Scary 20%

[madhat]

I went to my Dr. today for my six month check-up. He asked me if I still worked at the same place, and replied "yes," told him I had enough leave to cover my injury. He told me that a lot of men coming to his office are unemployed. When we talked about it, he said, "20 percent!!" I queried him further on this since most of his patients are the grey hair set including me. It doesn't include the retired. He said 20 percent give or take 2 percent, leaning on the higher side, because some maybe too ashamed to admit.

[ruuufuhbock]

I am not a part of the gray hair demo myself but i believe this. the govt only includes those that receive unemployment benefits as part of the unemployment numbers. Not those whose benefits have ran out and are still unemployed or those that were ineligible for benefits and are unemployed. The true numbers have been estimated at about 20%:gah:

[wahoo]

I'd agree, I'll bet it's closer to 20% if those who have used up all their un-employment is included. Sad, truly sad. I guess if you lived in a warm climate you could just "squat" in a repo'd house? And hopefully live close to a soup kitchen. Yeah, we got change all right!!:gah:

[ruuufuhbock]

Change is all I have in my pockets these days....

[meoberry]

SSSHHHH!! Don't let the man know you have change left. Remember he want's change.:gah:

[meoberry]

Whats really sad. Is that our glorious leaders do not study history. Because if they did they would learn from the former presidents mistakes. If you increase taxes on the wealthy: the unemployment rate always goes up. The wealthy will just take their money off shore and open bussiness some where else. Thus they will have less income to report as long as money stays out of country. They did not get wealthy by being stupid. With the NAFTA act they just made it easier to ship into the U.S. from foreign countries. I saw the housing bubble had to break 5 years ago. My GOD. How can the kids, just starting out, afford the houses at the prices they where going for 5 years ago. Between government and state building codes increasing housing by about 25% in the last 10 years. Most could not even qualify for the loan. Let alone come up with down payment.:.02:

[Salamander]

What's happening is that all over the world, employment is generally declining for people without fairly high level skills. Its the end of the industrial era (the era of "the job") and the beginning of "the future" which is in a sense the era of abundance. Barring a war which destroys humanity, its going to be an era of change - exponentially acceleraing change, as machines gradually do more and more of everything that can be automated, and eventually, become intelligent like we are. (my guess, around 50 yrs from now)

In between now and then, technology - silicon or similar, will do more and more. People's motivators will have to change, what will happen is we move more towards the sort of "flow" state - google the book by the same name, "Flow" which is the pleasure of doing a job well, the leasure of learning, the pleasure of contributing to knowledge, because money is not a big enough motivator for someone to become as good as they need to be to work in a field, and literally be the best in the world at it. Which is what it would take!

Evenually, the trades will be decimated by the modularization and standardization of things.. People's homes and the various utilities, will be manufacured just like anything else that comes from a factory, and they will be assembled by machines.. or even printed, like a printed circuit, see the 3D printers...Everyone is going to need a unique niche to be employed, they will mostly be in the sciences. People will also live much longer. But between now and then, there will be some difficult times because wealth will become very concentrated. Its happening already. In lots of countries, half, literally, of the young people, or more, dont have jobs, including those with advanced degrees (they just stay in school forever, getting more training) Here, we structure health insurance so people are laid off "retired" early, but nobody has to pay them for it. Nobody has to buy them out. This keeps the young people off the streets. It prevents needed social change. That is one reason they do health insurance this way.

Google "the singularity" for more on the path towards intelligent machines and their self awareness and its social implications for humanity.

20% I would say, more like 30% or 35% and its going to continue going up until we start educating people whenever they need it, for their whole lives.

[Salamander]

Taking supplemental methionine and a cross section of many different antioxidants..will help prevent gray hair. One really good one is alpha-lipoic acid. Another really good one is n-acetylcysteine


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19237503


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20927229 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20927229)

Note the second paper mentions the alpha-MSH system. HVAC guys and gals really need to watch out for mold. Mold can destroy your health. Mold will deplete your alpha-MSH which sets in motion lots of problems.

As you can see, above (the second paper) if it does that, that will also make you prematurely gray!

[meoberry]

Taking supplemental methionine and a cross section of many different antioxidants..will help prevent gray hair. One really good one is alpha-lipoic acid. Another really good one is n-acetylcysteine


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19237503


http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20927229 (http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/20927229)

Note the second paper mentions the alpha-MSH system. HVAC guys and gals really need to watch out for mold. Mold can destroy your health. Mold will deplete your alpha-MSH which sets in motion lots of problems.

As you can see, above (the second paper) if it does that, that will also make you prematurely gray!

