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A Tale of Two Countries
theodp writes "Over at TechCrunch, Jon Bischke is troubled by the growing divide between Silicon Valley and unemployed America. While people who spend most of their days within a few blocks of tech start-up epicenters are enjoying a boom/bubble, the number of unemployed now eclipses 14 million nationwide, labor under-utilization is 16.2%, and the mean duration of unemployment has spiked to 40 weeks. 'Which bring us to an important question,' writes Bischke. 'Should Silicon Valley (and other tech clusters throughout the country) care? After all, as long as people in Nebraska or the Central Valley of California have enough money to buy virtual tractors to tend their crops in Farmville, should the tech community be worried about whether those same people are getting paid to do work in the real world? Is what's best for Silicon Valley also good for America?'"
The software development, technology, and IT industries have been under attack for quite some time now. Automation, outsourcing, H1B visas, and now the cloud.
It is a testament to the technology-related fields that the workforce keeps adapting and evolving to keep pushing forward amidst adversity.
While I feel for all those unemployed, I have worked very hard to not only stay up-to-date and relevant, but to also keep pushing myself forward. I am not saying I am better than anybody else, but I have more than paid my dues and continue to do so. Perhaps the technology-related fields fare better because it has always been a moving target. Before you had worries about job security you had worries about your tools becoming obsolete or deprecated. The entire mindset is to keep learning new languages, concepts, and technology. Never rest on your laurels.
A nasty situation like riots and a bailout from Germany?
Nerd rage is the funniest rage.
look, no offense.
but a lot of people whose life is a never ending string of relatively well paying jobs, "interesting" work, conferences, tech seminars, etc, tend to lose their ability to empathize with the rest of us losers.
U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
U-6 jumped a full point from 15.4 in May to 16.4 in June.
Wow, this was one hell of a crap article. Who does this guy think he is, trying to guilt trip working americans in silicon valley because they are, well... working. I mean WTF?!
Income disparity was what made roman population lose interest, hope and eventually, participation in the roman republic, leading to deterioration of not only state but also culture in just a hundred years or so :
rich were flooding the market with cheap grain, causing the small farmers not to be able to make a living because the crop they produced ended up more expensive in cost than rich, big farm holders. in turn, they had to sell their farms to rich farmers and migrate into cities to make a living. increasingly roman agriculture had come under the control of very few, rich landowning aristocrats. these farms were called latifundia.
since the backbone of the country, the small free citizen landholders were gone, public services and military continually deteriorated. the 'barbarians' (non-romans) who were increasingly conscripted to the army had less incentive than a citizen soldier to defend anything. moreover, the disillusioned citizenry, who could get nothing out of the society at that point, cared much for any intruders - whomever invaded, they were just replacing existing elite with their own, little was changing in the case of ordinary citizens. (except for exceedingly vandal barbarians and similar - vandals were also a barbarian tribe, as a sidenote).
the rich, who held all the resources had little use for anything of the sort like republic or democracy. and when augustus and later emperors started to dismantle last vestiges of republic, noone cared. now, the citizenry had no say or share from society as a whole. and from that point on it all disintegrated.
the irony is, this process started around the peak of roman momentum - late republic era. the very era in which triumvirate (caesar pompei and crassus) were waging their civil war against each other. the empire didnt instantly disintegrate - it had momentum to take itself comfortably forward at least 100 years more. everything then started to directly crumble.
today is no different. back in roman times, the poor had at least the chance to engage in trade and arts/crafts. today, even those fields of life are 'latifundiated' by the rich just like how roman agriculture (then the backbone of economy) was consolidated in the hands of very few elite.
i would like to alert you to the fact that, this situation that destroyed roman empire, had later also become the causes that led to the birth of aristocracy in middle ages and on. in fact, the entire system of feudalism, is a system of property ownership - the difference with our current capitalist system is, now everyone is able to own property (land in this case), while back then, only aristocrats could. however this doesnt change one fundamental fact - this system eventually leads to a minority having and controlling everything (yes, including politics because resource is power - just like how senate had to accept subjugation in front of those who had the funds to muster legions), and ends up in an aristocratic hierarchical society.
in short - yes, they should care. for the sake of their own freedom too.
Read radical news here
you can make a change if you really want to.
i lost over $80,000 in value in 2 years on a chunk of my "American Dream".
this is exactly what i did and i just closed my short sell a few weeks ago. some how i actually got a check from someone for getting it sold. rofl. suckers.
1) stop paying your mortgage and put the money in a bank account (this is the beginning of your new savings account).
2) wait for your bank to ask you if you need help
3) activate the bank assistance programs if you quality
4) start the short sell process. your hardship is that you live in a place with no jobs and you need to relocate for work.
5) give the bank a ton of paper work that they ask you for
6) wait for someone to come along and pickup your hilarious underpriced/undervalued home.
7) get out of the house at the cost of a few hundred points to your credit score.
8) never use credit again.
note: you can stay in your home during this whole process with free rent.
i must emphasis #8. your new goal in life is to pay cash for everything you need including cars, the land, and the house you will die in (read, retirement).
...those of us that got suckered in with a mortgage...
How exactly were you 'suckered'?
