutionary no matter what schooling or environment they come from, but innovation will be more common given more rigorous and effective education. I think the government should aggressively fund and incentivize education at all levels.

      The other thing that's REALLY important is making it EASY to start and run a small company. Small business is extremely important in innovation, and local job creation. Joe (or Jane) Upper-Middle-Class-with-a-Bachelor's-degree-and-an -idea is not going to offshore anything. He is going to find someone local. The easier it is for him to stay in business, the longer that someone local has a job. And, the more people who can start small businesses are more people who can try their ideas out and perhaps start the next industry people will be scrambling towards.

      I think the US government, in order to protect its country's position of economic dominance over the next 20 years, must take an active role in shaping America into as Educated and Creative a country as it can. Big business leads to monopolies leads to a lack of innovation, competition, and freedom leads to mediocrity and the death of Capitalism. Why does our government encourage big business over small business, other than simply corruption?

      Ok, I've started ranting. I'll stop now.

      -If

      --
      Run a pencil-and-paper RPG campaign with your far-off friends: Gametable!
    3. Re:Outsourcing by Genda · · Score: 4, Insightful

      The problem here is that we are shifting from a colonial economic system to a global one, and we've kept the worst part of both.

      If you're going to have a global system, then you must adjust the relative value of human labor, so that the quality of life is elevated for the poorest, and the whole world isn't reduced to a huge slave shop. Just as we balance monetary worth between nations and currencies, we need to set up a fair trade balance in wage differential across nations to insure that the quick and the greedy don't just use this as an opportunity to make a cash grab (in the form of human value), and cause an economic implosion. This needs to be a slow process, allowing for global equalization to occur, at the same time we need to insure that trade and the flow of wealth is balanced so that the nations economy remains robust and flexible.

      The current outflow of 'Dollars' is unsustainable. The current rate of increasing unemployment for American workers is unsustainable. What happens when every, job blue and white, collar is taken by either an illegal immigrant, or a foreign national working outside the country? What happens when the only jobs available in this country pay minimum wage? What happens when tens of millions of people have no way of finding work at all, no way of contributing to the economy, and are a drain on the national infrastructure? As the tax base erodes, how are government services provided? How do we prevent lawlessness, crime, ignorance, when government infrastructure begins to collapse? That's not a moot question. A small town on the California central cost just closed it's city government, Salinas has let go of over half it's city employees, and the kindergartens in Monterey have gone from an average of 20 students 4 years ago, to over 40 per classroom now, and teachers are terrified, because there have recently been a number of cases of 5 year olds wandering off of school property because there is no way for one person to watch that many young children.

      Your idea about education is a good one, sadly, money for education is being cut across the board all over the country. A recent report describing the increased cost of education and the quickly dwindling money available for supporting education, is forcing student with resources to settle for less, and students without resources to settle for nothing at all. Add to that, a general educational system more intent on making people docile and obedient, than actually giving them anything that vaguely resembles knowledge, and you have one more critical ingredient for what is quickly becoming a global disaster.

      As for small business... how do you start a small business if the middle class is gone and you have no local customers? Are you going to start off with a global business from the get go? If so, how will you compete against a third world country providing the same service as you for 10% of your cost? Your ideas are good, they just can't happen in the world that is getting made, they are literally impossible, if the current trends follow to their conclusion. The worst part, is that the European and Asian economies are intimately linked to ours. If we go down, we're taking the entire first and second world down with us. We'll be faced with an economic disaster that makes the great depression look like misplaced chump change. The current Libertarian Presidential candidate had some brilliant ideas, returning the country to a strict adherence of the constitution, fixing the big mistakes we made with corporations and bringing back a high level of personal responsibility to both business and society. Separating business from state, just as we separate church from state. Making government service the thing it was originally intended to be, a means to serve, not a means to get rich or empower lawyers/business/the highest bidder.

      I am of the mind that all people everywhere need to be free, safe from harm, safe from violence, safe from slavery. I am of the mind that every person on earth should have a nom

  3. low unemployment compared to europe by vijayiyer · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Since it's so fashionable to compare our policy to the European powers, let's look at some of the numbers. In France, unemployment was 9.3% as of last year. Germany's unemployment rate was 9.7% as of 2 years ago. We had a bubble during the 90s, and it's only expected to pay the price now. The economy moves in cycles and is an extremely complex nonlinear system. To conclusively blame immigration and trade policy as the cause for an increase in unemployment is easy, but unfortunately also meaningless.

    1. Re:low unemployment compared to europe by N3WBI3 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      So to clarify: You're reasonably sure your better off unemployed in europe than the US but you dont know how? You're pretty sure unemployement is measured differently in europe then the us but you dont know how?

      --
    2. Re:low unemployment compared to europe by Tlosk · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "I am pretty sure that a person without a job in Europe is much better off then a person without a job in the US."

      Which unfortunately contributes to joblessness. Good arguments can be made to have unemployment programs, but the more you increase the coverage period and the better the benefits, the higher jobless rates will go.

      And the comparison isn't being made by most people as a "well other people have it worse argument," rather it's meant to show that you need to be careful of the policies you institute because sometimes they make the problem worse, not better, despite your good intentions. Europe is an example, so before we charge ahead with policies that have been shown to fail, we should think twice.

      It's usually a lot easier to focus on the short term, but we really need to take a long term view of things. Opening trade and eliminating barriers to the free flow of labor is where the larger rewards are in the long term.

