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Techies Migrate in Search of Work
prostoalex writes "Tracing the story of one family where the father is employed in the IT field, the Washington Post discusses the current unemployment in the information technology field. For a good reason - for the first time in 30 years the IT unemployment rate exceeded the national average unemployment rate, implying that you have a better chance of getting a job if your field is something other than IT. The journalist does offer a disclaimer, saying that the term 'IT worker' is applied equally to a top-notch scientist in a research lab, to a dot-com startup billionaire, and to a local HTML guru. Relevant employment statistics also shows that layoffs in the IT field were up 60% in the third quarter of 2004."
Having read the article in the Post, the guy the story is about is an ex-mechanic who got into IT during the boom. He live in the Midwest (not exactly a hotbed of IT jobs). A perfect analogy would be someone looking for water in the desert. He isn't moving to one of the coasts, so he's kind of stuck. Living in the DC area, there are loads of jobs, but you have to get here. He'd be better off signing up with one of the big contracting firms (EDS, SAIC, etc.) if he's looking.
Really, there's no demand for people who know how to use a computer. Everyone knows how to use a computer.
I'm tired of reading "poor me! I used to make 100,000 a year because I knew Lotus 1-2-3, and now the only work I can get is data entry for minimum wage" stories.
We all know how it works. The IT industry is rife with deskilling. What is today a marketable skill (I don't know, configuring LANs by hand, for instance) is tomorrow a useless one (autosensing switches and DHCP, etc). New technologies are constantly being created to replace IT workers.
So if you want to stay with the computers, you have to constantly acquire new skills to stay a step ahead. People who think they can just sit back and live the fat life and let their A+ certification take care of them are dead wrong and deserve what they get.
I don't need no instructions to know how to rock!!!!
The late 90's were an aberration that drew many unqualified people into IT. Think paper MCSEs and IT managers that could barely send email. What we are seeing is a deabsorption of these people (e.g. many of them out of work). Watch the allied health (medium skilled) fields do the same thing in a few years.
"I always have other feelers out," he said. "There's no such thing as a permanent position anymore."
And to think everybody voted for four more years of this garbage. Not that Clinton and his lookalike Kerry would have been that much better- but at least Democrats are smart enough to hide the pain behind an artifical bubble propped up by government surplus, as opposed to running deficits as far as the eye can see and robbing the future from the under-18 crowd.
Congradulations to all of those who voted for more of the same- all 59 million of you- who apparently like making sure that people can't get ahead.
SJW: a person who perceives an injustice, and while correcting it, commits a greater injustice.
I get to pay for Social Security without the hope of getting any, I thought this applied to anyone under 30?
500 dollar reward for tip(s) leading to the arrest of the person(s) who stole my sig.
Unless we see something new, IT jobs are going the way of plumbers. Every town will have a few and if a company needs IT support they'll call one out. The rest of the time their computers will just work.
That is the problem people look at people using computers they go IT. It was the same durring the late 90s tech boom they sell products on the internet then they are a tech company (I am sorry Pets.com was not a Tech company it was a Pet suply store that happends to be online) To put Pets.com as the same type of company as say Sun Micrososystems is just plane stupid. Now That the echonmy dropped they are still saying that all of them are IT staff. So to say that IT is down then the real question where is it down? Is it in the application Programmers, The Web Developers, IT Technical Support, System Administrators, Network Consultants, ..., ..., ... There are tons of jobs that fall under IT which require different disiplins and skills. Most Colleges have seemed to realize these differences thus make a difference between Computer Science, Computer Engineering, MIS, Information Technology Systems, ..., ..., ... But the general public doesn't seem t want to make the seporation in their mind. Sure we use computers for more then wordprocessing and spreadsheet, But after that the simularites get far more seporated. Saying IT jobs are being loss at the nation average is like saying, Office jobs are being loss above the national average. While only a couple of office jobs have been dropped.