Too late. I have almost no brown left. One of the girls in the office once said it made me look distinguished. I said, makes me look like an old fart.:grin2:

[meoberry]

Along time ago. My history teacher. Told us that most of the nations of the world economies are based loosely on war and disease. Without either there is no way to control population. Too many people, not enough work to go around. I honestly believe that the nafta act accelerated the problems. You have third world countries paying third world wages and able to freely trade with the other countries. Did not take the greedy long to figuire out: Just to move manufacturing to third world countries. That do not have union's thus dirt cheap labor. Not to mention the fact that in those countries politicians are alot cheaper. We have hit the two hundred year curse. Just about all civilizations througout history, only last about two hundred years. Thats about how long it takes for the lust of power and greed to undermine the civilization. And of course the physical and moral corruption that goes along with it.:.02:

[Salamander]

I think that barring some huge war, (which would simply destroy all humanity) global population naturally will level out at some point not far in the future and start falling. Look at Brazil, for example. Many nations are now just replacing themselves, or less. If it was not for immigration, even the population of the US would be falling, not rising. And the US is not the magnet for skilled immigrants it was recently, and a small but significant number of the skilled immigrants who had come here in the past are returning to their home countries to start businesses there. The unskilled illegal immigrants still come but the number is shrinking. But if they were to stop coming, I don't think that that would be the cure for low end job loss that some poliicians want to pretend it would be, or that a huge number of less-skilled jobless Americans would suddenly be offered jobs. On the other hand, it would be a help to a great many of better skilled workers, engineers, tech literate workers, many of whom are unemployed now, because some automated manufacturing would return to viability here, and the US robotics industry would grow significantly and wages for that tier of workers might even stabilize somewhat and the rate of job loss would slow significantly. If we then invested subsantially more in education, say, double what we do now, say made education free through the 16th year, or even 18th year, we would be able to catch up with Europe and Asia and rebuild a highly skilled workforce. Otherwise, we are in serious trouble, and it might buy us a few years, not very long, just a few more years, before we need a welfare state. Because within 10 years, no matter how little unskilled and underskilled workers will work for, or how desperate they become, they just won't be needed.

Because ultimately, cheap labor is just a step on the road to not needing human workers in a lot of jobs. One has to ask, are those jobs good jobs for people? Often they are not. They are boring, soul crushing jobs. But people need them to eat.

For the last 200 years, many people have looked to their jobs to define who they were, but what happens when people are not able to do that anymore, then we have to ask, what are we here for, because clearly, its more than that.

>"I honestly believe that the nafta act accelerated the problems"

All the free trade agreements are designed to bypass democracy. We really should scrap the enire BAD mental model that FTAs are based on before its used to destroy public education and healthcare globally..which is coming, its right around the corner.

[Salamander]

meoberry, I think that if we have taxes, they should be progressive, not regressive, and they should be enough to offset our spending. (Federal taxes are now quite low for the naion as a percentage, we are 25th out of the 28 OECD nations, only Mexico and Chile are lower - see http://www.ctj.org for the exact breakdowns on state and local taxes around the nation and how they interact with things like overseas tax havens, etc.)

A great many very wealthy people now get away with paying no taxes.. The middle class especially, and other less wealthy people pay more because of those loopholes. (People who earn wages at jobs are easy to find, easy to tax, and the poliitcians don't get the contributions from them that the very wealhy pay to have their concerns kept on top of the stack.)

Much of the rest of what you said is probably true. I don't think that wages or "onerous regulations" (which in reality are much less onerous here than many (most?) other developed nations!) make as large an impact on better jobs..as the location and availability of workers does.. If we have a highly educated workforce, in time, we'll be in substantially better shape than we are now to capture new GLOBAL job creation. (Look at how so much of the jobs stimulus money apparently went to create jobs - overseas..despite efforts to prevent that..)

But the smoothed trend over time, the number of jobs, the health of the middle class workforce barring large increases in education and mobility/flexibility, I suspect will still shrink.

Many of the real tax havens (besides us, http://CTJ.org says we are flirting with that status ) are small countries..

We don't know for sure but I suspect that the natural tendancy if we had no income taxes and no state/local taxes, ESPECIALLY if we replaced them wih VATs, sales taxes, "flat tax" etc, I think would be even more concentration of wealth than we have now. Look at education. Without public education, the middle class can't propagate itself into the next generation.

A flat tax - barring us SLASHING military spending to levels similar to other nations of our size and wealth.. (its way out of proportion to all the others now.. its more than the entire rest of the world combined..) could not work without HUGE STRUCTURAL CHANGES in both the nation's global stance - those troops are there largely to protect "our" corporate interests, much of which is overseas, not the American people- obviously- how we tax because we, you and I both know they WOULD NOT touch the loopholes.. even then..

