The travails of those workers in their 40′s to 50′s who are too young to retire but too old to hire, continues. It has to be awful to find yourself in that position and realize that it is quite likely that you will never work at a meaningful job with decent benefits ever again. As the article states: white collar professionals in low paying jobs (like the elitist derided Wal-Mart) might be quite common soon. Even when the economy eventually recovers (after Obama is gone), these people are going to have a hell of a time replicating their previous salaries and positions.
by Maureen Callahan
Anne, 45, has always considered herself middle-class: As a single mom earning $65,000 a year in ad sales, she was able to rent a one-bedroom apartment on the Upper East Side for $1,000 a month and send her daughter, now 12, to private school. “I was able to make it,” she says. “Even go on vacation sometimes.”
In the span of 15 months, she has come to define herself as poor — even if the government won’t, denying her multiple applications for welfare and food stamps because, she says, she once made “too much money.”
Upon losing her job in June 2009 — her company was going under — “I was plunged into immediate poverty,” she says. “It was a surprise attack.”
Anne has borrowed money from her sister and her retired parents — who are struggling themselves — to pay the rent; she applied for a Section 8 and was able to slash it in half, to $500 a month. She depleted her 401(k). She had no savings, was living paycheck-to-paycheck. But she still felt economically safe, given her location and her tax bracket and her white-collar job.
“Now, when I go to the grocery store, I have to decide what is absolutely essential for my child,” Anne says. “Sometimes, I’m eating whatever-in-a-can. A lot of the time, I’m literally walking around without a penny in my pocket.” She deliberates before taking her daughter on a day trip downtown, because a round-trip subway fare will cost $9. She negotiated a tuition break with her daughter’s school, and the ease of that leads her to believe she’s not the only parent who’s asked, which she does not find especially comforting.
She’s $16,000 in debt to credit card companies. One of her local grocers, who once let her buy food on a running tab, now has a bill collector after her. She has her résumé up online, but when headhunters call and ask her age, “suddenly they never call me back,” she says. “I’m depressed. None of my friends are able to find jobs. I am living day-to-day.”
Anne’s biggest fear is that her daughter finds out how dire the situation is.
“She’ll say to me, ‘Are we poor?’ And I keep lying,” Anne says. “I think it’s a very traumatic thing for a child. I don’t want her to feel like she’s the only one, or a victim.”
When the recession does ease up, Anne fears that she will emerge as a permanent member of the lower class.
“The world kind of betrayed us,” she says. “The salary I was making — I don’t think I’ll ever make it again.”
This is what President Obama spoke of last week on “60 Minutes”: the threat that America adapts to the point where this economy is considered “a new normal, where unemployment rates stay high, people who have jobs see their incomes go up, businesses make big profits, but they learn to do more with less and so they don’t hire.”
In other words: The new normal is most defined by the decimation of the middle class.
The decline of the middle class in America has been debated and discussed for 30 years — it was in the 1970s that middle-class wages began stagnating and education levels began declining — but it’s the Great Recession that has accelerated and intensified this decades-long trend. There is wealth and there is poverty, and the middle class — a category so vague that the majority of Americans, if asked, define themselves as such, whether they make $30,000 or $200,000 a year — are, in greater and greater numbers, downwardly mobile.
The median income is the US is now $50,000 a year, 5% less than it was in 2000. But whether one is middle class on that salary depends on a host of factors — your education level, how many dependents you have, where you live, whether you’re still paying off college loans, whether your mortgage is underwater.
“People with a college degree are the new working class,” says Lawrence Mishel, president of the Economic Policy Institute. He points to the long-term, exponentially increasing gap between rich and poor in America: from 1989-2007, the upper 1% of the population gained 56% of all income growth, while the bottom 90% gained just 16%.
“People have been doing poorly for a long time, but it’s not because they haven’t been working,” Mishel says. “It’s because the economy is working the way it’s designed to work.”
In his recent paper for the Center for American Progress, MIT economist David Autor studied the increasing polarization in the US job market, finding that the highly educated upper class and the less-educated lower class are faring far better in the recession than the middle class, which has been crushed by off-shoring and technology. (Other factors, such as the housing crisis, financial deregulations and the decline of unions, are cited by nearly all economists as contributors, but Autor focused on job availability and creation.)
From 1979-2009, there was a nearly 12% drop in the four “middle-skill” occupations: sales, office/administrative workers, production workers, operators. Meanwhile, people in the top 20% of the economy earning $100,000 or more a year, says Peter Francese, demographer at Ogilvy & Mather, “have barely been touched by this recession.” They average an unemployment rate between 3% and 4%, the lowest in the nation. The US Bureau of Labor Statistics projects a 14% increase in low-education service jobs between 2008-2018. “The only major occupational category with greater projected growth,” Autor writes, “is professional occupations, which are predicted to add 5.2 million jobs, or 17%.” These sectors include medicine, law and middle- and upper-management.
What is left, when this recession finally recedes, is a landscape where mid-skilled jobs are fallow, where someone who once worked in retail has lost their job due to the rise in online shopping, or an administrative executive has been replaced by new software. Economists fear this trend may be compounded by what Obama, too, sees coming: a dearth of mid-skill positions offered by businesses who’ve managed to raise productivity and profit margins while slashing jobs.
Without the training or the education for the formerly middle class worker to move up, the only direction is downward. So those by-now-familiar tales of former white-collar workers with master’s degrees competing for one part-time position as a floor manager at Home Depot — displacing a lower-skilled worker in the process — will become more common. As will the former mid-skill worker who takes a job for less than he was previously making, struggling to replenish his hollowed-out savings and attempting to rebuild a 401(k). Getting especially hurt: the 40- to 50-something who is “too old to hire, to young to retire,” in the words of Barbara Ehrenreich, author of “Nickel and Dimed: On (Not) Getting By in America.”
“This is an apocalyptic situation,” Ehrenreich says. Underemployment, she adds, does not just describe people who want to work full-time but can only find part-time jobs: “It also means white collar professionals in low paying jobs,” she says. “When the middle class disappears, you have the rich and the poor. And this is called ‘being the poor.’ ”
Read the rest Class dismissed: Why middle income jobs are not coming back
Tags: Maureen Callahan
Yup, that pretty well describes my situation perfectly.
Except for a period from after WWII till the 90′s it’s never been easy. We tend to forget that America only provides the means for success, it doesn’t guarantee it.