If something is so important that you feel the need to post it on the internet... It probably isn't that important.
had NO business being in IT in the first place!
They knew what the interweb was and could spell HTML yet, somehow, commanded over 50k a year.
I was glad to see the "people rake" come through and get rid of some of the dead weight.
Of course, you have to deal with a complete lack of anything resembling broadband, which is probably why they have the shortage in the first place; no techie wants to move somewhere 256kbps is considered broadband and worth paying $50/month for.
You have two hands and one brain, so always code twice as much as you think!
Attention all: Just in case it STILL hasn't sunk in, and apparently it hasn't, everyone who works for a living needs to have a decent level of savings. This is especially important when there's a dependent family in the picture! The article says the family in question was RENTING a house not long ago. Here's a news flash kids: renting a house costs just as much as buying a house except that renting builds no equity value!!! There are federal government programs to help first time buyers so that you don't even need a downpayment! Instead of living in an apartment, which in the same area will cost less than renting an entire house, and saving up this family is now crammed in a motel room! A multi-room apartment would be complete luxury. So if you're living paycheck to paycheck thanks to luxuries like renting a house, a lease on a new car, etc, think about what the people in the story are doing and imagine yourself there. Americans save pitifully little, if at all, and this is what can happen when you don't.
Skilled and unskilled? The vast majority of programmers I know are incapable of doing my job, which falls in the MIS category. I, too, am incapable of doing their job.
"You're right," Fisheye says. "I should have set it on 'whip' or 'chop.'"
Oh well, I have a good job now, and I got it because all of the idiots out there made me look so much better. Hell, the guy that I interviewed with left because he didn't know what he was doing, and now I do his job and mine. Maybe if there were more qualified people, I would have a new coworker... because we are looking, we just cannot find anyone who is competent.
Politics, Life, and More on my Aspiring for the Future
"That's why I'm such a big fan of Community College!"
Woo-Hoo, that guy should just go to community college, then he'll be able to find another great job. Isn't it so great when everything is so black and white?
The guy's making good money, it's his expenses that are killing him. Having to move frquently and accepting a motel as a home is a judgement call and it's blowing 1800 a month.
He should have his 9 year old set up a bank account so he can avoid the check-cashing fee.
If his wife can work they ought to just move back to Warren and he can commute to Akron, Kent, Canton or the Cleveland area. A three bedroom rental at $1000 and suddenly he's saving $700 / month.
The whole economy is too darwinian, future generations can't defend themselves if they haven't been born yet, and today's financial institutions just do whatever Washington will let them get away with. Shareholders VS society at-large. Temporal mindsets suck.
This guy should be happy he's got a wife and kids. Try PLC or truck driving or become an RN. There 'Service Economy' is inescapable - so he should be happy with what he's got. Sorry to be bitter, but I got my own problems, and $30 an hour aint one of 'em.
'There is only so much room in the economy for business owners - leaving the rest of us destined to being someone else's Em-Ploy-Ee.'
~ Ted Kaczynski, The Unabomber Manifesto
Stuff that matters.
The only thing that's kept it alive this long is that the Baby Boomers hadn't retired yet -- while they were still working, the money coming in to the "trust fund" was just about equal to what was getting paid out.
Now that the baby boomer generation is starting to retire, there are going to be A LOT MORE people drawing Social Security benefits and A LOT LESS money going in to the system. Can you say "negative cash flow"?
The money Congress stole is going to have to be repaid or else people are going to wake up and realize it's all been a big Ponzi scheme. You think Bush's Billionare Buddies are going to let him raise *their* taxes? You've gotta be kidding me. It's us -- the middle class who works for a living -- who are going to have to pay more taxes to cover the shortfall.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
Holy shit, that's one of the darkest posts I've ever read.