Also - without public education, (which acts often as the arbitrar of "truth" what is true and what is false) without some kind of sanity check on greed, the engine of past American prosperity, the large middle class, would vanish, replaced by a huge underclass of desperate people, like that of the worst and most stratified Third World nations..or the urban black underclass today.. The honest working people who remained here.. (many would try and some succeed to leave) who had the resourcefullness to even then earn money would find that they could not get ahead, once they did they would have to spend a lot of it to protect it, but even then it would largely be a matter of luck because the less real wealth creation there was the more people would resort to crime..or leave.. The politicians would all be crooked..without exception..

People, everyone who didn't have some gang-like alliance with some power bloc or another would have anything they managed to earn stolen by crooks as soon as it came to their attention.

"Kleptocracy"

[Salamander]

Meoberry.. I completely agree with a lot of what you said.. dont take my statement on taxes as meaning I dont agree with you.

I do see the wealthy as leaving whenever they want to. Its just like the urban/suburb/exurb explosion and the disinvestment in the old suburbs and the problems it brings..

Should we put more limits? I don't know.. The wealthy have been international for a long time now, and even hundreds of years ago used a nation's label as a flag of convenience more than anything else, when it suits their needs to shed it, they did and do. Wars always benefit the wealthy and decimate the poor and middle class..

Not that being international in outlook is a bad thing, it isn't - its simply reality.. but we also should remember that on one important level we come from wherever we came from and we need to sustain it if we can help do so. Like Robert De Niro said in Brazil.. (a film with some interesting HVAC aspects to it..) "We are all in it together."

On another level we ALL are increasingly also in every way citizens of all of planet earth and members of the human race and like it or not we are one big family.. especially the young.. Things in one country effect us all.. From space you also don't usually see national boundaries, except very rarely when some huge difference between the legal situation in one country or another makes the border stand out like a sore thumb (http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/world/dprk/dprk-dark.htm).

[John Markl]

What's being overlooked here, is the fact that we spent 30-40 years, working for high American wages, while spending it on cheap foreign goods.

This is our own undoing. Try closing our borders to imports. Watch how fast our standard of living plummets. A new, American (union) made TV set would cost a month's wages. (Like it used to back in the 60's).

Our problem, is that we forgot what "work" really is...We've been living fat, and now it's catching up to us.

[Salamander]

I still remember how pissed off my neighbors were about American cars..when I was a kid, but they still kept buying new ones every few years.. They were not happy about it though..

If it wasn't for Japanese and Chinese manufacturing, Americans standard of living might not have gone as high as many people think.. If your point is that, I think you're right.

We made a conscious decison to focus on space and military electronics - high margin items, but then we became addicted to a high level of military spending, which was - hopefully we can see that now, unsustainable. What's left is innovation, we have a spirit of innovation that we should cultivate.. But it requires a leap of faith in that many vested interests don't want it, they will fight it, and unless things change in Washington, things wont change..

We keep finding that they win again and again.. Why do we give tax breaks to companies who keep money overseas tax free and ship US factories and jobs overseas.. Thats the most offensive thing to me..

In the 70s when this was beginning, many companies closed their doors while they were still profitable, because they didn't hink the business was profitable enough. I don't think they just walked away from consumer electronics but there wasn't anything even remotely resembling an active defense of American jobs even though that was really called for. Those jobs just went to Asia.

It was a predecessor of the shifting of business to other countries after NAFTA.. IMO, we also blew our chances in many ways by embracing cheap illegal immigrant labor instead of making a decision to become more efficient..We should have kept as much of the consumer electronics industry as we could by producing more and more goods via automation. Hubris..

Now, they wont even admit that we blew it, which prevents any kind of honest discussion about how we might get it back. It reminds me of cargo cult behavior, politicians fret about lost jobs but they dont realize that the economic environment of the 50s, 60s and 70s was also in many ways a direct result of the war's devastation on "the competition" the postwar devastation, and the huge investment that the US had made in returning vets EDUCATION after WWII. Now we dont have the advantages of being the only game in town, plus we've been neglecting education and healthcare for decades and coasting on the educations immigrants have been bringing to the table, while neglecting the investments in educating Americans. Meanwhile other countries have been educating and providing increasingly better healthcare to their own people. Stress also causes a lot of health problems and the stress Americans are increasingly under is taking a big toll on our country's health and future.

[Salamander]

I don' t think that workers forgot what work is, but their management seem to have become fixated on short term profits shifting jobs and production according to the principle of buy low and sell high..instead of the sustainable business practices that would lead to the next generation having the skills they needed and jobs to use those skills at.

Instead of doing their jobs and getting people the education and protection from shameless crooks that we needed, the government turned a semi responsible banking industry into a pach of theives who pushed nina (no income no assets) loans and easy credit on people whose names they got by looking at who was in trouble.. if someone comes down with an illness, poof, the banks up their level of credit solicitations.. If you want an eye opener, listen to "the giant pool of money (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money)" a NPR radio show many years ago that laid out the housing bubble and what was happening.. everybody knew what they were doing.. and what was going to happen, and that they would then sock the american taxpayer with the bill for their gambling.. They knew the people they were lending to had no money..