“They should be saying ‘Thank you’!”
—President Barack Hussein Obama
Rancher wrote:
The current issue is whether the Administration is swinging a double-headed logging axe at those very means, and whether its swing can be arrested before the tree is felled.
Also, Baby Boomers in their early 60s are seeing the same thing.
If they take Social Security at 62, the benefits are significantly reduced forever and their benefits are also deducted in the amounts of whatever small bits of work they do find until they reach the normal retirement age.
Some are cashing in their retirement savings to stay afloat which means that they won’t have it when they really are ready to retire.
So they’ll never be ready to retire.
A lot of people are really screwed.
And meanwhile, the president continues his attacks on the “rich” which includes the middle class. Shutting down jobs and opportunities every chance he gets. I hope the Repubs in charge now keep beating the drum on the destruction the dems have caused in just a few short years and dems are never again given this chance to destroy the country.
@ lobo91:
Same here. Even while taking care of my father I’ve been applying all around the city and have had squat for results in two years.
The See-Saw is tipping to towards unemployed side, and the administration is kicking the fulcrum to make it bottom out faster.
Two years ago, I was married, had 3 cars, and made $74,000 a year (plus another $18,000 in non-taxable benefits).
I’ve now been unemployed for 17 months, am divorced, down to 1 car, have no medical insurance, and filed for my final week of unemployment benefits today.
I have enough money in the bank to last me until about February.
If I’m really lucky, I might be able to find something in retail or private security, paying $10 an hour.
Mars wrote:
I’ve had exactly 1 interview, for a job that paid $36,000 a year.
I’m sure they hired someone younger.
@ lobo91:
Two years ago I was married, had a job for 10 dollars an hour, and squat for benefits, but had my own car and apartment.
Now I’m divorced in 3 weeks, unemployed, living at my parents, taking care of a double amputee father, and no vehicle.
Didn’t fall quite as far as you, but did your wife become a lesbian?
lol.
@ lobo91:
Since 07 I’ve had a dozen interviews and I’m fully convinced most of them hired younger, mainly due to my having to pick entry level jobs. Not one job offer except by a couple of scam insurance companies.
Mars wrote:
I don’t even look at those ads from insurance companies, even the “big name” ones.
They’re more interested in how many names of friends and relatives you can give them as leads than anything else…
@ Mars:
That actually sounds like where I was in 1993, less the divorce.
This is the second time it’s happened to me. Just when I thought I’d finally gotten out of the hole I was in during the Clinton years, I had the rug pulled out from under me again.
There, but for the Grace of G-d go I.
Haven’t had to fall back on Plan B since the last time I had to fall back on Plan B, mid 90′s.
If there’s a bright side to the current situation here, at least it disproves the nonsense the left always likes to push about suicide bombers in the Middle East being driven by “lack of opportunity” and “hopelessness,” rather than Islam.
I haven’t heard of a single person blowing up a mortgage office or bank…
This “Anne” person of the quoted article doesn’t sound like the sharpest knife in the drawer. She’s a single mother of 45? Why didn’t she hook up with a new guy, if the kid’s father went out of the picture for whatever reason? A couple is going to be an economically stronger unit than a single wage-earner, no matter how well paid.
Then she’s spending a grand a month on an apartment. I suppose that’s actually cheap for New York City, but it’s still a big chunk of change. And she’s sending her daughter to private school, an expensive luxury for someone on a limited income.
And she whines about having to eat “something or other out of a can”, when canned goods are amongst the most expensive items, pound for pound, on the market shelves.
If she had made a practice of saving a little more of her income during the good years, she might have had more options available to her when the job went South, like maybe going South herself, and finding a job in Texas, and a lower cost of living to boot.
@ lobo91:
Not to be macabre, but I have read of a few instances where people take themselves out with their families, first.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
Probably still votes demoncratic too.
Brick wrote:
Sure, it happens once in awhile, usually because the person in question was already a whackjob.
@ lobo91:
At least I was still in the service during the Clinton years. Of course that was the same as being impoverished with all the damn cuts he dropped on us.
I don’t even know where the insurance companies keep getting my name, I guess they are pulling my resume from my local job website and using it.
citizen_q wrote:
That goes without saying.
I’m in much the same boat. Lost my job in July (my fault, not the economy) and I just started one making 45% less. And it’s a temp job to boot. Sent out over 200 resumes, managed less than half a dozen interviews.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
You raise some potentially valid points. I think what happens sometimes is that people get into situations where they can no longer see the forest for the trees, and their critical thinking process gets clouded.
The heck of this on a grander scale is…if we could keep more of our money paying less in taxes, we’d have more to give to a more efficient safety net structure of private orgs including churches, to lend a hand up to folks that need it.
The blog ate my post, like nachos in a drunken banjo player party.
@ lobo91:
The only thing I’m interested in with insurance is in claims.
lobo91 wrote:
Yeah I would never do anything to hurt my family. However I do have this list of people that I plan on visiting if I ever get a terminal disease.
/Kinda
mfhorn wrote:
That’s what the one interview I had was for.
Nevergiveup wrote:
Is yours arranged alphabetically, or chronologically?
Mine’s alphabetical.
Brick wrote:
listed by “most deserving”
@ Nevergiveup:
You should try geographic.
More efficient…
lobo91 wrote:
Ooh good point.
lobo91 wrote:
That’s why I love this give and take of the Innernets. Someone will always have a better idea.
@ Nevergiveup:
That’s what senior NCOs are for…
lobo91 wrote:
I know. Couldn’t get anything done with out them!
Nevergiveup wrote:
I usually tell people that the most important phrase you learn at the Sergeants Major Academy is, “Are you sure you want to do that, sir?”
First, we decimated our mining base. Then we decimated our manufacturing base. Now our service economy which was to replace our manufacturing economy is ferhootzed. Which leaves us with today’s information economy.
So what’s a pound of information go for these days?
We’ve gone from mining minerals, to mining information, and still can’t pay for day-to-day operations without borrowing.
@ Brick:
I think the best description of our economy today is “vaporware.”
Brick wrote:
Let me check the Indian going wage for CSR’s.
/just kidding but not so far from the truth.
@ Nevergiveup:
By the way, “Are you sure you want to do that, sir?” usually translates to, “That’s a really stupid idea, and if you insist on going forward with it, I’m going to stand over here…”
Brick wrote:
Mining information to learn the buying habits of people who can’t afford anything. Is this a great country or what?//
lobo91 wrote:
It’s usually a little different in a Medical Unit. Our Chiefs and Senior Chiefs usually just come around and ask me if I have enough support to get our job done–treating the patients.