I hope thinking like yours doesn't become a trend. We need optimism and ambition, not this pessimistic crap. Life is what you make of it, and there are always more opportunities than there are people. Within reason, what you want is almost always within your reach if you're willing to work hard enough. If we go to hell in a handbasket it's going to be because people who think like you will take us there. Fortunatly I think you're in the vast minority and could probably do with some anti-depressants.
Something dawned on me yesterday. IT is one of the few, if not the only, industry ever created to put its own workers, and the workers of as many other industries as possible, out of a job. That is the purpose of information technology. Kind of sad and kind of neat. IT makes very few truly new products. We create products that do old things a different way (ie. streaming a video over a network, cable or otherwise, so you don't have to go to Blockbuster). So be it.
I'm not sure if they're getting work, but it seems that a lot of them are former programmers, PC techs, startup employees, graphic designers, teachers, construction workers, sanitation workers, pimps, etc. I keep wondering why so many people are leaving other careers to go to "web design."
When "Automotive industry" includes people who drive and "Healthcare industry" includes parents that administer medication your comparison will be valid.
People who use computers and people who make computers and computer software are both considerd IT workers. That's the difference.
(Rude Fuckin' Idiot)
I make decent money. Not great, but comfortable and enough to keep a roof over my family, put money in a retirement fund, private school for the kids, a "saftey net" savings account and we're getting ready to buy our first home. And this is in LA County with a high cost of living and the AVERAGE house runs about .5 mil.
I have been offered literally triple my salery if I were willing to move/commute over an hour away -- or move to another state all together.
I've turned them down. I've turned them all down. Why? Because I live in an "ok" area. I live about a 20 min WALK from work. My hours are of my own choosing (mostly) and I enjoy a huge amount of freedom with my employer.
I actually get to help RAISE my kids -- not just let my wife or some hired 'day care' raise them. Our children have never seen a 'baby sitter' other than grandma. They've never been picked up from school by anyone other than my wife or myself. You cant pay me enough to give that up.
Even the Democratic Leadership Council agrees:
What happened?
If we want our country back, first we stop looking at our countrymen as the enemy. We stop telling them they're wrong. If you want to end the hatre, stop hatin' and start lovin'.
The only places in eastern Canada to come for IT work are Toronto, Ottawa, or the Waterloo area, all in Ontario. But forget it, nobody is really hiring.
Meh.
Just remember that George W. Bush reduced the outsourcing tax from 25% to 5% when you vote on November 2.
Let's suppose Bush RAISED rather than lowered the outsourcing tax... how would this have helped?
Big IT companies, recognizing that they compete on a global, rather than national basis, would have simply closed out their US headquarters and started doing business out of Europe. The IT jobs still would have gone overseas, AND we would have lost even more jobs and revenue.
By lowering the outsourcing tax, it's not enough to drive big companies out of the US, it provides at least SOME incentive to hire US workers, and we still get a tax revenue out of it.
I was building a dream.
And so I followed the mob
When there was earth to plow
Or guns to bear
I was always there
Right on the job.
They used to tell me
I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad
I made it run
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad
Now it's done
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower up to the sun
Brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower,
Now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
I warned you. On 2000-04-14, I wrote "Today begins the Second Great Depression". Was I wrong?
What are the benefits again?
That being said - I'm all for paying into Social Security to support those who depend on it or have paid into it for decades (and doing so as long as needed). But as a younger worker (30), give me the opportunity to save some of that myself in my own plan. Don't force me to pay into something I don't want and provides virtually ZERO benefit!
Computer Science is Applied Philosophy
Well said.
The same is true about the lifestype polygraph. You can be a married father and banging strange men at rest stops on the side with no condom.... but as long as your spouse knows about it there is no problem as far as your employment status...
Blackmail only works on people with something to hide.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
I said that the world is increasingly sucky, and why bring someone new into it? So they can be subjected to the ever-increasing shit that you and I have to deal with? So they can live paycheck to paycheck paying off a giant school loan to work for a ever smaller pool of unfulfilling jobs, if they can get one at all? All the while subjected to marketing designed to make people dissatisfied with life, possessions, relationships, and themselves? And an increasing chance of a fascist world run by a self-styled anticrist?