I think that for a long time, starting in the 70s and 80s, European companies seemed to strike a better balance of work/family and government/industry/workforce partnership.

All the stuff that is happening there is the subject of a great deal of spin mongering in the US trying to blame our problems on European safety net programs etc..

Just like many people try to blame the loss of US jobs on unions..
Ive heard from many people who I trust that our own financial bubble isn't just "as bad as theirs" its worse.. Its a Ponzi scheme.

But with much less, almost no safety net here, its going to hit Americans worse than it has there. I think that the government is really blowing it to not put their differences aside..and deal with their differences ... and come up with a budget..

[meoberry]

meoberry, I think that if we have taxes, they should be progressive, not regressive, and they should be enough to offset our spending. (Federal taxes are now quite low for the naion as a percentage, we are 25th out of the 28 OECD nations, only Mexico and Chile are lower - see http://www.ctj.org for the exact breakdowns on state and local taxes around the nation and how they interact with things like overseas tax havens, etc.)

A great many very wealthy people now get away with paying no taxes.. The middle class especially, and other less wealthy people pay more because of those loopholes. (People who earn wages at jobs are easy to find, easy to tax, and the poliitcians don't get the contributions from them that the very wealhy pay to have their concerns kept on top of the stack.)

Much of the rest of what you said is probably true. I don't think that wages or "onerous regulations" (which in reality are much less onerous here than many (most?) other developed nations!) make as large an impact on better jobs..as the location and availability of workers does.. If we have a highly educated workforce, in time, we'll be in substantially better shape than we are now to capture new GLOBAL job creation. (Look at how so much of the jobs stimulus money apparently went to create jobs - overseas..despite efforts to prevent that..)

But the smoothed trend over time, the number of jobs, the health of the middle class workforce barring large increases in education and mobility/flexibility, I suspect will still shrink.

Many of the real tax havens (besides us, http://CTJ.org says we are flirting with that status ) are small countries..

We don't know for sure but I suspect that the natural tendancy if we had no income taxes and no state/local taxes, ESPECIALLY if we replaced them wih VATs, sales taxes, "flat tax" etc, I think would be even more concentration of wealth than we have now. Look at education. Without public education, the middle class can't propagate itself into the next generation.

A flat tax - barring us SLASHING military spending to levels similar to other nations of our size and wealth.. (its way out of proportion to all the others now.. its more than the entire rest of the world combined..) could not work without HUGE STRUCTURAL CHANGES in both the nation's global stance - those troops are there largely to protect "our" corporate interests, much of which is overseas, not the American people- obviously- how we tax because we, you and I both know they WOULD NOT touch the loopholes.. even then..

Also - without public education, (which acts often as the arbitrar of "truth" what is true and what is false) without some kind of sanity check on greed, the engine of past American prosperity, the large middle class, would vanish, replaced by a huge underclass of desperate people, like that of the worst and most stratified Third World nations..or the urban black underclass today.. The honest working people who remained here.. (many would try and some succeed to leave) who had the resourcefullness to even then earn money would find that they could not get ahead, once they did they would have to spend a lot of it to protect it, but even then it would largely be a matter of luck because the less real wealth creation there was the more people would resort to crime..or leave.. The politicians would all be crooked..without exception..

People, everyone who didn't have some gang-like alliance with some power bloc or another would have anything they managed to earn stolen by crooks as soon as it came to their attention.

"Kleptocracy"

I am the middle class and I will tell you. I pay more than my fair shair at 22% of my income and if you figuire in state amd local taxes it will be closer to 35%. What burns my butt, Is people telling me that I'll get back at the end of the year. Bull^%$&. I will probable wind up owing another grand this year. My wife has passed away. So I have no dependents. Then I get to watch people get back not only what they pay in but also what I have paid in as a bonus. These same people that get back 9 to 10 grand a year and also get food stamps and any other handout they can get. They can afford to buy another car every year. While I drive around in a 1998 model. Not to mention that they can eat steak once or twice a week. What is the incentive to work hard when you can sit back, smoke dope and live off handouts. How is that fair to everyone else? (Those of us that are putting 50 to 60 hours a week)
Look back in history. All these problems did not arise until, all the social programs started. Their intention was and still is to get every American to depend on the government for all their needs. It's got another name SOCIALISM.:.02:

[meoberry]

I don' t think that workers forgot what work is, but their management seem to have become fixated on short term profits shifting jobs and production according to the principle of buy low and sell high..instead of the sustainable business practices that would lead to the next generation having the skills they needed and jobs to use those skills at.