Lobo and Brick:
Have you guys considered putting in applications to work as corporate safety officers, or as safety hands in the oil patch? Ex-military guys often do well in that role, as they tend to have a no-nonsense attitude, and can manage to train people efficiently without getting caught up in minutiae.
Right now, here in Canada, the oilpatch is actually short-handed again. Don’t know how it is in the U.S. side. Just remember there are many ancillary positions that don’t put you out there on the rig floor, but still pay good coin. I’ve been on a couple of wells where we had full-time security due to a perceived threat from eco-freaks.
@ lobo91:
I got a phone interview, but that was it.
I’ve got to think that at least part of the problem is a recent termination. This new job really sucks though- it’s servicing medicare ‘D’ policies (the prescription drug plan). Pay is garbage, especially for what you’re doing. Oh well. We’ll see what happens. God’s got a plan.
OT:
Like many other imperialist nations before and since, the Arabs genuinely believed that they were a civilising influence bringing salvation to mankind. It is ironic that most of the peoples they “liberated” from “ignorance” were culturally more civilised than the Arabs themselves…
Peoples such as Maldivians, with whom the stage had previously been set for Arab colonialism by infiltration are under attack again. The indigenous mode of dress, way of life and the language are again being assaulted more confidently than ever before.
There does not seem to be a shortage of willing native mercenaries for the Arab colonial cause. History is being rewritten to tell compliant natives that it all began with the Arabs. Native names, greetings and attire are symbols of jahiliyaa or the so called “Age of Ignorance”. National survival and identity depend on subservient pandering to the colonialist culture.
Unlike the subjects of other imperial powers, the native collaborators of the Arabs appear to be as zealously loyal to the cause as the Arabs themselves. Their willingness to condemn the culture of their ancestors is amazing indeed.
@ lobo91:
Is that a variation on ‘Overly optimistic as to the outcome of such an action’?
@ Nevergiveup:
Yeah, it would be a little different for you. I generally assume that licensed professionals know what they’re doing, until they prove otherwise.
I was referring more to the operational side of things.
lobo91 wrote:
Now that is a keeper term.
What upsets me most about the current state of affairs is we have moved our production base to countries that can do it cheaper so we can find great deals in the Walmart economy.
I would suck up the higher price of goods to bring those jobs back here.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
I’m not really in a position to be mobile at the moment, unfortunately. My mortgage is underwater, and it would be pretty hard for me to rent my house.
Of course, if something doesn’t come along soon, I won’t have to worry about the house anymore…
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
Thanks for the suggestion. Hopefully, I won’t have to use it anytime soon. Still gainfully employed, (for now.) Also, I was never .mil.
mfhorn wrote:
Something like that.
I generally figure that officers come up with plans, and I tell them why they won’t work…
song_and_dance_man wrote:
Yours is a growing sentiment.
@ song_and_dance_man:
At some point, our entire economy is going to involve people working for WalMart. They’ll be the only retail store left, and everything else will exist to keep them supplied.
lobo91 wrote:
I could be wrong but it seems to me in my limited experience that Us Medical Officers and the Senior NCOs get along better than in an “operational” Unit. I guess they view us as either harmless, or in need of a lot of protection?
The pendulum swings left then right. Unfortunately the baseline has trended left since our founding. Nevertheless things will improve, just keep in mind that you need to prepare during the boom times for the down times.
In 2000 I lost my wife, my livelihood, and my dog. Wife came back and I started a new career. Things were so bad I became a prison guard. That option is available to everyone here BTW, I know we’re hiring. I can’t smoke dope anymore but I still have vodka. Life goes on, I have a roof over my head, I’m feeding my family, wife’s getting her masters, we survive. I now have two dogs!
KABUL, Afghanistan -US and NATO officials claimed Sunday that insurgents in Afghanistan are facing financial problems and are in a weakened state after a fierce summer of fighting.
Read more: http://liveshots.blogs.foxnews.com/2010/11/14/afghan-insurgents-in-weakened-state/#ixzz15JTDiHC5
What a crock. At the end of ever summer they say the same thing. Then everyone takes the Afgan Winter off to regroup and resupply, and the fight starts a new in the spring?
@ lobo91:
I’m not sure where you are located, but jobs of that nature may exist within your operating range? There are many jobs out there that most people never dream even existed, because they are non-glamorous, and don’t work in the eye of the public. You never see them on TV.
Safety supervisors exist in almost all industrial jobs, and probably in government establishments, too. But there’s never been a TV show about them, AFAIK.
@ Nevergiveup:
It’s a different mindset.
@ song_and_dance_man:
http://www.howtobuyamerican.com
Rancher wrote:
Well Prisons are relatively recession proof I guess?
@ Nevergiveup:
They probably said the same thing there 1,000 years ago.
I’m wishing the best for all here who are having a hard time in this economy…and for everyone not here in the same situation.
I’m self employed. Sometimes that’s not the easiest route to go, but I’m still in business, for which I am thankful.
@ Brick:
It may be the only answer to bringing real production of goods and not just service to America. Turning that ship around is another matter.
Nevergiveup wrote:
Arithmetic on the Frontier
—Rudyard Kipling
A great and glorious thing it is
To learn, for seven years or so,
The Lord knows what of that and this,
Ere reckoned fit to face the foe—
The flying bullet down the Pass,
That whistles clear: “All flesh is grass.”
Three hundred pounds per annum spent
On making brain and body meeter
For all the murderous intent
Comprised in “villanous saltpetre!”
And after—ask the Yusufzaies
What comes of all our ‘ologies.
A scrimmage in a Border Station—
A canter down some dark defile—
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail—
The Crammer’s boast, the Squadron’s pride,
Shot like a rabbit in a ride!
No proposition Euclid wrote,
No formulae the text-books know,
Will turn the bullet from your coat,
Or ward the tulwar‘s downward blow
Strike hard who cares—shoot straight who can—
The odds are on the cheaper man.
One sword-knot stolen from the camp
Will pay for all the school expenses
Of any Kurrum Valley scamp
Who knows no word of moods and tenses,
But, being blessed with perfect sight,
Picks off our messmates left and right.