      Just as people have self-destructive tendencies with diet because we didn't evolve in an environment filled with calorie rich and easily obtained food, we also end up shooting ourselves in the foot when we decide to circle the wagons and protect members of the "tribe." It's not the world we live in anymore, and it requires a leap of rationality to recognize what is best for everyone in the long term.

    3. Re:low unemployment compared to europe by mvdwege · · Score: 4, Interesting
      The left leaning folks are making it difficult for Europe to restructure.

      And this is a good thing.

      Restructuring, as the current neo-con governments in Europe call it, is nothing more than:

      • Selling the national assets to big corporations (like the rail system and the communications infrastructure). What good is a privately held telephone company that both offers service and owns the infrastructure, for example? That's just a monopoly, where every cent of profit is exploited from the public, who see no improvement in service, and the only GDP growth is in the rising salaries for the executives. Same with all other public services being sold out. In the Netherlands they just launched a plan to privatise disability insurance. The buyers are all the big insurance corps, and I ask (as a syndicalist): why weren't the unions asked to participate to offer cooperative insurance to their members?
      • Crippling legislation that kills off the small and medium enterprises, the true engines of the economy, where most of the worthwhile jobs are, where the least money is wasted on the overhead of useless 'managers', where the most innovation happens.
      • A further slashing in public education, effective selling off our Universities to be nothing but the R&D arm of the big corporations.
      • Killing off unemployment benefits, effectively removing the power to bargain from the workers with their employers. And since the only remaining employers stand to be the big corps (see above), this is a huge setback. It's easy to say that jobs are merely free-market bargaining, but if there is a power disparity in the market, one party will end up exploited.

      Are you starting to see a pattern here? The so-called restructuring is nothing but a naked grab for power by the corporations and their toadies. The proof is in the pudding: all European politicians who participated in such 'restructurings' end up with cushy jobs at their friends' megacorps (do you hear me, Wim Kok?).

      Mart
      --
      "I know I will be modded down for this": where's the option '-1, Asking for it'?
  4. Thats not the major problem by lowell · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The problem is that these men who represent our presidential canidates, are the best that the parties could come up with. Out of everyone in the whole country. These four pricks. Thats insane. If this is the best that the dems and republicans can come up with then we need some different parties invovled in politics.

  5. Re:poor choice of story for slashdot frontpage by killjoe · · Score: 4, Insightful

    "The story itself is just a massive advertisement to vote against Bush too."

    Why? According to Bush the economy is doing great. If Bush is good for jobs then this thread may be an advertisement for voting for bush. It's only anti bush if Bush is horrible for jobs in the country.

    " I know I wont be trying to moderate anyone in this thread, because every second post will look like trolling or flamebait depending on the perspective of the reader."

    I have to agree with you there. I have never seen our country divided so much. The people who relish driving wedges to set the country apart have been very successful. I don't know what it would take to get the country back together again. Maybe if we had a president that was a "uniter not a divider" things would be different.

    --
    evil is as evil does
  6. Where is American Society going by Epeeist · · Score: 4, Insightful

    It is difficult to be sure from a distance (I live in the UK), but what seems to be happening in the States is a move to what I can best call a neo-feudal society.

    At the top end you have the rich and super-rich, with limited call on their wealth in terms of taxes.

    At the bottom end you seem to have people who have to hold down more than one job to make ends meet, have limited access to medical care and whose children receive only a poor quality education.

    This leaves your middle classes, who are being squeezed. If they don't work in a service that requires personal contact then they are in danger of being outsourced to cheaper locations elswhere on the globe.

    Barons, serfs and guilds is the way it appears to be. It isn't quite as extreme here in Britain, but we are going the same way.

    1. Re:Where is American Society going by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Please reconcile your comment with recent Department of Labor statistics which report that entrepreneurship is at an all-time high.

      When all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail. When all you want to talk about is classism, every society appears stratified.

      --

      I write in my journal
  7. Ohio is a mess... by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Data just came out showing that Cleveland, Ohio has the largest unemployment rate of any major city in the US. Cincinnati is on the brink of (and has fallen into) racial and class conflict. The whole state is an unbelieveable mess and it appears that even with an inept Republican govenor that Ohio will vote Republican and give the rich and corporations more and more tax cuts which they, in turn, will use to buy more foreign products and fund more outsourcing projects.

    Distribution of wealth is an nasty necessity that is created by the greed in all of us (once I hit the million dollar threshold I will give to the less fortunate - then it's once I become one of the 331 billionaires in the US -- well you get the drift...). Anyway, the Republicans have never and will never talk about redistribution of wealth. Flat taxes and sales taxes are rigged against the poor, but people seem to think they are a great idea because of conservative thinktank spin.

    The Democrats may have become as much of the problem as the Republicans, but at least they are still talking about these issues. I can't for the life of me undersand why a the population of a state on the brink of disaster would vote for a party that still talks about supply side economics and trickle down. I shake my head and then realize that to be a politician these days you have to be rich already -- it's no wonder that we are where we are.

    There will never be another farmer from Illinois in the Whitehouse, and I just don't see any solutions on the horizon...

    1. 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
    2. Re:Ohio is a mess... by Twirlip+of+the+Mists · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Anyway, the Republicans have never and will never talk about redistribution of wealth.

      That's not true. We Republicans talk about it whenever the subject comes up. We say that the redistribution of wealth by the state is (a) immoral and (b) unconstitutional. The conversation rarely goes beyond that, granted.

      Cleveland is a mess because its economy is shot. For more than twenty years the city has had a distinctly business-unfriendly fiscal plan, and consequently has failed to attract any significant outside investment. It's a slippery slope, because a city that's seen as bad for business is going to have a hard time correcting that image. But it's not impossible. It just take sound fiscal planning.