Instead of doing their jobs and getting people the education and protection from shameless crooks that we needed, the government turned a semi responsible banking industry into a pach of theives who pushed nina (no income no assets) loans and easy credit on people whose names they got by looking at who was in trouble.. if someone comes down with an illness, poof, the banks up their level of credit solicitations.. If you want an eye opener, listen to "the giant pool of money (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/355/the-giant-pool-of-money)" a NPR radio show many years ago that laid out the housing bubble and what was happening.. everybody knew what they were doing.. and what was going to happen, and that they would then sock the american taxpayer with the bill for their gambling.. They knew the people they were lending to had no money..

I think that for a long time, starting in the 70s and 80s, European companies seemed to strike a better balance of work/family and government/industry/workforce partnership.

All the stuff that is happening there is the subject of a great deal of spin mongering in the US trying to blame our problems on European safety net programs etc..

Just like many people try to blame the loss of US jobs on unions..
Ive heard from many people who I trust that our own financial bubble isn't just "as bad as theirs" its worse.. Its a Ponzi scheme.

But with much less, almost no safety net here, its going to hit Americans worse than it has there. I think that the government is really blowing it to not put their differences aside..and deal with their differences ... and come up with a budget..

Now I will have to agree with most of what you are saying here. But it still goes back to greed. I work for a corporation and its always about the I/O. Economy is bad and profits are down. So what are the customers wanting. Lower prices if we don't give it to them. They will find someone who will. No matter how better the service or experienced the techs. are. After all they are corporations too. They have to make that bottom line look better on the quarterlies. If they want to keep their jobs.


You are right. Training is out the window. Can't even get the company to supply laptops. Which is a neccassity now days. All they want to see is more profits. Even though the economy is fried right now. Building is almost nonexistant. We have laid off almost two thirds of construction.

As for the european countries. They are in most cases worse off than we are.:.02:

[Salamander]

I don't know about your town or where you live, but the poor people Ive known in my life often dont even own cars or drive. They take the bus or ride a bicycle or walk. They don't eat steak, maybe the most expensive meat they buy is ground beef, many low income people I know are vegetarians. Which often means the staples of their diet are things like grains, legumes, rice, bread. Some people who have had a good job in the last few years may have a nice car and get food stamps but that is because they have no or very little income now. They are not working, or they get very low wages and have families to feed. If you don't believe me, ask a social worker. They are not sponging off the system, they are often on the verge of homelessness.

The rate of poverty in the US is going up very quickly. Not long ago, a study came out showing that one in five kids in the US lives in a home that is at or below the Federal Poverty Level which is some ridiculously low level. Something like $16,000 a year for a family of four.

I grew up in a situation no so different than that. However, I always had enough to eat. My saving grace was that I loved to read. I was reading at seventh grade level before I entered grammar school, books like "Swiss Family Robinson".. But we didn't have the money for some important things. College was out of the question, even if I got financial aid, my mother didn't wan me to go. I got a very high SAT, her response was "you're so smart you don't need to go to college". Of course that wasn't true. But that is a survival instinct for poor people. They cannot take even the smallest risks, because a small bill that most people could deal with, they wont have the money to pay, and that sets a chain of events into action that can be disastrous for them.

Now I understand that.. I didn't then.

Some poor people are doing better than others.. but I think that your characterization of poor people is far more often than not, wildly wrong.

>"Look back in history. All these problems did not arise until, all the social programs started. Their intention was and still is to get every American to depend on the government for all their needs. It's got another name SOCIALISM."

I think Social Security started in 1934. The law was voted in not long after FDR's victory in the wake of Hoover's rout of the Bonus Marchers.

Starvation used to be a very real thing, and far more common in the US than anybody today realizes. Ask an archaeologist who has looked at recent history. People used to starve to death here, especially in rural areas, and most of those people were older people.

Medicare - another social program, was proposed by President Kennedy in I think 1962. He want out to push for it, spoke in front of some huge number of people in Madison Square Garden. After his death, they pushed it through. Now of course, they want to get rid of both it and Social Security. The problem with that is that we do not offer any kind of guarantee with any oher kind of investment. 401ks are a poor replacemen because the interest earned on investments is too small. Many people cannot save enough money even if they were saving a huge percentage of their income (which I used to do) Also, what happens when a large number of people cash in their 401ks at the same time? Social Security offers a way to prevent the worst kind of poverty. I used to live in a large city, and I like to go out for walks early in the morning. I used to see well dressed older people going through garbage. Old people are hungry. They often don't have enough to eat. They dont have cars and they dont drive. They can't live in places wihout public transportation. I hope you will consider what I'm saying. I'm not saying that all poor people are angels, I am just saying that they are rarely the social parasites you depict them as. If you want parasites, look to others. Perhaps the companies that collect corporate welfare and export jobs while collecting government bailout funds under false pretenses that they will create jobs.