With home-bred hordes the hillsides teem,
The troopships bring us one by one,
At vast expense of time and steam,
To slay Afridis where they run.
The “captives of our bow and spear”
Are cheap, alas! as we are dear.
@ song_and_dance_man:
You know, maybe the answer is to have progressive tariffs on imported consumer goods, arranged by tier on the price scale. Say, zero on the bottom 10%, ranging up to 100% on the topmost 10%, based on the wholesale price FOB the port of arrival.
That might create a window of opportunity for skilled workers to be re-employed making mid and upper-range cars, furniture, and appliances for domestic sale, and leave the people who can afford only the cheap-ass imports with access to the same.
I’d be in favor of Canada joining the USA behind the same tariff wall. We are facing similar losses in the manufacturing sector.
Nevergiveup wrote:
Definitely. Pennsylvania has had an open call for CO trainees since…looks like 2009 from the posting on the Civil Service site.
@ Rancher:
Sorry to hear about your dog. Who pays for the prison guards? I’d rather work at WalMart.
@ Rancher:
I found a new career as well in law enforcement. Long removed from my former stint as a data dude.
As Nevergiveup mentioned it is relatively a recession resistant field. The pay is not what I was used to but it is comfortable if one is willing to scale down.
@ song_and_dance_man:
I’m hardly the intimidating type, though. Short, heavy, and in rotten condition!
Nevergiveup wrote:
No, they’re not. The state doesn’t have any money so they are letting a lot of nonviolent offenders parole early. Our prison is at about 80% capacity. We have a hold on raises, we used to get a 3% raise every year. Still, the prison isn’t going to close but the one in Roswell almost did.
Rancher wrote:
New Mexico? There is a prison in Roswell?
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
Smoot–Hawley?
Nevergiveup wrote:
Where else would they keep the aliens?
song_and_dance_man wrote:
It’s a global market for a lot of production and services. With our minimum wage laws that insist that employers pay a broom pusher $7 to $10 per hour, while denying those under the age of 18 to push the same broom for less.
From Wiki:
BTW, I’m not making minimum wage right now.
Complaining? No. Worried? Yes.
Brick wrote:
I knew there was an Air Force Base there, but they are usually called Country Clubs?
Nevergiveup wrote:
If it nearly went broke there’s probably a lien on it.
Nevergiveup wrote:
Yeah, for aliens. Actually it’s a minimum level 1 facility. Doesn’t even have a fence. Since those are the cons they’re letting out it doesn’t have many inmates.
Rancher wrote:
No way anyone in the Executive capacity would let a prison close and dump criminals onto the streets. They’ll threaten to get the budget they want, but if push comes to shove, the prisons will remain open for business.
Who wants to be that guy who let the criminals out, who went on to commit x# of crimes, hurting/killing x# of constituents, etc.
Nevergiveup wrote:
Air Force base closed along time ago.
Brick wrote:
Usual they call him the Governor of Mass.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
::groan::
Rancher wrote:
Area 51 is still there, isn’t it?
Nevergiveup wrote:
Oops that is in Nevada–forget thart
@ mfhorn:
That goes with age. It’s a struggle to stay in shape as we grow older.
I don’t like the fact that it is twice as hard to stay in a diminished state as opposed to what I did in my youth with half the effort.
@ Rancher:
It’s my understanding that Smoot_Hawley turned out to be an exceedingly bad idea because it so thoroughly blocked trade that it provoked serious retaliatory tariffs. My proposal might get by because it would allow the foreign manufacturers a comfortable niche in the low and lower-middle price ranges. Your Honda Fits would come in duty-free, but the high-dollar Acuras would be tariffed, creating a niche for Ford, GM, and Chrysler to exploit. And the ultra-rich would still buy their Bugatti Veyrons, because it’s a status symbol for them to have paid through the nose for a car, anyway.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
That creates a black market for goods. I’m against tariffs.
Nevergiveup wrote:
Ouch.
Dukakis and Romney are not amused.
@ song_and_dance_man:
Yeah, I’ve never been the picture of good conditioning, but it IS harder. I’ve got to do something though. BP is up, doing a blood test tomorrow after work (no food from midnight until after the test!) to see cholesterol and all that other good stuff. I’ll get the results on Fri when I go in for 2nd BP check after 2 weeks on meds for that.
@ mfhorn:
Nice avatar, LOL!
@ m:
Just found it today! Thanks
@ Rancher:
When I first entered this new to me field we had 8 then 6 percent increases annually. Since 09, btw the year B. Hussein took office —not blaming him, just an off shoot mention, duh— we got $.25 this year and a really cool lapel pin.
If only Bush ran with the Socialist in Chief as Vice, we could directly blame him upfront rather than vicariously.
Brick wrote:
Energy. You left out the deliberate destruction of any and all domestic energy.
@ Bunk X:
Well, basically I’m against tariffs, too, but if the goal is to bring back any of the manufacturing jobs lost to Japan and China, and Malaysia, tariffs may be the only answer. If a factory making DVD players has to pay a minimum $8/hr wage, plus all payroll taxes, and retirement, and medical insurance, they cannot compete with $39 DVD players flooding in from China, even if the Chinese ones are mostly crap. And you know that people won’t want to work in a factory job for mere minimum wage, regardless of the bennies.
And the “information economy” is increasingly being outsourced to India…
Not everyone can work in a service industry; there have to be people in primary industries where wealth is actually produced.
swamprat wrote:
Quite right.
And let’s not forget medicine is on the chopping block as well.
Tariffs can encourage domestic markets and are a good idea if they relieve the tax load on citizens and domestic manufacturers.
@ Bagua:
We already import a lot of RN’s from the Phillipines and Nigeria.
Let alone MDs from elsewhere.
@ Bagua:
Wow. You are right. The whole thing is under destruction.
@ swamprat:
Agreed. That’s still a destruction in progress. We’ve nixed more nuclear, nixed close offshore, are trying to nix coal, and are dragging our feet on solar, wind, and hydro.
One of the purposes for the creation of the DOE was supposedly to reduce our dependence on foreign oil.
That was back in 1977.
Good evening, whatever happened to the Fair Tax?
Wasn’t it supposed to tax everything sold in the US?
That way imports would be taxed and exports would be tax free.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Exactly.
I saw the disaster coming in 2005. We sold our house and used the equity to buy the motorhome (cash). We did not have debt. Our living expenses have been pared to the minimum. However, on account of both of us having health problems, the amount of money we were able to save is not enough for us to retire. Even though I have been updating my skills, nobody wants to hire people in their late 50s who have various disabilities and health issues.