"But you could have a kid that could bring an end to all these things!!", I've heard people say. Nope. People don't change. At the end of the day, they're still a bunch of stupid, fear-laden, selfish creatures that are slaves to repeating history. Does anyone truly see a bright spot at the end of the tunnel? I think the world needs a supervirus or asteriod hit. We are going to choke ourselves out of existence, and frankly, I wish armageddon would hurry up already. I'm rooting for birds to take over next. At least they openly shit on you.
Don't buy bread; buy flour, eggs, and yeast and learn to bake your own bread. Don't buy pre-packaged deli meat; buy a big enconomy-size roast, cook it yourself, and slice it up. Don't buy potato chips, buy a big bag of potatos and a gallon of vegatable oil. You get the idea...
Tomatos too expensive? Plant a garden! Even an apartment dweller can raise a significant crop of fresh vegatables in big flowerpots. Go to the library and check out a book on box gardening.
Most importantly, learn how to shop! For example, every supermarket I've ever been in marks down it's meats on the sell-by date. They'll sell it for a few cents on the dollar rather than thowing it out. If you know your store's routine, you can be there waiting when they mark it down. Then, take it straight home and throw it in the freezer. The other thing is to take advantage of coupons and loss leaders! Loss leaders are great if you have the discipline to go in and ONLY buy what's on sale. You may have to go to 3 or 4 stores to get everything you need, but you save a ton of money. Clipping coupons may be a pain in the ass, but it's worth it -- my wife will routinely spend $100 at the grocery store and get $60 of it back in coupons and promotions.
Why is it that the proponents of "one nation under God" are so eager to get rid of "liberty and justice for all"?
I've had to move 3 times in the last year for work. Maybe one day I'll find a job where I can stay a few years at least, either that or invest in uhaul.
-- "Life's not fair, but the root password helps."
I wish it were true. I came down to San Jose from the Pacific North West, where I live in a beautiful house for about a grand a month in rent. Now down here I'm paying almost $3K a month for a fairly decent place, but I can't afford to buy anything. The smallest place I'd consider is up around $700K. I could get better in Portland or further north for $250K.
Silicon Valley really does suck the big one. It's a pity that the software engineering jobs are here. It's not like I even get to see the sun (well, except driving to work in the morning).
And start to do what is practically useful to support your lifestyle. If you are a code crunching monkey or a sysadmin you are either out of work or will soon be out of work or severely overworked. That is an inescable fact just as if this was 1903 and you were the world's best wagon wheel maker. Don't forget that the word
Saboteur
comes from the weaving EXPERT craftsmen who threw their shoes (Sabot) into the Jaquard powerlooms to break them because automation put them out of work. These were the best in their field.
And just like them it really doesn't matter how impressive your skills are if they are impractical or inefficient or not in any meaningful economic demand.
What the un/underemployed need to do is figure out what new set of tasks they can do or learn to do that will allow them to live more or less the way they are accustomed. Imagine if instead of an IT jock you were a farmer or a UAW line worker. Would you wander around looking for the tiny handful of farming jobs or auto assembly line jobs that were still around?
Today in IT there are a few categories that are hiring. This includes security, privacy, IT audit, business controls and corporate compliance, Sarbanes-Oxley, HIPPA. These are the jobs that still need sharp people in an advisory role frequently in an interpersonal setting. And any job that requires a physical presence will never be outsourced.
The nation needs more retail associates to sell to the droves of Enron executives spending their ill-gotten gains. We also need more construction workers to build palaces for our newly founded aristocracy. You should be set, as long as you can survive on a 900 calorie a day starvation diet while affording no heating this winter. Personally, I've found that newspaper is both cheap and a great insulator for my cardboard box. Stock up now before they start gouging prices for it at the vending machine!
