Unemployment soared during the financial crisis and its aftermath. So it seems bizarre to argue that the real problem lies with the workers — that the millions of Americans who were working four years ago but aren’t working now somehow lack the skills the economy needs.
Yet that’s what you hear from many pundits these days: high unemployment is “structural,??? they say, and requires long-term solutions (which means, in practice, doing nothing).
Well, if there really was a mismatch between the workers we have and the workers we need, workers who do have the right skills, and are therefore able to find jobs, should be getting big wage increases. They aren’t. In fact, average wages actually fell last month.
The only thing missing is the obsession with re-training camp community college. Because, like in China — dude, they got all those workers going to community college to learn how to make the stuff we used to make and still need but don’t make but buy at Wal-Mart and Target and everywhere else you can shop.
My US-branded made-in-China socks, bought new three weeks ago, sprouted holes on the third wash. And those jobs went over there because of the fault of American workers, yep.
As far as newspaper editorials go, it basically shits on him for 750 words. Using polite language.
Here’s another video of a “rock band” of Republican congressman, including McCotter and one token Dem, playing badly at Farm Aid a few years ago. It’s unlistenable, twenty seconds being about all you can stand. Pantywaist vocals while murdering a Beatles tune plus the drummer making a good argument for replacement with a drum machine.
“We like to have fun every once in awhile,” says one of the men in the band called, wait for it, The Second Amendments. Mystifyingly, it appears to have been shot for television broadcast.
None of these guys ever rock, even remotely. Originally, I wanted to cut McCotter some slack because he so obviously loves to play guitar. But he just stinks at it — totally “dad rock.”
It’s doubly damning because he’s from Michigan, Detroit being known for many great electric guitar players in the Sixties and Seventies.
For example, if Jim McCarty of the Detroit Wheels was/is a Boss 302, McCotter is an old Pinto or Chevy Vega.
In Michigan domestic manufacturing, except for cars and tanks, has disappeared. Electrolux, in Greenville, closed its plant, destroying employment in the town. All the jobs went overseas.
So to re-training camp, Montcalm Community College, to get people ready for the jobs of the future! In this case, solar panel manufacturing.
Problem, the jobs of the future are too few. And American companies still ship the jobs out.
Here:
Solar panel technology was invented in the United States. So was the key technology for advanced batteries for electric vehicles, for which Michigan is also developing a number of factories.
But in each case, sales and production are tiny compared with European countries.
Even if clean technologies were to bloom, it’s not clear that they would produce large numbers of new jobs.
The Uni-Solar plant is the size of 10 football fields but so highly automated that it requires only a few dozen workers at any one time.
“That was supposed to be the big savior for this area, and it never happened,” said Mike Wills, a former Electrolux employee who works as a supervisor at God’s Love Closet, a men’s shelter where he once lived.
The shelter didn’t exist before Electrolux closed, making it one more sign of how the effects of joblessness spread through a community.
“[The] U.S. usually has left matters to the private sector, and its multinational companies have moved tens of thousands of jobs overseas,” it reads.
It’s not the training. That is a rationalization.
In fact, a company could train people to do its work as easily, or even more quickly, than a community college. The US guitar and amplifier manufacturing industry didn’t send all its jobs to China because that country has community college training its workers to make rock and roll consumer electronics.
It’s all bullsht. The Los Angeles Times doesn’t state this. However, the story makes clear that re-training camp has a pretty good failure rate.
Underlying this story are choices made about what kind of country this is going to be for the future.
And that’s the equivalent of Swiss chocolates-maker to the world.
When it’s not arms manufacturing, it’s going to be the artisan goods, high-end and high-priced things made in small runs made for the rich and the haves of the world. And, even in this, there won’t be an edge. Europe can make the stuff just as easily as we can.
Paradoxically, in Europe — and in Canada, where the Greenville solar panel factory moved a lot of its jobs, there are laws in place to discourage companies from going out of country and to encourage retention of a labor force.
Mississippi, where 34.4 percent of the people are obese, has the highest obesity rate. Other states with obesity rates above 30 percent include: Alabama, Arkansas, Kentucky, Louisiana, Michigan, Missouri, Oklahoma, South Carolina, Tennessee, Texas and West Virginia …
Correlate with percentages who hold disbelief in the President being an American, global warming as hoax, etc …
Yep, it’s a stereotype. And sometimes the stereotypes have some accuracy going for them.
Life expectancy decline in the southern red and backward part of the country. “I guess the geography of the decline speaks for itself,” says the blogger.