Over three months ago, I managed to find a part-time, minimum-wage job as a retail clerk. This is literally the ONLY job I have been offered in two and a half years of looking for work.
The one thing I can’t handle is anybody who blames this stuff on me. It is not my fault.
Bagua wrote:
That was part of the motivation for zerocare, you can bet on that.
@ mfhorn:
I hope and pray it all goes well with you.
Getting older is no fun, especially if one is accustomed to good times doing physical things. It is a hard thing to exercise when your body says, ‘Look dude, we’ve done this all your life, you are done.’
I have as a friend the mother of my life long bud whom I’ve know since 6. She says the day she stops moving is the day she dies. She is 90 and kicking dust in OK nowadays.
The dose makes the poison. Tariffs can be bad when they are excessive and good when they are necessary.
They are beyond necessary currently.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
Wrongo city. People WILL take those jobs.
I work in a retail store for “mere minimum wage” in the hope that I will get a raise eventually. I buy health insurance for myself and my husband, and the premiums take one-third of my pay, but such is life these days. I regularly see people coming into the store asking for job apps for those same minimum wage jobs.
Brick wrote:
Yeah. The left loves foreign energy. Of course the the right enables them. A pox on both their houses, and their senates.
Brick wrote:
All that is true, but if the law-abiding constituents were properly armed, including the right to carry concealed firearms without requiring a permit, then those criminals will look for greener pastures in some other state!
Uh oh, I’ve been listening to Basement Cat again!
@ swamprat:
I think they want us poor so we won’t be able to afford energy.
Thereby saving planet earth from the AGW’s.
Brick wrote:
Solar and wind are not commercial, they are at best a delusion.
[...] This post was mentioned on Twitter by 1389, The Blogmocracy. The Blogmocracy said: The Decimation of the Middle Class http://goo.gl/fb/wfC3S #economy #maureencallahan [...]
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
I would do it the other way around. High tariffs on the cheap crap, low on the expensive stuff. Why? Because the cheap crap can be made in crappy factories where they pay their workers almost nothing. The expensive stuff requires good methods and reasonably well-paid workers to make, so they automatically compete with us on a level playing field.
Bagua wrote:
Both are economically worthwhile only in SMALL NICHE markets and nowhere else.
Such as putting a solar panel on top of an RV to counteract all of the parasitic loads that discharge the batteries. Or on a portable calculator, so that you won’t have to bother with batteries if you can use it by a window or even under a strong artificial light. Or a windmill on a farm to pump water into a livestock watering trough. Or solar panels to power highway electronics in remote areas where it doesn’t pay to run a power cable.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
There is no way to force foreign countries to operate according to our labor laws. In order to compete, we need to de-regulate and allow the free market to balance out supply and demand.
Say you had a company that required widgets, and local widgets cost $2 apiece, but another company in another region produced them for $1.50 including shipping costs, wouldn’t you buy them at the lower price? Certainly.
Now say that your region decides to enact a law, a tax, a tariff, that added $.50 to the cost of the “imported” widget in order to keep the local widget producer in business. Would that work?
No it wouldn’t. That’s because you’ve artificially taken away the competition, and at the same time reduced the availability of widgets. Both actions drive up the cost of widgets.
In that scenario you’ve messed with the basic tenets of a free market and now you’re stuck paying higher prices for the widgets you need. Now you have to increase your own prices to balance that loss, or eat it, and eventually shut down operations for lack of affordable widgets.
I’m not an economist, but it seems like common sense to me.
wait a second. the article said the woman had no savings and was living paycheck to paycheck and yet implies she felt secure. why? why would anyone feel secure living paycheck to paycheck with NO savings? that doesn’t make any sense and i’m having a really hard time not saying she is at least partially to blame for her current situation.
and she depleted her 410k that quickly? must not have been much in there OR her lifestyle ate it up pretty darn quick.
which is NOT to say that those who had savings and were living responsibly but have now depleted their funds are the same as the woman in the article.
1389AD wrote:
But it’s the cheap-crap jobs that nobody here wants. I don’t want to have to pay $60 for a pair of cheap-crap jeans that I can buy for nine dollars at Wal-Mart. But if I can afford to pay $80,000 for a Cadillac, I can afford to pay $80,000 for a comparable Acura. Futhermore, if you put up a tariff wall against all the cheap-ass crap, they will just raise their prices enough to be competitive. It’s easier for countries like China to be bottom-feeders, because they have next to no labor standards. For them to make high-class products, they have to use more talented workers, and pay them a little better, which levels out the playing field slightly.
Also, tariffs on the cheapest products would be domestically very unpopular, as it would be viewed as an attack on the poor. Tariffs against “luxury products, OTOH, would be viewed as “soaking the Rich” and would not be so unpopular. Being neither rich nor poor, I’d continue doing what I already do, buying the cheapest stuff that’s fit for the task, except in the few cases where I allow myself a luxury. It wouldn’t hurt me much at all. And with more people working, and paying taxes, and the government more solvent, it might eventually reduce MY tax burden, or at least prevent it from skyrocketing.
Hang on to your job for dear life!
Hi all!
Speranza wrote:
good advice and exactly what i’m doing now!
and save as much as you can!
Speranza wrote:
That’s so true!
swamprat wrote:
That’s a fallacy. Once you enact tariffs other countries do the same in retaliation. If I penalize you, you have the right to penalize me.
@ Kirly:
Yup save as much as can!
Calo wrote:
Nigeria’s main exports are coffee and yellowcake uranium. Saddam was negotiating for coffee.///
song_and_dance_man wrote:
I am too old and have too many physical limitations that cannot be overcome through conditioning.
Besides, I seem to be on some kind of blacklist when it comes to government jobs, probably due to my pro-Serb activities in the past, and current pro-secessionist activities, both using my real name. Considering that I finally got a retail clerk job in the private sector, I’ll see where that takes me. If the economy here collapses any further, I’ll abandon ship and move someplace else.
@ Bunk X:
It leads to a disaster!
@ Kirly:
Very important!
