Category: The New Depression
European austerity
Looks like Germany’s driving the policy bus, and they still say cut, cut, cut!
Future’s so bright, they gotta wear shades
If my kids were still college-age, I think I’d encourage them to get into a union apprentice program. Because if you’re not connected to the one percent job network, I don’t think a college diploma is a sure thing anymore and student loans mean being a debt slave for the rest of your life. But that’s just me.
I’m also torn by the fact that some degrees are more equal than others. It seems brutal to expect high school kids to suppress their talents and dreams to try to fit some more career-worthy mold. For instance, not everyone has the kind of skills that would make them good engineers or computer scientists. But if we’re forcing students onto certain career paths because they’re the only way they can ever afford to go to college in the first place, it doesn’t seem quite… American to me. After all, we’re humans, not car parts:
A weak labor market already has left half of young college graduates either jobless or underemployed in positions that don’t fully use their skills and knowledge.
Young adults with bachelor’s degrees are increasingly scraping by in lower-wage jobs – waiter or waitress, bartender, retail clerk or receptionist, for example – and that’s confounding their hopes a degree would pay off despite higher tuition and mounting student loans.
An analysis of government data conducted for The Associated Press lays bare the highly uneven prospects for holders of bachelor’s degrees.
Continue reading “Future’s so bright, they gotta wear shades”
The dog days of April
I don’t even like August weather in August, not in Philadelphia, which is why I’ll be spending the summer in New Zealand, where bees buzz around in cool breezes that blow up from Antarctica with icebergs the size of Rhode Island. More here.
No mercy from bailed-out BofA
by Odd Man Out
Susan posted this foreclosure story earlier today, but I couldn’t help ranting about commenting on it… More here.
Unemployment numbers
Well, I figured it was still bad even though hiring is picking up a little bit, but I didn’t know it was this bad:
More people have jobs in America this month than they did last month, so says the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS).
But the headline unemployment rate of 8.3% isn’t the whole story.
It’s not that there wasn’t positive news. The addition of 243,000 new jobs far exceeded economists’ expectations for an increase of 150,000. It was the seventh straight month of increases of 100,000 or more.
And yet buried in the BLS report are numbers that paint a different picture.
One of the main reasons the rate dropped, in fact, is because the BLS stopped counting nearly 1.2 million people as part of the labor force.
That’s a record. It puts the labor force participation rate at a 30-year low of 63.7%, significantly below the long-term average of 65.8%.
While it’s true the official number of unemployed fell from 13.1 million in December to 12.8 million, it helps when you simply don’t include 1.2 million in the equation.
“This is not a fundamentally positive way to see the unemployment rate fall,” Jason Schenker, president of Prestige Economics, said in an email to clients.
Online shopping’s invisible wage slaves
By Odd Man Out
A reporter for Mother Jones worked on assignment for an online shipping company and heard this from a member of the local chamber of commerce:
“But look at it from their perspective. They need you to work as fast as possible to push out as much as they can as fast as they can. So they’re gonna give you goals, and then you know what? If you make those goals, they’re gonna increase the goals. But they’ll be yelling at you all the time. It’s like the military. They have to break you down so they can turn you into what they want you to be. So they’re going to tell you, ‘You’re not good enough, you’re not good enough, you’re not good enough,’ to make you work harder. Don’t say, ‘This is the best I can do.’ Say, ‘I’ll try,’ even if you know you can’t do it. Because if you say, ‘This is the best I can do,’ they’ll let you go. They hire and fire constantly, every day. You’ll see people dropping all around you. But don’t take it personally and break down or start crying when they yell at you.”
One word for you investors: ‘Prisons’
By Odd Man Out
The “too-big-to-fail” bank Wells Fargo received a $37 billion bailout from the government after playing a major role in sparking the 2008 collapse of the housing market. Now the bank is bigger than ever and investing heavily in one of the country’s fasted-growing industries — for-profit prisons. More here.
Regarding the Chicken Man of Roswell, GA…
by Boohunney
On March 26th, Andrew Wordes, the infamous “Chicken Man” of Roswell, GA took his own life in an explosion that also destroyed his home during an attempt by marshals to evict him from his property that was in foreclosure. Wordes property was located in an area that was in proximity to McMansion neighborhoods and considered an eyesore by some. Others considered him the lovable Chicken Man.
Wordes had been involved in an on going dispute with the City of Roswell beginning back in 2009 on several issues including raising more “livestock” (chickens and turkeys) on his one acre property than permitted by the city. Also, there were other issues as Wordes not obtaining a permit to grade his property against floods and to repair damage from the epic floods in Georgia in 2009. The result was a conviction for Wordes and he was sentenced to community service. He was unable to meet the terms of his probation due to illness and was sent to the city jail for three months. During this time his house went into foreclosure.
If these troubles were not enough, in July of 2011, someone opened up a pen and released all his baby chicks. Approximately 53 of his 160 turkeys and chickens were allegedly poisoned. Mayor Jere Wood of Roswell had sympathy as he stated that he owned some of the turkeys that died. In fact, many residents of the area have poultry in their yards, including the Mayor Wood.
The Chicken Man was a relic of past times in an area now of suburban sprawl. Considered eccentric, he was well liked by many and tried to live life on his own terms. He sold his fresh eggs and traded poultry with many of the new “Suburban Farmers” that are becoming in vogue along with the old time property owners that have livestock that are surrounded by the new developments moving further and further out into rural areas. Some argue it was about eminent domain issues, some are saying it was foreclosure issues.
It was a sad ending to a true character. Some people just can’t handle colorful or coexist with the unusual. In his honor, my neighbors next door will receive a bag of feed for their beautiful chickens. More here.
Define self-interest, please
By Odd Man Out
I remember reading Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter With Kansas? a few years ago and feeling as perplexed as the author, whose book included a series of brave, convoluted attempts to explain why so many poor people vote for the politicians who are working to ensure they remain poor.
Yesterday, Digby helped shed light on the subject by linking to an interview of Corey Robin, author of The Reactionary Mind: Conservatism from Edmund Burke to Sarah Palin.
Her summary of Robin’s remarks:
They believe that giving up their private power would be far more destructive than giving up political power. Sure, right wing politicians are all liars and cheats and do anything they can to hold on to their public power. That’s the gig. But to the true believers their central concern is losing the privilege that defines them. And it isn’t really about money, although that’s tangentially part of it. It’s about hierarchy, status and dominion.