[Salamander]

If I am making a salary tha works out to $80k a year, and in the middle of the year, I lose my job, and apply for food stamps after unemployment runs out, I might get a big refund back, but thats only because my withholding was substantial at the beginning of the year, when all indications were that I would have a job all year, then I lose it, and the whole withholding calculation is off because my tax rate is much lower than it would have been otherwise. So yes, they will get a big chunk of that money back. You would too, if that happened to you. But, come April 15, they don't have a job, and the outlook for another one is often not so good. They get a big refund from the previous year but they aren't going out and partying with that money, they are trying to make it last as long as they can. And they are looking for another job.

[meoberry]

I don't know about your town or where you live, but the poor people Ive known in my life often dont even own cars or drive. They take the bus or ride a bicycle or walk. They don't eat steak, maybe the most expensive meat they buy is ground beef, many low income people I know are vegetarians. Which often means the staples of their diet are things like grains, legumes, rice, bread. Some people who have had a good job in the last few years may have a nice car and get food stamps but that is because they have no or very little income now. They are not working, or they get very low wages and have families to feed. If you don't believe me, ask a social worker. They are not sponging off the system, they are often on the verge of homelessness.

The rate of poverty in the US is going up very quickly. Not long ago, a study came out showing that one in five kids in the US lives in a home that is at or below the Federal Poverty Level which is some ridiculously low level. Something like $16,000 a year for a family of four.

I grew up in a situation no so different than that. However, I always had enough to eat. My saving grace was that I loved to read. I was reading at seventh grade level before I entered grammar school, books like "Swiss Family Robinson".. But we didn't have the money for some important things. College was out of the question, even if I got financial aid, my mother didn't wan me to go. I got a very high SAT, her response was "you're so smart you don't need to go to college". Of course that wasn't true. But that is a survival instinct for poor people. They cannot take even the smallest risks, because a small bill that most people could deal with, they wont have the money to pay, and that sets a chain of events into action that can be disastrous for them.

Now I understand that.. I didn't then.

Some poor people are doing better than others.. but I think that your characterization of poor people is far more often than not, wildly wrong.

>"Look back in history. All these problems did not arise until, all the social programs started. Their intention was and still is to get every American to depend on the government for all their needs. It's got another name SOCIALISM."

I think Social Security started in 1934. The law was voted in not long after FDR's victory in the wake of Hoover's rout of the Bonus Marchers.

Starvation used to be a very real thing, and far more common in the US than anybody today realizes. Ask an archaeologist who has looked at recent history. People used to starve to death here, especially in rural areas, and most of those people were older people.

Medicare - another social program, was proposed by President Kennedy in I think 1962. He want out to push for it, spoke in front of some huge number of people in Madison Square Garden. After his death, they pushed it through. Now of course, they want to get rid of both it and Social Security. The problem with that is that we do not offer any kind of guarantee with any oher kind of investment. 401ks are a poor replacemen because the interest earned on investments is too small. Many people cannot save enough money even if they were saving a huge percentage of their income (which I used to do) Also, what happens when a large number of people cash in their 401ks at the same time? Social Security offers a way to prevent the worst kind of poverty. I used to live in a large city, and I like to go out for walks early in the morning. I used to see well dressed older people going through garbage. Old people are hungry. They often don't have enough to eat. They dont have cars and they dont drive. They can't live in places wihout public transportation. I hope you will consider what I'm saying. I'm not saying that all poor people are angels, I am just saying that they are rarely the social parasites you depict them as. If you want parasites, look to others. Perhaps the companies that collect corporate welfare and export jobs while collecting government bailout funds under false pretenses that they will create jobs.

Oh! So you are saying the poor are poor because, it was somebody elses fault. I grew up with very little to eat, in a poor family. Often if we did not kill something hunting we had no meat. I was one of the poor. My family refused handouts, back then. Now it's a common thing for some of my relatives to get handouts. They think it's all right. And none of them will do anything to lose that check. Including trying to better themselves. That is mentality I see now days. Twenty years ago. My income was less than 6000 a year. That was the poverty rate back then. Did I turn to the feds for help. Yes, I did. They paid for my schooling at a junior college, while I worked two part time jobs to support myself. No food stamps or any other help. No my friend, as long as we provide for the poors wants and not their immediate needs. You give them no incentive to better themselves. You also create more poor. Hows that? Because they will have children they cannot afford or support. They will grow up being taught to use the system.

As for the poor and old: You do realize they are collecting a social security check. But because the politicians have been using the SS account for a slush fund for over two decades. It's broke. The SS is the only ponsy scheme that is legal. If you rely on on SS to retire on you will be along side of the others at the trash cans.

Medicaid and medicare: The most abused program the feds offer. Not only the people that get it, but also the health care proffesionals. Just think. If you can go to a doctor for any thing at any time with no out of pocket costs and the doctors know what kinds of tests and treatments they can get away with. Don't rely on ethics to stay their hand. (They haven't cured anything since polio) Their is more money in treating symptoms than curing a disease.

