I read somewhere that first-world countries will need to reduce wages by 50% to remain competitive globally. There is nothing we can do about Global offshoring except wish them bad luck and get on with our lives.

The 50% wage reduction is simple economics, how and when we achieve the wage reduction is up to us. Neocon resistance to raising the minimum wage is because $7.00 will be pretty good pay in the coming years.

Our competitiveness problem is overpriced housing, exacerbated by immigration. America is fat and addicted to immigration and the business lobbies are telling America to keep eating.

The coming housing crash is inevitable, a simple adjustment in the stockmarket will be the catalyst. Business has already divested (with the help of guestworkers) from the American adjustment.

We need a New Deal. Stop bombing houses abroad and start building here houses in America. The goal is to get single unit apartment costs down to $200.00 per month in live work neighborhoods.

Economic immigration would be curtailed, we need the service sector jobs.

The Live work New Deal would reduce oil dependence, breadwinners would rent near work during the week and cut 8 commutes out of each workweek.

The Live Work New Deal will also help to Resolve our children’s educational difficulties — with reasonable housing costs one parent will have the option of staying home with the kids.

The 150,000/month net payroll job creation rate
that’s usually cited as corresponding to
population growth is also something of a `legend.’
It apparently represents what some economists once
figured would ensure a small but positive GDP
growth.

Labor demand is rather the force behind US
population growth, which is entirely through
immigration—without which it would be zero or
slightly negative.

It used to be said that a 1% decrease in the
unemployment rate would contibute 3% to GDP: it’s
now plainly an _increase_ in unemployment that
raises GDP.

Thank you for bringing up the issue of student loans. I was one of those who fell for the “get an education/re-training to be worthy/quslified for good jobs in the New Economy” mantra. I never got a chance for a good job. I never got a chance for a job in my field (the bachelors degree I earned in math/computer science was for nothing). All I got were various flavors of commissions-only paying “jobs” with NO benefits, no base salary to live on, etc. I was poor due to becoming disabled in my early 20’s. SO I had to take out student loans. Many others who all tried to do “all the right things” who are our age and older with exorbitant student loan debt have ended up having their Social Security garnished - involuntarily I might add - by the federal government for repayment of those loans after not being able to repay them when denied any chances for good jobs. One case was a disabled 59 yr old man living in Section-8 housing. He gets about $600/mo and the gov’t is taking 15% of his meager income - leaving himunable to buy food or pay his utilities.

Another was an older cancer patient who was threatened with seizure of his car in lieu of outstanding gov’t student loans - even though he needs his car to get to and from his medical treatment at a local clinic. He too is on a very low fixed income.

When I couldn’t get a job (a real job that paid a living wage w/ a guaranteed salary and medical benefits - NOT commissions-only without benefits and where you have to pay licensing fees, etc just to be able to work) after 4 1/2 years of searching and doing everything humanly possible, my student loans went into default after my last Unemployment Deferment was exhausted. I was offered consolidation to bring them out of default, through the WIlliam D FOrd Direct Loan COnsolidation program. Repayment is income-contingent where if you make federal minimum wage or less, you are granted deferment. I graduated college at age 35 with $38,000 in student loan debt. The additional fees from those loans going into default before being offered the consolidation plus all the capitalized interest from the deferments has made my initial debt of $38,000 turn into a student loan debt of over $50,000 - which I will NEVER be able to afford to repay without a chance for a good job! ANd now that I am almost 40 and have a 16 yr gap in my work history (self-employment does not count as work history) I know I’ll never get a chance for anything.

Basically, I feel like I am being punished for being a victim of age and disability discrimination in the job market - for what few good jobs that remain which were NOT off-shored, or filled by 23 yr old kids and insourced foreigners on guest worker visas.

The least the government should do for people like me and others in the same boat is give us amnesty and debt forgiveness for those student loans!

Here is an interveiw with Friedman:

http://yaleglobal.yale.edu/display.article?id=5581

I think United Professionals is the best thing since muckraking first caused Congress to pass reforms such as the Pure Food and Drugs Act (1906) and the Meat Inspection Act (1906).

Perhaps you can get Kieth Olbermann to write on the subject of America’s deplorable employment situation as one result of our country’s financially exhausting war on drugs and terrorism?!

I had just finished reading “Bait and Switch”. I am a late 30s college graduate that was a member of the U.S. Custom Service (in the pre-Homeland Security Days). I made 23K starting out fresh from school.

Six months after Homeland was formed, a whopping 20,000 employees were laid off to save money (probably to help pay for the on-going, unsuccessful Hunt for Osama) Being at the bottom of the seniority ranks, I was let go WITHOUT unemployment insurance (federal employees do not have the private sector unemployment–we get a “Special Fund”). Too bad it rejected my claim…

At the time of the pink slip (May 2003), I made 3 predictions.

A. Bankruptcy was inevitable.
B. I had to leave my home in Tampa due to its cost.
C. Payback of student loans for my Master’s Degree would be difficult to impossible.

From the spring of 2003 until the summer of 2004, I sent out hundreds of resumes, gone to several job fairs, used the Internet, and got just 2 interviews. No success.

August 2004–Bankruptcy was filed, I lived with some college friends after vacating my apartment,
and I started work as a public school language specialist for a mere $9500 a year working full time. The County I work for picks up the cost for health care. I was feeling a good deal of job satisfaction while working in my new field.