Lets see... I will probably be considered a bigot for say this. You have several options.
1. Become a citizen.
2. Not work in the U.S. and return home.
3. Stay and pay for the infrastructure that allows you to get to work and enjoy your life style.
I take issue with your misuse of my country's founding war cry, "taxed without representation". NO ONE HAS REPRESENTATION IN ANY COUNTRY THEY ARE NOT A CITIZEN.
If it so bad here in the U.S. why stay? It must be better than anywhere else. Even with the taxes.
I am glad you do not have security clearance.
My wife and I bought our first home 6 months ago and did the math: with 3.5 years left on our student loans, either we can keep the house and play catch-up on planning for retirement or we can have kids and give it up. Her biological clock is ticking since we're both about 32. It's kids or our only shot at financial security (take a look at how much it costs to raise children). We don't have relatives to hand us piles of cash, or free childcare, or a place to live durring the early years. We've had to work hard for everything we have and trying to have a kid puts it all at serious risk.
This wasn't an easy decision. My wife and I have gone back and fourth on the topic of kids since neither of us have been longing for years for children. She was an oldest child and so helped raise her brother and sister while Mom worked along w/ babysitting, and I've just never been enthralled enough to want one but the thought of not experiencing it has been tought to deal with. It's still an emotional thing at times, but we're figuring out a way to deal with it.
We're phrasing it as "taking the easy way out": we're skipping the parent stage and going right to a psudo-grandparent stage. We're getting involved with the kids lives, taking them for occasional weekends, having fun (giving the parents a break in the process) and handing right the hell back. So far, it's working out great. No diapers unlesss we want to deal with them, we get to be the favorite aunt and uncle, and we've got over half a dozen (with more popping up every once in a while) to spend time with.
We're happy to play our role and stick with our levels of risk (zero to low), our friends and family are _MORE_ than happy whenever we offer to take the kids off their hands, and we're free to do whatever we want to with our lives. They say it takes a village to raise a child. That doesn't mean, however, that the village should be over-run with children.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Well, you situation is curious. Why would only H1B's have the skills your company needs? Are the schools that train in it only in India? We cannot answer these questions based on the info you have given.
Table-ized A.I.
This doesn't seem quite right to me though. If you're being offered a good wage, why would you take a bribe? And if you've got good credit and are doing financially well, it probably stands to reason that you would expect a good wage or not go for the job
In cases of embezzling, etc in corporate environments, how often is it the indebted indivual vs the greedy one? Look at big companies like Enron... once you've hit a certain bar - you have lots of money but for some reason can't get enough.
So yeah, perhaps the guy who's going to have his legs broken by "Vinny" for gambling debts might take a bribe, but your regular haven't-worked-in-awhile credit-card-debt type would probably rather keep his regular wage and perhaps take out a loan or credit extension in hopes of paying off the debts (rather than lose the job and have no monentary future).
Of course, at a certain point, it doesn't really matter if you're in debt or not if you're getting a $250,000 (or similar high amount) bribe offer. At that point it's purely about morals...
This is why I tell laypeople I'm a "rocket scientist" rather than a "computer programmer/software engineer" or whatever. My official title is "Scientific Software Engineer", but the systems and computer work part is easy. The tough part of my job comes from the maths required to do map projection, end member spectral deconvolution, principal component analysis, and calculating ephemerides. I couldn't design a spacecraft to save my life, but I spend way more brain cycles thinking about space science concepts than I do databases and software development.
This also has the advantage that people don't ask me to fix their PC anymore. :-)
I think this is a wake up call for techies to realize that a way to differentiate ourselves is to become a specialist applying technology to a field. Being able to say "I'm an expert on process manufacturing and inventory control who happens to know Java" (for example) is likely to get us further than being able so say " I know Java". There's no magic bullet, but it's always been a given in IT (and I'm old enough to remember when it was called MIS, and before that DP) that we have to keep up with technology changes. We're just changing the dimension. We have to learn more than the technology now. We have to learn a business and become more vertical knowledge experts. So, I humbly suggest we find industries that interest us, learn as much as we can about them, and bill ourselves as experts who also can speak tech.