I have lived all of this personally. I am 59. I lost a job in 2007 where I was the senior support technician for a very complex enterprise software application. I made 70K a year. After that I found jobs but it took months, that then paid 65K. However the first one was at Countrywide, same thing, supporting complex loan software. Housing bubble collapse, I lose that job, I am now a junior tech wherever I go, first to get laid off. In the meantime all savings are being used up, credit cards filling up. I picked up a job here and there, nothing permanent. Meanwhile my sort of job is off-shoring by the thousands to India. I finally got another job and am now making 43K a year in a company that is unstable. My prospects are gloomy…broke, Chapter 7 etc. I owe the IRS and a few other personal debts. No prospects of any kind of retirement. The feeling is one of betrayal, of a government, and Wall Street types that have repeatedly raped me and millions like me. Meanwhile we are certainly facing hyper-inflation, so the much smaller amount I make will not go as far. This is a great…slow suffering evil that the elites have created. I am killing mad right now, I wonder how many others feel the same?
Bunk X wrote:
But protectionists always think it’s a tariffic idea.
Bunk X wrote:
Here again, that depends on how high the tariffs are. The nation’s founders considered a reasonable level of tariffs to be a way to raise some money to finance the running of the government. I tend to agree with that. High tariffs, to shut down imports more or less completely, are another matter.
@ Bunk X:
You are postulating the case of a single domestic producer of widgets, with a single foreign competitor. And a single consumer. Basically, a zero-sum game. I’m talking about primarily mass-market consumer goods: cars, home entertainment, appliances, clothing, etc. And leave the cheap-ass end of the market alone, go for the mid-to-high end, where the domestic manufacturers are already closest to being competitive. Start at the top, and work down. Let the marketplace decide. If GM takes advantage of the tariff wall to build a piece-of-crap Malibu that cannot compete with even a Toyota Corona bearing a 40% tariff, then the public will let them know about it.
Bunk X wrote:
America seemed to do ok before the income tax. We did ok when we had tariffs on imported goods. French perfume was an expensive comodity, but we survived. I know economics is not simple subject, but we seem to be penalizing local production, and using foreign trade as a form of diplomacy…at our own expense.
1389AD wrote:
Exactly. It’s better off working for something than for nothing. I can work for nothing in my back yard.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
The only way that’s gonna happen is if same countries get nuked.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
We can compete without tariffs. American productivity is still very high. You make a product overseas you have a lot of crap to deal with. Sporadic power, lots of holidays infrastructure problems, shipping costs, corrupt government officials, etc. Problem is our minimum wage, our unions, our corporate tax rate, and a thousand regulations we impose on our businesses result in lost jobs and dead industries.
Jehu wrote:
Yep.
Except instead of killing, I would suggest the following:
1) If things turn around for the better a lot more than anyone of us expects, then stay put and keep working.
Otherwise:
2a) If you live in a State that might secede, stay there a little while longer and try to give it a push in that direction.
Or:
2b) Failing that, drop everything and head for Chile, where they respect Christianity and free market principles.
@ Bunk X:
What’s wrong with a little economic strong-arming? We got the food, what do they have? They can’t eat consumer goods, or oil, or rare earth elements. Want to charge us the equivalent of $500.00 for a pair of flip-flops? The price of American export wheat just went to a bazillion bucks a bushel.
How you like me now?
I’m obviously not a student of modern economics.
@ Bunk X:
Your example of widjets does not adequately address the fact that the competitors widjets are made with near slave labour. Under those circumstances, talk of free market and competition are false.
We see the same thing going on in the domestic marketplace. Trades such as construction are becoming dominated by labour at rates that can not support a modern lifestyle. But they work for illegals willing to live in crowded, third world conditions. That is not free market and competition.
Now here’s a Super Argument to check out:
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
Leaving tariffs aside for a moment, you know what’s funny in a sad sort of way? Sears Roebuck used to sell houses by mail; you could order a house out of their catalog, it came in crates, and you could assemble it yourself. Not only were these houses pretty decent in their own day—they are now considered something in the way of American landmarks.
Think of it; you could buy a lot and run up your own house at low cost. It’s one of the ways that home ownership became possible for people in, or moving into, the middle class in a time when lots of people lived in boarding houses.
These houses still stand today, as I’ve said; but chances are that if such kits were available today, you’d run afoul of so many zoning ordinances and safety regulations that you’d never get started. So far have we fallen.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
Problem is, GM is now “Government Motors” and therefore somewhat insulated from the demands of the marketplace, not to mention the beleaguered taxpayers and voters.
Bagua wrote:
You got that right. The Chinese equivalent of the Gulag has nothing to do with free markets. Nothing.
Bunk X wrote:
I did that and eventually worked my way out.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
Hey I hear you’re a Studebaker collector! Next time you’re in AZ let me know, eh.
@ Rancher:
Well, you won’t get any argument from me on those issues you raise in that last sentence there. If you could wave a magic wand and fix all those problems, you wouldn’t need tariffs. But if people expect to be able to keep all the “benefits” incurred by the unions, regulations, taxes, etc., tariffs might be the only tool left in the toolbox.
Ultimately, the problem is an asymmetrical market that’s free in some respects, but very un-free in others. So, either you go to complete laissez-faire, or you try to offset the constraints put on domestic manufacturers by placing constraints on the marketing of foreign products.
Whichever way you go, it’s a lead-pipe cinch that somebody will be whining; it all depends upon whose ox is being gored.
@ Jehu:
The line forms to the right.
This is one of the fundamentals driving the popularity of Tea Party type movements for the civilized, and for the more militant, well…I’m sure there’s other groups that are coalescing that satisfy them as well.
buzzsawmonkey wrote:
Actually, you can buy log home kits, complete with all modern amenities. Some of them are nice enough to be considered log mansions, and they are, as one might expect, extremely sturdy. They do pass muster when it comes to safety and zoning regs in many places. However, they are NOT CHEAP!
They are very popular in the Appalachians, given the fact that they fit people’s idea of traditional vernacular architecture while providing all of the features on the inside that people want these days. From what I hear, they are also quite reasonable with regard to fuel usage.
Rodan wrote:
It’s been tried, and it’s nothing more than self-subsidizing at the expense of foreign entities. It doesn’t work for simple and obvious reasons.
I’m in favor of a flat-rate consumption tax, elimination of personal income tax, and repeal of the 17th and 26th Amendments.
@ buzzsawmonkey:
Lol, that.
@ 1389AD:
Here’s a repeat of the video of a nice Hotel kit built in 6 days in China:
@ buzzsawmonkey:
True enough. Sears used to sell Henry J automobiles under the Allstate brand, and motorcycles, too. I’m old enough to remember seeing the motorcycles in the Sears catalog. It was Simpson-Sears here in Canada, but their product line was much the same.