Now, don't get me wrong. Everyone gets hit with unforseen problems from time to time. But I know people that are on their third or fourth generation of government support. The children beleive it is normal and a right for the government to support them. There has to be a time limit on government support for those that are able to work. Most them that I have known over the years. Will do anything not to lose the handouts. Including any thing to better themselves. The ones that I have witnessed that used the system to better themselves are now living normal lives without handouts. Has been a small number. Unfortunately, most do not.

Yes, it is true. Back in the 30's and 40's. Starvation was possible. But you have to look at the times. Middle of the great deppresion. Caused by the banking industry. With the new regulations that where imposed on the banks. It was never supposed to happen again. Guess what? Unemployement at a realistic figuire of twenty to twenty five percent. They lied. Same as then. The feds rolled out large sums of money for work programs. Increased taxes on the rich. And increased regulations on bussiness. That actually extended the deppression. If you want to look back at history. Look at the mistakes that where made and learn. Or you are doomed to make the same mistakes again. As the present administration is doing. :.02:

[meoberry]

If I am making a salary tha works out to $80k a year, and in the middle of the year, I lose my job, and apply for food stamps after unemployment runs out, I might get a big refund back, but thats only because my withholding was substantial at the beginning of the year, when all indications were that I would have a job all year, then I lose it, and the whole withholding calculation is off because my tax rate is much lower than it would have been otherwise. So yes, they will get a big chunk of that money back. You would too, if that happened to you. But, come April 15, they don't have a job, and the outlook for another one is often not so good. They get a big refund from the previous year but they aren't going out and partying with that money, they are trying to make it last as long as they can. And they are looking for another job.

Thats the ones we are supposed to help. I am talking about the ones that will not take a job. Because it will stop the checks. Usually because they can't pass a drug test. I am tired of trying to help people that refuse to help themselves. And their are far more of these types than the others. I have seen people trade food stamps for drugs and let their children go hungry. So they can get their buzz. You turn them in. Then see the children still hungry the next month. I have dropped food off at these houses, just to make sure the children have something to eat. The parents so stoned they can barely stand. I feel sorry for the children. But what can I do? I have seen what happens when you interfear. Children wind up in a foster home. Helps no one. There is no excuse to bring children into this world that you cannot support. With all the birth control devices available for free now days. It should be criminal.:.02:

[Salamander]

That sounds terrible. Drugs are a dead end street, no doubt about it.

I saw an indie film not long ago, "Winter's Bone" - that sounds like that world.. It was a pretty good movie..

Do you get Netflix?

"Winter's Bone is a 2010 American independent drama film, an adaptation of Daniel Woodrell's 2006 novel of the same name. The film was written and directed by Debra Granik and stars Jennifer Lawrence. It explores the interrelated themes of close and distant family ties, the power and speed of gossip, patriarchy, self-sufficiency, and rural poverty in the Ozarks as they are changed by the pervasive underworld of illegal methamphetamine labs. The film won a number of awards, including the Grand Jury Prize: Dramatic Film at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival. It was selected for four 2011 Academy Award nominations: Best Picture, Best Adapted Screenplay, Best Actress and Best Supporting Actor."

It was a really good movie, and you could tell its story was real.

[Salamander]

We need to make it clear to Washington that the laws need to be changed to bring jobs back to the US, as much as is possible. And also to re-prioritize education and make money available for real education, not just brief vocational training in already obsolete skills..

Because without jobs, you and I could argue until we were blue in the face but it wouldnt make a damn bit of difference because as time goes on, without jobs, the situation becomes more and more difficult to reverse..

With manufacturing jobs gone and services jobs subject to GATS - with multinationals allowed to bring in skilled service workers, teachers, doctors, nurses, - profitable margin contract workers under GATS Mode Four, the "American" jobs will either be here, but filled by those contract workers under 5 year contracts.. living in dorms.. or they will be overseas, (at subsidiaries of "American" firms THERE) and they will go to nationals of those countries.. again..HERE there wont be any jobs for our less skilled American people to get here, and whether the people surviving all this are capable engaged, skilled potenial workers, or potheads stoned out of their minds, as time goes on, it increasingly wont make a difference, there wont be any money. No jobs, no money.

[Salamander]

You're right, people have to want to work. Wages also need to be enough to live on. We could learn a lot from immigrants, who often all work together to lower their cost of living so they can save money. When wages fall, people have to understand that they have to give up the cell phone, the car, the private apartment. If they are not skilled enough, if they aren't moving forward, they are falling back, they can't expect their standard of living to remain the same or rise unless they are learning new skills and making themselves invaluable to their employer. And even then, their employer may close up and leave, or contract with some body shop to bring on an engineer from India..