But there are no guarantees. Well, maybe there's a guarantee no reporter will call us "IT Workers" again. :-)
I suppose you think Teresa would have let Kerry raise her taxes? The facts are that Democrats are far more beholding to millionaire contributors than Republicans. But then that doesn't support your bias, so why would you want to acknowledge that.
The Democrats are just as much as part of the rich as the Republicans. The biggest loser of this election was Campaign Finance Reform. It sure took the money out of politics now, didn't it.
As long as politicians are willing to be bought (and given the price of running for re-election, that's going to be forever), someone will figure out how to buy them. It's not a Republican problem, despite all your wishful thinking.
The solution is term limits, but that's about as likely to happen as Congress voting themselves a pay cut.
how much do you "routinely" spend on gas to drive around those 3-4 stores?
Social Security has been wrecked for years.
Social Security was a Ponzi scheme from the start.
"The first person to receive monthly benefits was Ida May Fuller from Vermont, who retired in November 1939 and started collecting benefits in January 1940 at age 65. In the three years that Fuller worked under the program, she contributed a total of $24.75. Her first benefit check was for $22.54 and she went on collecting benefits for 35 years, until 1975, when she died at age 100. In this time she collected a total of $22,888.92."
The fundamental problem is that the ratio of workers to retirees is going to drop precipitously in the near future, and no amount of Democratic or Republican proposals is going to change that basic fact. It should mean a devaluing of assets relative to the price of labor, but it may also mean near-war between the young and the old.
Ooh, a sarcasm detector. Oh, that's a real useful invention.
I think the same way, though not in the sense that I'm avoiding commitments because I might decide to eat lead one day. While you're young, starting a family can be locationally limiting. At the moment I have no marital committments, if a great job comes up halfway across the globe I can take it. If I bank enough days off and cash I can take a holiday
Too many people have this vision of the future with a beautiful wife and perfect kids, a leave-it-to-beaver life that greets you when you get home from work. I'm not saying you shouldn't settle down when the time's right, but there's a lot of world to see beforehand.
We paid off all our credit cards and are about to payoff the last car loan we ever plan on having. I wouldn't have a car loan now if they paid me interest. We save cash every month and pay extra on our mortgage. We do it by not living extravegantly, shopping at discount stores, and not going out all the time. It's not easy, but just something like packing your lunch can save a bunch of money every month. Many of my co-workers eat out every day, that's between seven and ten dollars a day.
On top of that I have a non-tech back up career I work part-time. Living off of it full time wouldn't be fun but we wouldn't lose the house.
Lot of young people are killing themselves with credit cards. And now days being late on one can raise interest and fees on all the others. It's insane. Credit card companies are modern day robber barons. Cut them up, pay them off and close those accounts! That way you're not tempted.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
The money Congress stole is going to have to be repaid or else people are going to wake up and realize it's all been a big Ponzi scheme. You think Bush's Billionare Buddies are going to let him raise *their* taxes? You've gotta be kidding me. It's us -- the middle class who works for a living -- who are going to have to pay more taxes to cover the shortfall.
There are a lot fewer billionares than middle class. The middle class does have the power to redistribute the wealth of the rich. It is called DEMOCRACY.
Demand a higher standard of public education for ALL and watch democracy work.
The RICH need the poor and middle class to be educated only enough to do a trade and compete against each other for scraps. Demand that your kids get proper educations, including philosophy and history.
In a democracy if the poor and middle class had educations which included philosophy and history, you can be confident you will start to see some real equitable distributions of power and wealth emerging.
Democracy is failing only because people are so poorly educated they are not generally capable of seeing what is in their own best interests.