I have a 1920-something edition of the Johnson-Smith Novelty Company mail-order catalog at home. There was darn near nothing they didn’t sell by mail, including pistols and rifles, and ammunition. If one of the administrators would like to scan it and post pages on the blog here, I’d be glad to drop it in the mail. Some of the stuff they sold would be considered downright racist in today’s society.
@ Macker:
Sure. I hope to get there for a spell during the Christmas break, if I get a Christmas break. Failing that, in Spring breakup, maybe late March, early April.
@ Eliana:
P.S. The hotel is 15 stories tall and it was built with pre-fab components made in a factory.
Alberta Oil Peon wrote:
The argument is the same whether you’re talking about one purchaser of widgets, or one hundred. Or a hundred purchasers buying 1,000 widgets. I agree completely with you: Let the marketplace decide.
lobo91 wrote:
Considering that nearly everything they sell is imported (except maybe for groceries), that economic scenario leads to major doomage.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
Just like we can buy darn near anything on the internet today.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
I always enjoy it when anti-gun types make their idiotic claims about how guns are “more available now than ever.”
They conveniently forget that, until 1968, you could buy guns by mail.
@ swamprat:
Yep. That we are, and for all the wrong reasons, IMO. There are exceptions having to do with sanctions of rogue nations, and I have no problems with that.
@ Bagua:
And hydro is pretty much tapped out.
@ Rancher:
ditto.
snork wrote:
It’s not cheap, but it’s the one renewable source that will exist as long as the Earth keeps spinning and there’s gravity. Tidal hydroelectric.
snork wrote:
Yes, and comes at great impact to the local ecosystem.
@ lobo91:
That’s right. Even in Canada, you used to be able to buy rifles and shotguns by mail, out of that same Sears catalog. How many letter carriers got slipped discs humping Lee-Enfield .303s to their mail-order buyers?
That old catalog is real hoot. One pistol they sold (for under $10, IIRC) was a 5-shot .22 revolver called a “Young America” and the illustration showed a boy on a bicycle, wearing plus-fours and a flat cap, popping off shots at a dog which was chasing him on the bike.
@ Brick:
Come on over. I’ll buy you a beer and we’ll talk. You buy the next 11 and it’ll be worth it… FOR YOU!
@ Brick:
Show me the commercial application in the real world. Right now this is the stuff of fantasy, unicorns.
Alternatively, coal, oil, gas, even nuclear, are real and have brought humans a level of prosperity unknown in history.
lobo91 wrote:
Exactly.
Stay away from those.
Bagua wrote:
But that impact is more in the nature of a change, than outright destruction. Instead of a U-shaped glacial valley, with habitat for a few hundred ungulates, a couple of grizzly bears, and countless squirrels, you have a big lake that eventually becomes habitat for ducks and fish. Natural processes can cause similar changes, but they generally take longer than the span of a human life, so they tend to get overlooked. We have to change the false notion that all the changes we make to the planet are necessarily bad. Is it a bad thing to have wiped out the smallpox virus?
What do they think the effect of cap and trade would be?
America needs alternative energy to power her new green economy.
Then they lecture me about how green third world countries are because they can’t afford anything.
Just because it’s too funny not to post: Cyclist run over by Electric Car.
Bagua wrote:
Would you deny third world denizens the opportunity to make a few dollars a day, versus no dollars per day? That’s what the argument is.
What is a “modern lifestyle” anyway? Who says that the ability to push a broom or clean up trash is a way to support a “modern lifestyle?” Who says that one should be able to support oneself on the wages paid to sweep a floor? What is the value of unskilled labor?
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
No, not all bad, but the large impact is undeniable. But let’s not get carried away, wiping out smallpox and wiping out a river system are very different and don’t belong in the same discussion.
@ Alberta Oil Peon:
Or so we thought…thanks to all the damn Illegals.
Bagua wrote:
Email with PDF’s have largely replaced fax machines, however when only fax machines existed…they were the cat’s meow.
Tidal would generate fractional amount of current supply, but once the infrastructure is in place…it is completely renewable as long as the Earth keeps spinning. With experience, comes efficiency and someone’s gotta be first.
song_and_dance_man wrote:
I’d rather be successful enough to pay others to cut the grass. Win-Win.
@ Brick:
Yeah, sounds lovely, and could someday work for coastal communities, but at present it is a distraction from very real energy needs that can only be provided from fossil fuels. I’m all for research, but the green delusion is well beyond dangerous, it needs to be brought back to the real world.
1389AD wrote:
Beware. The kits look pretty, though…
And exponential progress is not always possible. Just because email is replacing faxes does not mean that windmills will replace natural gas. The idea also has to be practical and efficient. Notice that having faxes delivered by little green fairies didn’t replace the fax. Progress has to work better, not just sound better.
unspecial wrote:
We have green technology. Were it more profitable than traditional methods it would be mainstream, but it’s not feasible without government intervention, i.e., the force of law. We will always be dependent upon oil to some extent.
Bagua wrote:
I agree that oil, nuke, and coal are the immediate fixes. In the bigger picture, none of them are truly renewable.
At some point in the future…the natural resources of this planet will no longer meet the needs of a continually growing population. Not in my lifetime, perhaps not in my unborn grand-children’s lifetime. It will happen, eventually. Looking forward and planning for this contingency is the responsible thing to do.
The long-term answer is out there, and this administration is doing everything it can to make out there off-limits. Up to and including retasking the folks responsible for the out there stuff, to appease a segment of the population still stuck in the 14th century and make them feel good about themselves.
The bigger, bigger picture is outer space.
lobo91 wrote:
Lee Harvey Oswald bought the rifle he used on JFK that way.
Brick wrote:
YES! We’ve got to mine outer space for our fossil fuels! Damn I wish I’d thought of that! /// ;D
@ Bunk X:
Maybe he belongs on the ONT?
Calo wrote:
I think we should be talking about relocating West Virginia to the nearest asteroid so we can mine coal remotely. After all, there’s no EPA out there.
@ Nevergiveup:
And here I thought I was the only one with this thought…kinda tough though makin’ it all the way through life without ever mmmmmmm….well, you know…then, just before meeting St Peter go and blow it all.
My favorite Richard Pryor line:
“Its hard enough to make it through a day without killin’ a M.F’er.”