Oct. 2006–I love the job and I may clear $10,000 a year thanks to the labor union that represents me (SEIU). The bankruptcy is over with (I even kept my 2001 vintage car). The student loans are a lost cause. I am awaiting the eventual court case that will take the IRS EIC and dock some of my pay. This case will probably come in 2011 or so.

Housing, what is that ? It is a good thing I have good friends. Even the Bankruptcy Trustee was stunned that I was a college degree holder that was also homeless.

Being born in the last half of the 1960s, I a now too old to be hired by Corporate America. The college debt prevents me from finding work with the federal government. Even my transcripts are impounded !

I am effectively stuck at a job I actually like to do and it offers a pension and benefits. I am blessed in that regard.

My web site was a school project I did in 1996. It is amazing that the computer I used for that site still runs ! I still use it for letters and borrow my friend’s system for web and email.

Suggestions for UP.org–

1. See if Congress will issue an amnesty for Stafford/Perkins Loans issued from 1995 on. Those loans are not recoverable given what little money some college graduates are earning. I myself would like to take care of not being purpetually homeless first before trying to tackle any loan repayment.

2. Something has to be done with housing for the poor. Great Depression style shanty villages are already appearing along rivers such as the Missouri and in national forests. Housing is out of my reach.

3. There is now a need for government supported health insurance. I was very lucky to find one of the last jobs in the US that offers such as part of the benefits package. I even get a pension !

As for the elderly bank robbers looking for prison shelter before retirement, this make perfect sense since they are FORCED into very early retirement. It is a pity it has come to this.

Chao !

MMJR

I heard about that 62 yr old bank robber. Something similar happened in northwest PA not too long ago where a 58 yr old lady was busted in one of the outlying regions of the coounty for running a meth ring. Same reasons…….couldn’t get a chance for a job and couldn’t afford to live, and of course, couldn’t get enough help to be able to live because only young single mothers can get anything here in PA.
It truly is a sad state of affairs. Our nation is becoming a banana republic.

You mentioned the US becoming a third-world country. Have you read “The Flat Land?” It’s written by an economist who proclaims that the US is becoming just that - a third world country.

I haven’t read it, because I can’t find it at the library.

And the unemployment statistics are false, for the reasons you stated. Did you hear about the 62 yr. old man who robbed a bank just so he could go to prison while awaiting his S.S.?

He said he couldn’t afford to live: all he could find were minimum-wage jobs!!! (This was on MSNBC.com)

P.R. Saunders’ comments reminded me of the musing about the propulsion of fashion statements i have done over the last several days as I shop for items for my impending wedding. During this period, I have spent more time in malls and chain stores than I usually do. Walking among the cheap clothes and cheap housewares manufactured in (other) third-world countries, and seeing my fellow shoppers in the latest designer-promoted styles, I wonder when the endless buying will finally stop. In these underdeveloped countries where these items are made, the workers cannot afford to buy them. When we tire of them, the items are often donated to charities who sometimes send them back overseas for the poor to wear. How ridiculous it seems to me to feel compelled to buy this gathered-neck T just because it’s pictured everywhere now and a plain-neck one is so six-months ago. Do we really need the latest advertised and promoted styles for everything we own? Must we have those pointy shoes with the 3-inch heels and those very white teeth that require a $20 to $50 toothpaste to find peace and happiness? Just because “everyone” is getting into podcasting, do I need to spend the money on that little appliance or might I better spend my money and my time making this a better world for all of us? Are plump lips, an SUV, 5 or more televisions in a house, 3000+ square-foot homes, and $3.85 lattés bringing meaning to anyone’s life? When we as individuals value ourselves and our time more than we value what others tell us to hold dear, we will shift the way this country runs and state with our pocketbooks that “We are mad as hell and we’re not going to take it anymore.” (Paddy Chayefsky)

I appplaud those who make the effort to refocus our energies on what we can accomplish. When our so-called leaders get the message that they can no longer distract us with ephemera and divide us with blaming, we will be able to move this country back toward democracy.

All of the hype about the baby boom generation being a ‘different group’ is exactly that. For most of those I know who are my age (58) that I know, are extremely nervous and if they have a job in which they are protected by a union and are eligible to retire, they are not. Why? Because they don’t want to get screwed by the company, the government or the organization who might change the rules of the game, when they are vulnerable and have no power. So they are continuing to work, to keep their power and relevancy to those in charge at all levels.

Staying relevant is the main concern, for we seen what has happened to the poor in this country, gone from the relevancy equation. When was the last time you heard a politician talk about the poor? I think it was Walter Mondale in ‘84, and we all know how effective that was in that election. To be relevant means hanging on to the middle class illusion in our culture, and what is middle class these days? Some say that $30,000 is the entry level of middle class. But I think that the entry level is actually much higher, maybe as high as $80,000 in this timeframe. Most of the professionals I know will not make much that on their retirement, so we get back to relevancy again. You say, well, they should be able to live on their retirement, not in a consumer driven culture that focuses on the accumulation of ‘things.’
Many people are turning down ‘buyouts’ for that very reason, to keep working, to be able to acquire ‘things’ so that they feel relevant in our culture.