OK, this one of the new "Big Lies" that is repeated enough that it might become accepted -- 'that public sector workers don't produce anything, only the private sector does'. Total BS. Examples: When a scientist employed by the Naval Research Laboratories invents a better laser, is something of value produced -- yes. When an employee of the city picks up your garbage, is a service of value performed -- yes. When a SEAL puts a bullet through the head of bin Laden, is a service of value performed -- yes. All examples of public employees producing valuable goods and services. The purveyors of this line of BS need to read some economics and learn the definition of "production". And I've known lots of persons employed in the private sector who produced absolutely nothing of value. If you want to, you could try to make some deranged argument that the private sector could always perform a service cheaper or better than the public sector, which is at least coherent, if not correct.
Public Sector workers don't pay income taxes?
On the back of what cereal box did you read that? Having worked in various players within the public sector (State, Local, and Federal) - I've been hit with the same unpleasant income tax that anyone else is required to pay. There are no free lunches where income tax is concerned.
I'm guessing you're conflating certain states (IIRC, Vermont, NH, and possibly D.C.) that don't have a state income tax. That doesn't get you out of paying federal income taxes, which are the brunt anyways, and those states and locales that don't have an income tax get the revenue in other ways (10%+ sales tax, $300 to throw away a bag of trash or $500 to park a car on your street.)
Nobody gets away clean.
Also, for what it's worth, I recently left the public sector (State of Wisconsin, of all places) and re-joined the private sector after a long hiatus. I'm up $35,000 year-over-year, even considering lousy health insurance compared to the state, and I'm responsible for much less work in the private sector than was expected of me in the public sector. Increasingly, working for government is a job that only a crazy person would sign up for. You really want the type of individual that sees a value proposition in making half-as-much money for twice-as-much work teaching your kids, writing government software, policing your streets, etc?
But by all means, don't let reality get in the way of ideology.
How is that being 'suckered'?
So, questions -
A) Where and how is 347/wk covering all of his bills? Because it wouldn't work in Sarasota Florida, I can say from experience.
B) Does the fact that it's temporary somehow not matter because it's extensible in (monitored) emergency circumstances?
C) Is this friend, in fact, not searching for employment? Because I can guarantee you that most people don't just say "Mmmm, delicious - I'm making $16k a year, until benefits end, I have no reason to try and find a job."
You're not supposed to make unemployment hard to get or maintain - because it's meant to alleviate a hardship, and allow people to keep effectively looking for a job, which gets a lot harder when you've lost your housing and communication services.
It cannot be said that a private worker does not pay taxes to government, because government did not have that money already.
It is irrelevant who has the money to start with. A government employee gets a salary, part of which is paid to the government in taxes, just as a private sector employee does. How much is withheld depends on the dependents and other status filed on the same W4 for both employees. It is an identical situation: if the money being withheld for taxes was not withheld, it could be paid to the employee.
Now, if you seriously want to argue that government employees do not pay taxes, then you must also deduct the amount that is called "income tax" from their salary when complaining about how large the government employee salaries are. You cannot honestly argue both ways -- "look at how large their salaries are" and "they don't pay taxes!".
The government workers do not pay income taxes, because it is clear that it's just one government department shuffling money to another...
Except for the fact that the money goes through a private citizen first, you would be correct. You do understand, I hope, that the money withheld from a government employee's salary is just like every other worker's withholding. I.e., an estimate of the amount of taxes that will be owed at the end of the year. And that by proper estate planning and other actions the amount withheld can be returned to the employee as a "tax refund" when he files his taxes. That's another example of why your lie that government employees don't pay taxes is a lie.
No, the only "Freedom of the 19th Century" was a giant portion of the North American continent available for mining of numerous resources - farming land, coal, expansion land, Indians, animals. With cheap, abundant natural resources a vigorous expansion economy is relatively easy. Take away cheap, abundant resources and you have the US at present.
Rose colored Republican glasses not needed.
Faster! Faster! Faster would be better!
If compassion isn't enough to make you support unemployment, think about it this way: The most dangerous people are those with nothing to lose. When a man has to put a gun to your head to pay his rent I doubt you'll be lecturing him on how he could have avoided the whole situation if only he had saved.
So, yeah... How about that privilege you got there? Because some people might not be financially illiterate, so much as not making more than their needs. Or they got cancer, or their parent or spouse got cancer, and their means weren't sufficient to keep their loved one alive AND build up a huge savings pool. Or one of the other members of the infinite array of things that can go wrong without someone being stupid or bad for it.
Sorry, but your "if you're poor it's cause you're stupid" narrative has never had any value, and is deeply, deeply disgusting to anyone who's ever actually interacted with someone affected by poverty.
Oh, and you know what - even if you were right (which, let's never forget, you aren't) - your "lets make it harder to keep unemployment" crap is STILL deeply stupid. Because regardless of whether we provide unemployment or other job assistance or not, the unemployed people are still going to exist. And you know what sucks more than paying a small amount of tax dollars into unemployment benefits and job assistance programs? Adding to the homeless problem, the crime rate, and the other problems that poverty serves as a primary driver for. And hey - if they turn to crime, you get to pay, not partial income, but full room and board in one of our fine correctional institutes, which costs a whole lot more than unemployment.