Of course Richard never minced words but seeing this is a ‘family’ oriented site so I cleaned it up ! The older ya get it seems, the longer the list. I’d probably succumb before making it through the ‘G’.s ]
“Yoo hoo, taxi !”
Why turn a perfectly good ride into a Clyde Barrow special ?
Yeah, you know who you are M.F.ers !!
Of course I say this all in jest ! I’m funny like that….
[...] The Decimation of the Middle Class › 2.0: The Blogmocracy [...]
[...] The Decimation of the Middle Class › 2.0: The Blogmocracy [...]
I retired from an oil-services company, anticipating a consulting position with the company. But the oil moratorium put a halt to exploration drilling. The company has to take care of their employees first so they cut down on the consultants they have now, rightly so.
My pension keeps me afloat. I would like to work some more until the maximum SS can kick in and then really retire.
Wow, I think that this piece hits a lot of people where they live. I had a nice job, corner office and was in upper middle management before being downsized at 50, seven years ago. Even with 30 years of experience and a pristine record, I was forced to take whatever I could get. I ended up at ajob making a third of what I was previously making with an airline, but the travel schedule nearly killed me and it looks like I’ll end up on disablity.
This has been going on for quite some time, and it looks like it will be going on for some time to come. The “work hard and make something of yourself” part of the American Dream may well be dead, or at least in a coma, on life support…………..
@ MacDuff:
That is as the Democrats have always wanted it. They want the vast majoprity of us poor and controlable. Their perfect world would have them, as the rich elite, supported by a small, skilled enabling class who would live lives analogous to our middle class, but with much less freedon, and the “vast unwashed” who live only to supply the votes to pass whatever the Ruling Class desires. Only the Ruling Class would be free. Only they would hve meaningful lives.
Top ‘o da mornin’ Fist.
This is a great thread, I only wish it weren’t almost dead. Yeah, that’s they way it would appear, but the big problem is that “the rich” of which these fools speak is so small that it could never support much of anything. According to this, households with incomes of $200K and up comprise less than 2.5% of all U.S. households. Even the confiscation of 100% of the assets of these households would run a welfare state for only a matter of months.
The “middle class” has always been where the money is; you can’t tax “the rich” enough to pay the bills, and “the poor” don’t have any money.
This article explains a big part of the reason the words “squirrel meat” figure prominently in my retirement plans.
@ MacDuff:
They aren’t real good at running things when they have control. Look at the former Soviet Union. Sub-standard everything except for the rich elites. That is how the Left want America, and the world. They really don’t care what happens to the Untermenchen. Look, a million kids a year die in Africa to malairia. A ,I>million, and DDT could be preventing 90+% of them. No DDT, because Mother Gaia doesn’t like it. To the tune of a million dead kids a year, but those dead kids are black, so it is OK. That alone should scare you plenty about the kind of people the Left are.
Somewhere along the line America went from a nation that built things to a nation that decided to service things.
Eliana wrote:
I call it my disaster fund.
@ Speranza:
Some of us still build. I build software, which is similar to being a machinist or other highly skilled trade. But you are right, most of our manufacturing is gone. People that bemoaned that were paintedas fringe, “not with it”, kooks. We should have maybe listened more to the kooks, because the Credentialed Idiots that lead us here don’t even have a plan on how to keep us here. Things will devolve into a Third World economy if we leave the same Harvard educated imbicils at the helm.
[...] The Decimation of the Middle Class › 2.0: The Blogmocracy [...]
Iron Fist wrote:
There was a time when I would have seen that as an unthinkable scenario, but I believe that people should now start thinking the unthinkable. If the American middle class is destroyed, the unthinkable will become reality.
All of us who have worked our asses off, paid our taxes, paid house payments, and asked for nothing but that which we have worked for are about to be screwed. We conservatives who, for years, have seen the coming tsunami, but were dragged into paying for the profligate spending that liberals demanded so they could buy more votes are now being asked to “sacrifice”. It’s curious how it becomes WE and US, and SHARED SACRIFICE when the bill comes due.
Define White Collar Jobs…
[...] d am now making 43K a year in a company that is unstable. My prospects are gloom [...]…
MacDuff wrote:
And they still mean you sacrifice. If you think they are giving up their gulfstreams, their trips abroad, or the fine living they have been enjoying on the taxpayer’s dime, you are kidding yourself. Instapundit has a link White House Staffers Got a Bigger Raise Than You Did Last Year. They did me, that is for sure. Probably will get a bigger raise this year as well. The people on the Government tit are doing well in this Great
DepressionRecession That Isn’t A Recession. Those of us who are supplying the milk are getting screwed. That can’t last.@ Speranza:
@ Iron Fist:
Even if we can turn this thing around, we are destined to have at least a couple of “lost generations”, I think. Even a booming economy can support only so many what we now call “middle class” jobs and there are more people entering the workforce every day. If one is shooting for one of those “upper management” jobs, well, we can only support so many of them, as well. Population growth is outpacing economic growth and even if economic growth picks up, we have a huge backlog of people lined up to enter the workforce.
The bottom line is that being screwed is the new normal.
@ MacDuff:
People need to have real skills. Going to college to become a computer programmer or engineer is good. Going to major in Womyn’s studyies with a Queer Theory minor probably won’t take you very far. Instapundit’s been warning about a higher education bubble for some time. I think people are going to get tired rather quickly of coming u=out of college with $50-100K of debt and not being able to get a job working construction as a welder. All these “feel good” majors that have cropped up in the last 20 years are going to go away. They need to. People can’t afford them. If they want to get a feel good major, let them do something real first, then take Queer Theory in night school, if that is their passion.
@ Brick:
Pennsylvania has had an open call for CO trainees since…looks like 2009 from the posting on the Civil Service site.
Under “Clerical”:
2009-019 Liquor Store Clerks
wtf ???
Iron Fist wrote:
All good points, but making that transition will take some time. Even on this board, we have a lot of people in their late 40s and 50s who, in many cases, don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of making that transition.
You’re advice is good, but applies mostly to people who will be entering the workforce in the future. Even at that, a lot of programming jobs are beginning to be moved offshore. Much of the problem lies in that types of potential good paying jobs are becoming increasingly less diverse….
[...] The Decimation of the Middle Class › 2.0: The Blogmocracy [...]
[...] The Decimation of the Middle Class › 2.0: The Blogmocracy [...]