      The seizure of private property by the state is not the answer. Not only is it not the answer, it's not even an answer. It's immoral and wrong, before you even get into a discussion about whether it's good or bad.

      Flat taxes and sales taxes are rigged against the poor

      Sales taxes do, in fact, hurt the poor more than the wealthy, because poor people spend a bigger fraction of their income than wealthy people spend. This is offset to an extent by exemptions. Proposals to replace the federal income tax with a national sales tax--proposals which have never gone anywhere--have traditionally included a fixed credit that effectively establishes a minimum taxable income level.

      Flat taxes, of course, are not "rigged against the poor" at all. All citizens pay precisely the same fraction of their income in taxes. The only way you can come to the conclusion that they're rigged is if you start with the assumption that the wealthy should pay a bigger percentage, which is circular reasoning at its finest.

      I can't for the life of me undersand why a the population of a state on the brink of disaster would vote for a party that still talks about supply side economics and trickle down.

      'Cause it works? Nice job with the "brink of disaster" line, though. That's a play right out of Terry McAuliffe's book. Good job.

      --

      I write in my journal
    3. Re:Ohio is a mess... by SofaMan · · Score: 4, Insightful

      Flat taxes, of course, are not "rigged against the poor" at all. All citizens pay precisely the same fraction of their income in taxes.

      Flat taxes *are* rigged against the poor, since any given fixed percentage of a person's income in going to mean a lot more to a poor person than a rich one. Let's pretend the rate is 15% - A person who only earns $10,000 a year is going to be hurt a lot more losing $1500 a year, than some who earns $100,000 losing $15,000. The rich guy still has $85,000, the the poor guy now only has $8500.

      --

      SofaMan -- Occasionally Battling Evil With His Mighty Powers Of Indolence.

  8. I'm a micro-view of the job situation by parliboy · · Score: 4, Insightful
    I graduated in May with a degree in Education and another in Computer Science. I can't get permanent work in either. In Houston. The epicenter of Bushism.

    All the layoffs of recent times have flooded the teaching ranks with people getting alternative certification. Add to that a recent flood of people who spent years in other roles in education just now finishing their degrees, and the new teachers are getting pushed out. That whole ETS scoring fiasco didn't help either.

    Read again to understand this: there are too many teachers. People in other countries may not understand the gravity of this, but for people who are used to teachers being the most pissed on of American professionals, this should be the ultimate sign of how bad things are right now.

    --
    "You're never ready, just less unprepared."
  9. Immigration policy by Tim+C · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Yeah, it's always the fault of those pesky foreigners...

  10. Racismdot by Lurker+McLurker · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Well, I never expected to see this story on the front page of slashdot. What next?

    --
    Mod parent up!
  11. Labour Force Survey by Epeeist · · Score: 4, Informative

    > I am not sure how it's measured in Europe but I would bet it's different. You may be comparing oranges and apples.

    There is a common measure of unemployment across Europe, the Labour Force Survey. The survey seeks information on respondents' personal circumstances and their labour market status during a specific reference period, normally a period of one week or four weeks (depending on the topic) immediately prior to the interview.

    The LFS is carried out under a European Union Directive and uses internationally agreed concepts and definitions. It is the source of the internationally comparable (International Labour Organisation) measure known as 'ILO unemployment'.

    On this measure the UK jobless rate is just under 5%, with France, Germany and Italy all at around the 9% mark.

  12. Sad Day For /. by R.Caley · · Score: 4, Insightful

    When the rantings on a xenophobic loonie site are presented as fact.

    --
    _O_
    .|<
    The named which can be named is not the true named
  13. 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.

  14. Xenophobic Bullshit by billstewart · · Score: 5, Insightful
    "Bad Immigration Policy"? My ancestors let your ancestors move to North America, so don't bitch if we let other people move here too. Meanwhile, when I moved to California from New Jersey, I came twice as far as a typical Mexican immigrant, and I only speak one of the four or five main languages used here in SF, but nobody made me ask permission from some bureaucrat to move here.

    Yes, we've got a job crunch in this country, and we had a severe job crunch in the dot-bomb technology industry, with an estimated 49% of San Francisco's high-tech jobs disappearing, so my friends were affected much more strongly than the average American, and there's a non-trivial chance I'll get laid off next week.

    • One reason we're having trouble is that technological change created a lot of temporary opportunities for jobs until the market figured out what the web business was really worth and the VC money all dried up.
    • Another reason has to do with rapidly rising interest rates in Y2K, which _is_ something politicians had a lot of influence on, which happened as the Y2K-conversion software boom jobs dried up and the dogfood-on-line.com companies were running out of their early funding rounds.
    • Another reason is that Bush's protectionism raised the price of steel, hurting any American manufacturers who used steel, harming a lot more business than it saved.
    • Moore's Law really zapped the telecommunications industry, by suddenly giving us near-infinite fiber bandwidth when everybody's construction funding had depended on selling it at slowly declining prices, and the "Internet capacity demand doubling every 15 minutes" phenomenon only slowed down the crash a bit.
    • Information wants to be free and the Internet lets anybody work from anywhere in the world. That seemed like a good reason for everybody to move to San Francisco, but in fact anybody in the world who's reasonably educated can compete with us, even if the xenophobes don't let them move here. That's not just the software business - almost any white-collar job is really about either manipulating information or talking to people face to face; the cost of phone calls dropped to near-zero once government monopolies in most of the world realized that white-collar jobs were more important than ripoff telephone prices.
    • Container shipping means that not only can information go anywhere in the world, physical stuff can be transported cheaply too, so manufacturing jobs can easily be done around the world.
    • The American Education System has been declining over the last 30 years, just in case you thought this was a purely Libertarian rant. School systems aren't putting out the quality of education they used to, which means that students aren't prepared for high-value jobs, but schools also aren't teaching mechanical skills that laborers would use.
    --