Democracy can work if the people want it to.
No one has a right to their *own* opinion. They have a right to the TRUTH.
This is true in general, not just for security. Companies don't like to give jobs to people who are out of work. Companies would much rather cherry pick someone who is already gainfully employed elsewhere. Obviously, if you don't have a job, then they shouldn't hire you, because nobody else has either.
Oh, and don't go padding your resume saying that you weren't unemployed, you were contracting. That's even worse. Nobody wants to hire someone who is adaptable, thinks on their feet, and has personal ambition. That kind of person will leave as soon as the market picks up.
Try to pass yourself off as someone who is competent to do the job, but otherwise a complete amoeba with no backbone at all.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Part of this was the "cost" to our relationship. All of our friends and family members have family members near to offer free child care and/or have the luxury of houses offered to them. They can have one of them stop working w/o having to give up on home ownership in a steep housing market. And yes, they also have more time.
We looked at how we might do it, and as with college and our 1st home, it came down to doing it by ourselves, on our own, with no support structure. We realized this would put serious stress on our relationship. One person at risk for all of the bread-winning. One person managing all of the household. Our sense of equality and co-operation would be worn down. Our time with each other would be even more limted. We've weighed where we are aginst the timeframe to have our own kids and there's never been a "good" time, and the window of opportunity is closing in terms of likelyhood and safety (we don't want to be the psychotic fertility feinds). We think we could be good parents. We also think we could be good pastry chefs. Neither seems like a compelling reason to bring a new life into this world.
*** Sigs are a stupid waste of bandwidth.
Smartest thing I have ever read on Slashdot. Other young fathers should heed what this guy is saying. When you're sitting on your deathbed, you won't regret making $50k instead of $100k in 2004, but you will regret it if you didn't spend enough time with your children.
So yes I agree that people should save whenever possible. But for those 35-55 year olds out there that have been "downsized", it is not reasonable to expect them to become farmers overnight.
It's all good for the upper income types and the propertied Americans and the megacorporations. As long as they have the advantage of power, wealth, and other advantages, these ups and downs and even economic depressions don't really affect them too drastically. In fact, profits are higher than ever. The era of slavery and indentured servitude was great for profit--for the slaveowners.
The sad part of all this is that if Kerry would have been smart, he would have played this issue up and made this his core issue. In my opinion he didn't and that is why he lost. Well that and the fact that his past haunted him.
I am a leftist, but I am glad that Kerry lost, even though I was devastated by Bush's victory. Kerry does not want to make too big a fuss about this, and neither do any of the other democrats. I am not sure why. Maybe they are afraid they would awaken a sleeping tiger. They really do not want to rock the boat. After all, why would they want to alter the status quo? They are on top of the world!
Now that kerry has lost, I hope the Democrats fall further out of power in 2006. That might cause them to move back to the left, economically left, that is.....
eat shiat and bark at the moon
Dude, for over 11 years I thought I was alone in this mode of thinking.
Procreating is selfish. It used to be more obvious though, when the kids had to work on the farm to support old parents, today it is not necessarily as obvious, but it is still true - people are afraid to be alone when they are older, so they have kids.
Personally, for over a decade now I have been thinking on this subject. Quite a few things you ended with in your head, like for example that I never wanted to be born. Too bad it was not possible prior to my conception to ask me (the one from anywhere within the past decade,) whether I would want to be born. I would have refused with passion.
You can't handle the truth.
Quite so.
Unfortunately when they "cash in" those T-Bonds to pay benefits,
...the bonds won't be worth a plugged nickel.
That's because the Asian central banks holding over US$1e12 of T bonds and the owners of accumulated petrodollars will get tired of the weakening dollar eating their lunch.
We'll see $100/bbl oil, $5/gal gasoline a lot sooner than most of my fellow Americans realize.
But that's OK, we've been preparing admirably by increasing our consumer debt.
"Provided by the management for your protection."