There’s the exception to the national fatness demography in New Jersey. Where a lot of people now have buyer’s remorse.
“The average American does not view the economy through the prism of GDP or unemployment rates or even monthly jobs numbers,” David Plouffe said at a Bloomberg breakfast event Wednesday. “People won’t vote based on the unemployment rate, they’re going to vote based on: ‘How do I feel about my own situation? Do I believe the president makes decisions based on me and my family?’ “
He’ll trade the Democratic Party for a race in which you hold your nose and vote for the President because the alternative is quick brimstone and ruin. Rather than slow death in pieces.
And, yeah, he’s right. People don’t vote statistics. They vote on the impression they have because either they’re out of work, family members are out of work, friends are out of work, or some combination thereof. Too much time spent rubbing the hands together over the wonder of a Twitter press conference.
Life as a statistic, lads! I was in the space between the dotted red line and the solid red line in 2010. Now I’m just back to the regular line.
Americans who illegally download music, movies and games may soon find their internet access grinding to a halt. The nation’s top internet providers – including Verizon, Time Warner Cable, AT&T, Cablevision and Comcast – have agreed to a new system in which users suspected of digital copyright infringement will be given a series of six warnings by email or other means. Repeat offenders would be threatened with progressively severe punishments, culminating in reduced connection speed or having service cut off entirely. Customers will be allowed to contest each warning.
The internet carriers hope to deter piracy through annoyance …
Of course, no one will be punished for downloading pirated material from a Google property … like YouTube, one assumes. Lest the entire business model collapse.
The only working rule in effect here is if the group or individual is a current big seller, their legal fixers and YouTube will work to keep their albums from being uploaded. So that the videos can be monetized through Vevo.
What would happen if ISP’s blocked YouTube, for the annoyance of users into stopping their downloading/streaming of pirated content?
From the wire, things a computer program or tape-recorder could furnish:
“The economy as a whole just isn’t producing nearly enough jobs for everybody who’s looking,” Obama said in prepared comments in the White House Rose Garden. He cited “tough headwinds” that are exerting a drag on the economy …
He also cited the need to “rein in the deficit” and come to an agreement to raise the debt ceiling, in order to give businesses the confidence they need to start hiring.
Most economists believe that cutting spending will reduce growth …
When the Associated Press note-taking piece immediately tacks on the “most economists believe” bit, it’s done for.
Whatever is driving the President now, no one with any sense can fathom it other than to state he’s bought into the right wing delusion on government spending and deficits causing the country’s failure. And that it’s linked to a groupthink of the worst kind.
In 2012 it won’t matter if the parts of the Democratic base simply don’t vote for the man. The state is a lock. But it’s astoundingly demoralizing to know the President has calculated he can install horrendous policy because we’ll hold our noses and vote for him since the alternative is so much worse.
Today, a good professor writes on what everyone knows concerning where all the jobs and fortunes went. And the connection with the psychotic behavior of the Republican Party.
One of the takeaways, in the meta part, is that when all the perfessers (part of the class that’s professionally insulated against these misfortunes) are finally writing opinion pieces, some of them must be getting scared a bit concerned that irreparable harm has been done. And that, someday, it will affect even them.
The economy gained only 2.6 million jobs [during the Bush administration]. In fact, Bush’s job creation record in his first term was among the worst since Herbert Hoover’s.
And the numbers are even worse than they appear, because many of those jobs were produced by increased military spending related to the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan …
[By] 2003, more American money was being invested overseas than in the United States. In other words, those [GOP] tax cuts did help create jobs – in China, India, Brazil, and other foreign countries, but not in the United States.
Tax cuts create jobs! But clearly, in the last decade, they haven’t – unless you’re looking for work in China.
The juxtaposition of three graphs, which I’ve done before, illustrate it.
One — the expansion of the trade deficit with China, caused by the cessation of almost all domestic non-military production.
Two — the explosion in arms manufacturing.
Three — the burst in hiring by homeland security. And nobody else.
Ballistic ascension of trade deficit with China matching reality of all goods in stores providing materials for the middle class containing nothing but products from that country.
Yeah, I know, how boring. One of the conclusions I’ve drawn from the data is that the present-day GOP, in its fealty to big corporate money and plutocracy, is a great threat to the security of the country. It’s not an ideological thing. It’s simply backed up by the numbers.