    Bill Stewart
    New Fast-Compression-only CPR http://preview.tinyurl.com/dy575ks
  15. Thank god for that article by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Thank god for that article. I was beginning to wonder if *I* might be the one responsible for my unemployment due to my choice of remaining in a one factory town, with my limited skill-set, narrow education, zero-ambition and unwillingness to take any job that was far beneath my abilities that can apparently be replicated by someone who grew-up in a third world country without indoor plumbing while educated in a classroom with a dirt floor. I'm so glad I can blame them foreigners and people in Washington. I was almost thinking that I was some kind of loser slacker who spent all my time on message boards downloading music (cause it was meant to be free!) and not trying to make myself into someone with valuable assets. Not my responsibility. There's no way you can convince me otherwise now. Forget the "data", this economy sucks because all my loser friends are out of work too.

  16. As a Canuck working in the U.S. by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 4, Insightful

    I have to say that a lot of issues presented in that article are the same sort of crap that's been tossed around for decades.

    For instance, mining and metallurgical refining are extremely high-risk cost-dependent ventures, and they always go wherever is cheapest. My dad's been designing mines for decades, works around the world, and sometimes you can't even get a gold mine going in a place with incredibly low labour costs like Costa Rica! So to point to a shift of refining work to Canada and Mexico as being a fault with NAFTA is just incorrect-- it's exactly what NAFTA was designed to do, in order to make it cheaper for Americans to buy products.

    As for Visas, many people on HB-1s, J-1s, etc... leave the U.S. after a few years. They're here for training, and that's it-- and when you consider the legal hurdles that companies have to go through in order to get foreigners (like moi) into the country in the first place, you should realize it's not going to happen if companies could easily find adequately skilled people here in the U.S.

    No, I'm afraid what's really wrong with the U.S. job situation is very simple-- there are extreme disincentives for companies to hire new employees if they can make current employees work overtime.

    'Fess up. How many of you work overtime for little or NO pay? 50% of you? 75%? How many of your companies had massive layoffs in the past decade, then been very slow to rehire even as the bottom line improved?

    I'm good at what I do, and I'm willing to work hard, but realistically, the company I work for should have hired half a dozen more people instead of just me.

  17. Can you guys drop the Socialist moniker please? by jotaeleemeese · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Frankly it is tiring, Western Europe and what is today's EU has always respected free enterprise and private ownership, cornerstones of a capitalist economy.

    People in the US have no idea what they are talking about when they say EU countries are socialist.

    They may be more socially responsible than the US goverments perhaps, but private property and free enterprise has never been stopped.

    If you want examples of Socialist countries look at Cuba or North Korea, where everything is Socialized by means of state control and ownership.

    --
    IANAL but write like a drunk one.
  18. All I know is... by Taco+Cowboy · · Score: 4, Insightful

    before that, your sister, your friend, and his wife were thinking ... hmmm... perhaps we can go to Europe for a nice vacation, and never realize that their own jobs were hanging by a rope.

    Wake up, people.

    Don't blame "bad immigration", or "globalization", blame YOURSELVES for being COMPLACENT !

    This world we live in is increasingly interconnected. Whatever we'd seen playing in the halls of UN 20 or 30 years ago today is playing right at our doorsteps - and that is, we aren't compete against other Americans for our own survival, but against THE WORLD !

    Yes, globalization goes both ways. While the third world countries are whinning about "Developing world conspire to re-colonize us", we, who live in FIRST WORLD COUNTRIES, must realize that while those sons-of-bitches are whinning, their cheaper labor is taking away our jobs.

    Usually, we single-minded Americans will yell and shout and demand our "representatives" to "DO SOMETHING" - which, more than always, mean "closing our borders", "stop outsourcing" etc, which in itself WILL NOT WORK ANYMORE IN THIS WORLD WE ARE LIVING.

    Instead of closing up, we SHOULD be OPENING UP EVEN MORE, and yes, that means, we should roll up our sleeves and COMPETE AGAINST THE CHEAPEST LABOR IN BANGLADESH, by using OUR BRAIN.

    Our plush lifestyle is at threat. If we don't do something, our high cost of living ain't gonna last. We gotta figure out ways to be BOTH the CHEAPEST COUNTRY IN THE WORLD TO DO SOMETHING, and THE COUNTRY WHERE WE CAN LIVE In WHATEVER LIFESTYLE WE WANT.

    I am saying this base on my experience of a guy who have traveled and worked in all over the world. I am not that type of "Americans" who coccoon himself in the "protection of Uncle Sam". Rather, I go out into the WORLD and see what's going on, and btw, making money at it.

    Yep, there are people in the third world countries who will accuse me of "exploitation", but I don't mind. If they won't let me exploit them, then they won't get jobs. It's that simple.

    And then, there are Americans who accuse me of "exporting jobs to other countries". Again, I don't mind.

    You see, if I can't make a toaster oven in America under U$ 2.25, then I won't make money selling them not only in America, but also all over the world. I gotta find the CHEAPEST PLACE IN THE WORLD to do what I need to do, and if that means doing it OUTSIDE AMERICA, I'll do it in a jiffy.