Even if they go to the right college, take all the right classes, at that college, get straight As, do everything right, there is no guarantee.

"stay hungry, stay foolish" Steve Jobs said in his 2005 commencement address at Stanford.. telling graduates (he himself had not graduated from college) to try to trust all their intuitions and go for the brass ring of their dreams..

Its good advice.. But, we, as a country, need to be a team, not trying to undermine ourselves with greed.

I think Obama is being too generous to the wealthy and corporations.

http://ctj.org/ctjreports/archives.html

http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/federal_tax_issues/corporate_taxes_1/

[meoberry]

You're right, people have to want to work. Wages also need to be enough to live on. We could learn a lot from immigrants, who often all work together to lower their cost of living so they can save money. When wages fall, people have to understand that they have to give up the cell phone, the car, the private apartment. If they are not skilled enough, if they aren't moving forward, they are falling back, they can't expect their standard of living to remain the same or rise unless they are learning new skills and making themselves invaluable to their employer. And even then, their employer may close up and leave, or contract with some body shop to bring on an engineer from India..

Even if they go to the right college, take all the right classes, at that college, get straight As, do everything right, there is no guarantee.

"stay hungry, stay foolish" Steve Jobs said in his 2005 commencement address at Stanford.. telling graduates (he himself had not graduated from college) to try to trust all their intuitions and go for the brass ring of their dreams..

Its good advice.. But, we, as a country, need to be a team, not trying to undermine ourselves with greed.

I think Obama is being too generous to the wealthy and corporations.

http://ctj.org/ctjreports/archives.html

http://www.ctj.org/taxjusticedigest/archive/federal_tax_issues/corporate_taxes_1/

That's where I disagree with you. It takes money to make money. I have never had my pay check signed by a poor man. It is the wealthy that create jobs. The government cannot make a job. They can kill jobs. By regulations and taxes. The best thing the government can do is just get out of the way and shut up. Sure the government can greate a new service that will hire more people. But it will not manufacuture or create anything. Except for higher taxes to pay for another service. That usually create more regulations to kill more jobs.

Education is great. As long as the education is applied. I have seen college graduates that have no self motivation. To suceed you must apply what you have learned and be prepared to work hard to succeed. If you don't all you have done is wasted 4 years of your life in school.

As for low wages. I agree that it is low. But, with the housing crash. Which has lowered the price on housing. Should help with the younger generation with a roof over their heads. Which by the way. I saw coming about 5 years ago. It had no choice. The cost of housing had risen so high that even I could not qualify for a loan. Until the government lowered the lending requirements which unfortunately caused the crash to begin with. If they had left it alone the prices would have had to come down, without their intervention.:.02:

[John Markl]

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qo-cUZ2aRKc&feature=related

This clip has been shared on another thread, but bears repeating here.

We live in a nation with an unemployment rate of 8-20%, depending on who you believe. Yet, we are faced with a critical shortage of skilled labor.

This is due in large part, to the fallacy propogated back in the 70's, that everyone should go to college and live the "good life". The government poured gas on the fire, with all sorts of loan and aid programs, that have left many graduates burdened with debt they can not pay.

The problem is, that as a result, we have a shortage of good tradespeople, and a glut of useless people with useless degrees out "looking for jobs"....expecting to do nothing, and get fat paychecks.

The computer industry is perhaps, one of the leading magnets for this. Yes, we enjoy what computers can do for us......but we can't all sit in cubicles or in our apartments staring at computer screens, and remain a productive society. Someone still has to go out there and do the work.

We've marginalized skilled trades, to promote the fallacy that we're all going to be computer gurus of one form or another.

Somebody's still gotta make the donuts.....

[pbharvey]

80% of the people have a job :patriot:

[Salamander]

The kind of dynamic that applies to the trades.. applies everywhere..

But the computer people are what I see the most of..

One reason I keep talking about Linux is because Linux communities are very creative..a creativity that is sustainable. They just build wealth. Look at Google, Yahoo, YouTube, facebook.. Those companies were built on *nix.

I see 'experts' who refuse to learn new things in computing all the time. They are really trapped in a rut - they want the world to just stop changing.. "who moved my cheese" syndrome.

If they devoted some time on some challenging project- to catching up -they could probably find work.

There are areas that thrive more the worse the economy gets.. two I can think of are Linux and computer security..

Now if you are in HVAC I would say a safe bet as far as a potentially quite hot area to be in would be some disruptive new HVAC technology that saved companies lots of money, which was compatible with or used linux!

Look at all the cool stuff they are doing in Germany!

[Salamander]

Assuming we count the people who work part time as greeters at WalMart and those who sell their old stuff on ebay?


80% of the people have a job :patriot:


This is a pretty good radio show.. listened to this episode recently..

"How to Create a Job" (http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/435/how-to-create-a-job)
http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/435/how-to-create-a-job