Another thought: How did the country turn into a place where it statistically looks like, if there was a remake of the story of Robin Hood, everyone who makes the decisions would be standing in line for autographs from the Sheriff of Nottingham and Sir Guy of Gisborne?
Minor satisfaction over the weekend that Tom Hanks’ movie, Larry Crowne, on his character being fired and sent to retraining camp community college in LA, as a heartwarming reflection of the life in our times, is a major flop.
Yeah, that’s how everyone feels its going to turn out, Tom. They’ll get to ride around on nifty scooters and get the beautiful smart woman in the end.
Raw number of hits Google News returns for the mark of obsession with retraining camp as a cure: 2,065
Sampling:
“The AMERICA Works Act would allow community colleges to offer certification through the Manufacturing Skills Certification System …” — Burlington News
“Manufacturing jobs are a big source of economic growth in the Shenandoah Valley, and at Blue Ridge Community College, people can train …” — some radio station transcript
“And graduates will know that the community college diploma they earn ‘will be valuable when you hit the job market,’ he added. The White House also proposed a program to train 10000 engineering students a year …” — Fortune
“[Community] College will train chefs at New Mount Holly Center …” — the Philly Inquirer
Between bedpan technicians and chefs, we’ll guarantee the future.
“Train to be a master gardener at Spartanburg Community College” — Spartanburg Journal
Casino sees [community college] as work incubator … The company says it has had discussions with at least three central Ohio schools, including Columbus State Community College, to create several programs to train workers for the $400 million casino.” — Columbus Dispatch
You have to be trained to work at a casino? What, how to mix drinks, deal cards, polish slot machines and deal with people who need escorting from the premises?
“Warren County Community College to train [bedpan technicians]/hospice workers …” — Warren County newspaper
Push it toward 2,000 views, folks.
The DD blog fundraiser continues. Only a few days left!
One favorite of the business press is the love of small business success stories. Because of economic failure and mass unemployment, they’re totally irresistible, particularly when they purport to finding someone who has made it after being fired.
The most notable case in recent news revolves around the woman seen all over the country in television ads for Chase Ink credit cards, the Jamie Dimon creation.
Beer and cupcakes, says the woman named Marlo, who started a bistro to serve them. That was the ticket.
It’s advertised as a tale of revenge, satisfaction and triumph against all odds. Marlo was fired, so she started Sweet Revenge before the cash ran out. And the business almost failed.
No one was interested. You can’t give free food and drinks away in NYC, apparently. I believe it.
Anyway, it took a fluke — delivering cupcakes to Martha Stewart and a subsequent guest appearance — to save the operation.
It was publicity no money could buy. And what isn’t mentioned in the story is that, knowing how the media works, I’m positive the press ignored Sweet Revenge, even though it was a unique idea, until it showed up on Stewart.
Anyway, these kinds of things are, as here, peddled as answers to corporate America’s animosity toward US labor.
Start your own business! That’s how we’ll all innovate our way to success.
It’s totally unworkable in a country the size of the US. Delusional, actually.
It requires miracles and astonishing strokes of good luck on the order of grains of sand on an acre of beach to make it work for millions of unemployed, even assuming they’re all perfectly disposed to being entrepreneurial.
1. It’s allegedly tied to revolution and birth of a nation. The only people’s revolution we’ve had recently is the Tea Party. Which was a revolution by people afraid of others not exactly like them. It was revolt against women’s rights, any religion not fundamentalist Christian, gay people, Mexican and Spanish Americans, all immigrants — illegal or otherwise, who don’t have white skin, Muslims, the imagined conspiracy of sharia-law sapping and impurifying our bodily fluids, money not backed by the old gold standard, the hoax of climate change, Charles Darwin and the socialist guy from Kenya living in the White House.
These are principles upon which one can build a great nation, certainly.
3. Because it’s an excuse to shoot off fireworks while the US fireworks seen firsthand around the world today will be from Predator drones attacking others, bad or good — whatever, much poorer than us.
4. Related to number 3, because we’ve dispensed with declarations of war. They just slow things down.
5. Because there’s suppressed guilt and shame over how things have turned out and nothing works better as salve than waving the American flag, eating grilled hamburgers and hot dogs, shooting off fireworks, watching re-runs of Clint Eastwood in “Heartbreak Ridge” or genuflecting toward “the soldiers” even though you ain’t one, and muttering “But this is still the greatest country in the world.”
The fundraiser continues. You fancied that song/video with the exploding lyric blurbs and Lindsay Lohan thumbnail, right? I know you
did.