    In the same token, the money I earned, I sent back to my good ol' U. S. of A. for safekeeping. No matter how I like the world outside America, America is still my country.

    To to those who want to close our borders - please don't buy any clothing, any furniture, any electrical appliances, any thing, in fact, because 90% of them are MADE OUTSIDE America !

    You can close the border to "immigrant, but you can't stop those things from coming in. It's us, the Americans, who demand CHEAP but QUALITY goods, so something gotta give.

    Until the day you realize you can't live the way you did, you wouldn't understand which world we are living in, my friend.

    --
    Muchas Gracias, Señor Edward Snowden !
  19. All you know is nothing... by voss · · Score: 5, Informative

    "He not only turned a routine recession into the great depression, he instituted the practice of the federal government taxing the wages of each and every worker in the country."

    In 1933...

    When FDR entered office the unemployment rate was 25%, with an underemployment rate of 50%. He had to close the banks to stop from them from failing. Germany that year would appoint an austrian named Adolf Hitler as their leader. Veterans the previous year had rioted in washington. If you want to make the argument that FDR had prolonged the depression through bad policies...you can make that argument but calling the economy of 1933 "a routine recession" is idiocy.

    Second of all the relocation camps didnt happen until TEN YEARS LATER in the middle of a little conflict called "world war II".

    Other than not knowing anything about history, economics, or politics the author of this comment seems relatively well informed.

    1. Re:All you know is nothing... by intnsred · · Score: 4, Insightful

      "He [FDR] not only turned a routine recession into the great depression..."

      When FDR entered office the unemployment rate was 25%, with an underemployment rate of 50%. [...] calling the economy of 1933 "a routine recession" is idiocy.

      No it's NOT! I heard it on Rush Limbaugh and again on Fox News so it MUST be true! :-)

  20. more about VDare by Simon · · Score: 4, Informative
    This page from that news article explains what V-Dare is about.:
    V-DARE
    www.vdare.com

    V-DARE - shorthand for Virginia Dare, the first English child to be born in what is now the United States - is a web site run by a "coalition" whose most prominent member is Peter Brimelow.

    Brimelow, a leading anti-immigration activist and author of Alien Nation, argues that America is historically a predominantly white nation, and that Americans have a right to demand that it remain that way.

    A past columnist for the conservative National Review, Brimelow says he once considered adding a fictional end to his Alien Nation, a nonfiction critique of immigration, about the last white family to leave Los Angeles.

    V-DARE posts anti-immigration articles by Brimelow's twin brother John; right-wing columnists like Paul Craig Roberts and Joseph Fallon (Brimelow's main researcher on Alien Nation); and defenders of The Bell Curve - a controversial book arguing that whites are more intelligent than blacks - like Steve Sailer.

    Both Brimelow and Fallon have defended Jared Taylor, who edits the racist American Renaissance magazine. Taylor's deputy, James Lubinskas, has returned the favor by writing for V-DARE.

    Brimelow has close ties to several other leaders on the anti-immigration scene, among them John Vinson of the American Immigration Control Foundation, Llewellyn Rockwell and Jeffrey Tucker of the Ludwig von Mises Institute, and John H. Tanton of the Federation for American Immigration Reform.

    *sigh*, it is just great to see this on the front page of Slashdot... :(

    --
    Simon

  21. A Lousy Article by Amigori · · Score: 4, Insightful
    Stylistically, this is a terrible article to read. Since when did one sentence equal an entire paragraph? (Yes I know the newspapers often do it.) Although, after checking other articles on this site, they all seem to be written this way. The author could have written the entire page using bullet points.

    All he did was state data, interpret, and generalize. He indicts rebuplicans and the current administration for corporate decisions; democrats for their failure to understand their constituents. He is assuming the Kerry-Edwards campaign will succeed in November by advising them in what they should be doing, manage the trade defecit and immigration. By doing so will magically grow the middle class and their disposable income.

    For being an economist, why doesn't he understand that and unemployment rate of 5.4% is very good and one of the lowest in the world. Its certainly better than the double-digit numbers in most of the world and certainly this overall number from India.

    As for the shifting of capital and the growing divide of the classes, name one successful society, where the controlling power had a monetary policy will divide the currency exactly among its citizens. Just one... Nope? I didn't think so. The closest example I can think of is the USSR, and they still had the rich elite controlling the working class; and it only lasted 70 years.

    Last time I checked, my blue-collar, low-wage friends and I all have the same opportunity of wealth as the rich kids we tend to resent. Notice, I did NOT say that it would be easier because often capital is more difficult to obtain, but we have the same basic opportunity to start a business as the next person. We have the greatest entrepreneurial environment in the world and its ours to take advantage of. People from other countries see this and other advantages our country offers and immigrate. Is the global playing field level? No, it never has been and it never will be. Life is not fair. Life is hard. Get over the idea of being employeed in one place for your entire life in a job that a trained monkey or robots can do.

    Will the election in November help? No. Its just a corporate sponsored figurehead with a puppet administration. Either one. What about a third party? Well, we effectively shut them out a generation ago and now, they're just a talking point.--Amigori

    --
    "The quality of life is determined by its activites."--Aristotle
  22. Tariffs make things BETTER, not worse by Cryofan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    We Americans have a right to protect our jobs. And we have the means to do so.
    This economic treason by the elites all started decades ago when they shipped out our advanced manufacturing jobs to Japan. Advanced manufacturing jobs are not assembly jobs, but more like fabrication jobs. See this article for more info.

    Now they are doing the same thing to office work (like software, financial etc) that they did to advanced manufacturing. But we office workers are more able to stop them this time, mainly because we have some access to the media via the internet and boards like Slashdot.

    Tariffs do make things worse, but only for the upper income group. For the average working person, tariffs are good.

    Let me ask you something: if free trade is so good for lowering prices, then why is an average car costing more of the average salary now than it did 25 years ago? For more details on this check out Marshall Brain's Concentration of Wealth blog.

    --
    eat shiat and bark at the moon
    1. Re:Tariffs make things BETTER, not worse by jpop32 · · Score: 4, Insightful

      We Americans have a right to protect our jobs. And we have the means to do so.

      I'm really having trouble understanding how can someone defend import tariffs, and point to works of Noam Chomsky, all in the same post...

      Tariffs do make things worse, but only for the upper income group. For the average working person, tariffs are good.

      Yup. Tell that to third world cotton growers (hundreds of thousands of them), whose lives are held hostage by a couple of thousand of US cotton growers for which the US government keeps the sky high import tariffs. Or to the african cattle herders who live on less money _monthly_ than an european _cow_ receives from the government _daily_! Yeah, all good and fine.

      The western powers would like to have their cake and eat it too. When they export high value industrial goods into the third world, they demand free trade and no tariffs. But, when those same third world countries try to leverage their position by importing cheap agricultural goods and offering cheap labor, out comes the 'protect our workers' rethoric, and import tariffs. Hypocrisy, anyone?

      Capitalism is fine, but only to the extent that it benefits us, right?

  23. We WANT high labor costs! It's a Good Thing! by Cryofan · · Score: 5, Insightful

    Labor costs are the PROFITS of the worker. You don't hear business owners complaining when their profits get too high, do you?

    Look, the highest standards of living in the world are in the social demcracies of Europe, and they have HIGH labor costs--they have minimum wages levels of like $12/hour. High lahor costs are a GOOD THING...IF, and ONLY if you are a WORKER. Now, if you are an investor or business owner, that is a Bad Thing.

    Fortunately, over 90% of Americans are WORKERS. Your problem is that you have been tricked by investor/corporate propaganda into thinking that YOU are an INVESTOR. Well, you AIN'T an investor. YOu are a WORKER. Deal with it. Accept it, and then help organize your country to HELP THE WORKER, like they do in Scandanavia.

    The reason the 3rd world IS the 3rd world is that they have LOW LABOR COSTS. That is the DEFINTION of being 3rd world.

    The reason many of the countries in NW Europe have the highest quality of life is because they have the HIGHEST COST OF LABOR. And it aint no accident. The two concepts are DIRECTLY RELATED.

    --
    eat shiat and bark at the moon
  24. Nice flamebait re: FDR by quarkscat · · Score: 5, Insightful

    FDR tried to alleviate the suffering caused by
    the depression's very high unemployment rate by
    instituting SS, and work programs like CCC and WPA
    that provided a public benefit. He did not make
    lies, half-truths, and political doublespeak
    an Executive Branch SOP. He did not slash
    corporate taxes, and the tax rate of the very
    wealthiest Americans, and then shift the tax
    burdeon onto the backs of the shrinking
    middle class. FDR did not encourage the flight
    of American jobs overseas because "what's good
    for General Motors is good for America". FDR
    did not open the floodgates of illegal
    immigration into this country to force wages
    lower.

    George W. Bush has done all these things, and
    more. It is pretty sad when the only decent
    paying jobs available to unemployed Americans
    is to drive a truck through Iraqi free fire
    zones. The high point of Bush's "job creation"
    record was 135,000 new jobs in a month -- which
    unfortunately doesn't even cover students from
    high school or college entering the job market,
    let alone those unemployed. Bush has embraced
    "corporate national socialism", and abandoned
    the working class. From all reliable accounts,
    one of the Bush administration's top policy
    goals was the invasion of Iraq, from before his
    inauguration. All the lies and doublespeak that
    was employed (WMD, terror links, and "imminent
    threat" were cobbled together and used after
    9/11/2001 as cover for this war. Each have
    proved to be false. The Bush "war plank" was
    an agenda hidden from the voters in 2000 by
    such promises as "no foreign wars", "no nation-
    building", etcetera, all while planning for
    Saddam's ouster. Bush mismanagement of the
    war in Iraq, and of domestic policy decisions,
    have been equally disasterous to this country,
    with the sole exception of the GOP-aligned
    multinational corporations. George W. Bush
    spoke the truth (finally) at a Washington,DC
    fundraiser when he said "the HAVE's and the
    HAVE MORE's are my base (constituency)".

    If this country should be cursed with yet another
    George W. Bush term of office, do not expect that
    there will be any improvements in job growth,
    health care, international relations, or the
    war in Iraq. Do expect more tax cuts for the
    corporations and wealthiest 2% of taxpayers.
    Do expect SS and Medicare to be gutted, as Bush
    finds new ways to drive the country deeper into
    debt. Do expect greater loss of personal freedom
    in this country, as "Patriot Act" extensions
    are subverted to crush political opposition.
    Do expect Bush to continue promoting religious
    organizations as the only source of welfare
    and social assistance. Do expect America's
    open borders to continue to encourage illegal
    immigration, because America's businesses
    want ever cheaper labor.

    1. Re:Nice flamebait re: FDR by slew · · Score: 4, Informative

      FDR wasn't quite the saint that many portray him to be. Perhaphs a little research on FDR and his tenure as Assistant Secretary of the Navy under Woodrow Wilson may dissuade you of that notion...

      Basically President Woodrow Wilson "decided" that Haiti would be a strategic port in case of war, and pretty much directed the US to take over the country. FDR lead the occupation of that country and was effectively the "administrator of Haiti" during that occupation. By many accounts, it was a boondogle of Iraq proportions (prison abuse scandels, contract skimming scandels, etc.) At one time he tried a "gore-ism" claiming that he single handedly wrote the Haiti constitution.

      As president FDR, during the London Economic Conference in 1933 which called to coordinate efforts stabilize the world wide economy, he pretty much unilaterally pulled out angering and alienating all the European delegates and eventually leading to the breakdown of the conference. Some historians feel that this breakdown of this conference contributed to prolonging the recession/depression in europe and led to the rise of dictators in some countries which eventually led to WWII.

      As part of the "good neigbor" policy of the FDR administration, he helped to push through the Reciprocal Trade Agreements Act of 1934, which tried to increase export trade and decrease tariffs into the United States with central and south american countries. I'm sure some of the "job protectionist anti-wto democrats" would take great issue with that type of stance today.

      Later on in his tenure as president (after he broke the 2-term "tradition"), FDR had quite a few run-ups with the supreme court and was probably the only president with enough gall to try to stack the court (by trying to simply appoint new justices instead of waiting for them to retire and maintaining the "traditional number"). Not really the spirit of the law type person (I guess since he never got to practice law, he wasn't too concerned about all this law stuff).

      History has a mixed report on FDR, certainly the US was in need of a change during that time to shake things up, but it's hard to know if any of his policies were really effective since the general consensous is that it was really the WWII that had the bigger impact on the state of the country at that time than anything FDR did.

      By the way, one of FDR's biggest legacies is the Federal Income Tax (instead of a traditional property tax or wealth tax). Although originally targetted only at the wealthy, has since become essentially a tax on the middle class. Of course the wealthy get to defer their income by purchasing property which goes up in value w/o being taxed, and since the relative tax burden of income vs property has shifted, they in fact get a defacto tax break. Yeah, that morgage interest deduction is a token that gets thrown the middle class's way, but if you look at the percentage of wealth of individuals and the percentage of federal income tax collected from those individuals, you can easily see how the Federal Income tax has slowly but surely become the tax on the middle class that keeps the poor from entering the middle class and the middle class from becoming more wealthy (by introducing an artificial economic class structure in its progressive rate structure).

  25. Re:Pathetic by gorbachev · · Score: 4, Insightful

    The illegal Mexican immigrants are NOT squeezing the middle class in any way. There is nobody in the middle class that would their jobs.

    Several researchers have actually said the illegal immigration is good for the country, from the job market perspective, that is. Sure, illegal immigration brings other problems, but they sure as hell aren't taking any jobs away from the us middle class.

    --
    In Soviet Russia, I ruled you
  26. Holy crap by HangingChad · · Score: 4, Informative
    And the problems with these times are a carryover from the Clinton administration's disastrous policies. There is only so much recovery one president can do in one term, despite how good Bush is.

    I can guarantee you if a Democrat gets in again you'll be sliding deeper and deeper.

    Almost four years later you're still trying to blame Clinton? And what are we sliding deeper into? When Clinton was president the economy was booming, people had jobs, we had a budget surplus. America was a lot stronger under Clinton than it is under Bush. If Clinton was running against Bush then dubya wouldn't have a chance.

    I will say this, though. This time around we can blame the supreme court. But if Americans actually elect that idiot, then we deserve what we get the next four years.

    --
    That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
  27. Immigration in and of itself is NOT the problem by Proudrooster · · Score: 4, Interesting

    It's easy to blame immigration and say, "Look at all the foreigners coming into our country and stealing all our jobs."

    Let me ask you this? Why must we have immigration?

    The answer is that you want you society to resemble a pyramid with the youngest at the base of the pyramid, the middle aged in the middle, and the eldest at the top of the pyramid. If your society is not shaped like a pyramid, social programs and the system of collecting taxes completely fall apart.

    In order for society to maintain a balance, every woman needs to have on average about three kids. How many kids did your parents have?

    How many kids are you going to have?


    Because citizens don't have enough kids to fill in the bottom of the pyramid we must have immigration or, we have to re-engineer our social systems and methods of tax collection. Take your pick.

    This is why France has the largest muslim population in Europe. Native France citizens didn't have enough kids to support the country. SOo to supplement they had to allow immigration.

    This is why Japan is doomed without immigration. Women there are now refusing to marry and having kids later and later (post 35). Pretty soon the population pyramid of Japan will be inverted with the oldest at the top. I predict they will allow immigration soon.

    Africa's population has no middle. Only the very young and very old. The middle was wiped out by AIDS.

    So that's the long and short of immigration. If you want something different, you have three choices:

    1. Have more kids.
    2. Change your system of collecting taxes (shift the tax burden higher up the pyramid).
    3. Change your system of social programs. Maybe public education is no longer free. Maybe social security vanishes. Lot's of cuts will have to be made since there are fewer older people to pay taxes and usually they pay less.

    The sad thing is that our politicians don't explain the social engineering of our country and let everyone jump to their own conclusions. The Repulicans know that if they do not capture the Hispanic/Latino/Mexican vote that they will NEVER win an election again. That is why Bush speaks spanish and was going to open the immigration flood gates to Mexio prior to 9-11. Right now, it's a giant mess and we really need some good social planners to figure out how best to manage our society in the direction that we want it to go.

  28. Taking Self-Employed Into Account? and my thoughts by MS_leases_my_soul · · Score: 4, Interesting

    Does this take the self-employed into account? I read tha article and saw nothing about the self-employed mentioned anywhere in there.

    From what I have read from the federal government's figures, once you take the self-employed into account, Bush is creating jobs, not losing them. Since the self-employed are not being taken into account by the "left", I can not trust anything they have to say about avarage salary since they are not taking millions of workers into account.

    Now don't take this to mean that I support Bush either. The whole Homeland Security continues to rub me the wrong way. And the federalizing of the airport screeners?!?

    As far as outsourcing goes, every company I have personally been involved with that has outsourced to India (5 in the IT arena) have all seen it as a huge failure and pulled it back in-house. 2 where development and 3 were tech support.

    I do agree with their take on worker visas. If you want to work and live in America, become a citizen.

    The lowering "disposible income" figure is very misleading. This has been torn apart by the "Right" because you look at what is considered "essential" today as compared to 30 years ago. Who doesn't have a washer, a dryer, a television, and a telephone today? Today they count as essential. Decades ago they didn't. Thus, the "cost of living" goes up and the "disposible income" goes down.

    Economics is the easiest thing to understand at a systemic level and the hardest thing to actually implement at the individual level. "Economies" do not change, the earning, spending and investing of individuals changes.

    But when you get right down to it, you need the American people to keep more of their own money and for them to spend that money buying products from American companies that employ American workers. Those workers need to invest in those American companies and thus increase their personal wealth while giving the companies more capital to expand.

    Oh, and those of you blaming the President for the economy need to remember that it is CONGRESS, not the President, who rules the country's taxes and spending. While the President provides the leadership, CONGRESS is to blame. Vote accordingly.

    In my opinion (and, since I am not an economist, it is just my opinion), we need to:

    - reduce federal spending (make Congress personally responsible for any deficit?).

    - lower taxes for those who pay taxes (the lower 50% of the earners in America pay no taxes!).

    - streamline the tax system with the Fair Tax. Once you get rid of most of the IRS, you lower federal costs, you lower the costs of businesses and individuals doing their taxes, you make your tax burden directly linked to your spending, you remove ALL tax burden from those living in poverty, and you lower the cost of American goods, thus making them more competitive in the world economy.

    - as individuals, buy products from American companies (preferrably made entirely in America if you can still find one).

    - phase out social security (the third rail of politics!). This will never happen, but it should. Over 12% of every worker's paycheck goes to retired people. Imagine if half that money went into your personal IRA account that would actually be worth something when you retired! (Also, as a side note, black men have the lowest life expectancy in America. White women have the highest. Statistically, social security takes money from young black men and gives it to old white women!)

    - get the government out of the charity business. Let groups like the Red Cross, the United Way, religious charities, etc. do this work and treat people as individuals instead of numbers.

    - put the government back on focus to what it MUST do, not what people WANT it to do. The government should not be a wealth redistribution plan. Government should provide the Common Good Required For Existence.

    - Without breathable air, drinkable water, and land that can support farming and ranching,

  29. Race To the Top vs Race to the Bottom by Cryofan · · Score: 4, Insightful

    Corporations and Investors want a Race to the Bottom, which increases profits by decreasing wages and benefits. The end result will be a large amount of wealth concentrated in the hands of a few.

    Workers want a Race to the Top by increasing wages and benefits. THe end result here will be a large amount of wealth dispersed into the hands of many.

    As we can see here on Slashdot, the real problem we have is that the wealthy and the corporations have funded a network of think tanks and foundations that have spent the last 30 years spewing propaganda to make everyone think that a Race to the Bottom is good and that a Race to the Top is Bad. And most Americans (and most Slashdotters!) are buying into the corporate propaganda!

    It just goes to show you the power of propaganda over a long period of time--if you spend billions of dollars saying that black is white and white is black, that after 30 years, you will have a bunch of people walking around telling you black is white and that high labor costs and protective trade laws are bad....

    THe details of the this RightWing/Corporate propaganda machine are starting to be made public. You can get more info about these "Tentacles of Rage" in the lastest edition of Harpers Magazine here.

    --
    eat shiat and bark at the moon
  30. Progressive view of Milton Friedman is uneducated by Money+for+Nothin' · · Score: 4, Informative

    I love how in TFA, they say (under " Professional "Guest Workers.""):

    "Since the employer pays a token fee for a guest worker visa, the employer is essentially using the public resource of immigration rights as a partial compensation--a practice even pro-business economists like Milton Friedman admit is a de facto corporate "subsidy"."

    Friedman is *not* a "pro-business" economist. He is a pro-free-market economist -- and there is a difference. Pro-business economists prefer policy that explicitly favors businesses. Pro-free-market economists favor policy (or more-often, a deliberate lack of policy) that favors a freer, more-open marketplace, or the elimination of policies which oppose the goal of a free-market -- even if that more-open marketplace comes at the expense of the desires of some businesses.

    Friedman would support fewer regulations on the financial industry, for instance. Yet, having worked in a big financial firm myself (which shall remain nameless), some of these companies actually support increased regulation -- because they know it benefits their cause of making a profit. In this way, Friedman could be alternately described as anti-business -- or, more-correctly, a neutral onlooker who prefers a free-market to outright pro-business policies.

    Not that I would expect the illiterates of free-market economics (i.e. "progressives" or "socialists" or "Greens" or whatever they're calling themselves this week) to actually understand the difference between "markets" and "business"...