Recently, one of my comment castigators whined, "Can we expect an end to your alarmist, Bush/Wall Street bashing propaganda now?"
No. You cannot. Not as long as your favorite "conservative" economic destroyers are giving away my hard-earned tax revenues to keep the latest investment bubble inflated while my fellow Americans lose their means of sustenance.
The task of re inflating the Pie-in-the Blue-Sky hot-air express is going to become even more difficult as more Americans become unemployed; all of the RNC propaganda organs and all of the Bush funny money men in this nation cannot prevent news of the fiscal disaster that they have foisted upon us from getting out. Even Fox "News" is reporting on angry truckers who cannot make a profit due to rising fuel costs. But just as the economy is running out of gas and diesel, the focus shifts to the reduction in the workforce by employers seeking to remain in gear and on their wheels.
With Wall Street narrowly focused on whether Bennie the Bad Penny was going to lower the interest rates again, they were caught short with the news that more American workers lost their jobs than even the experts expected. Not only did 80,000 watch their economic security disappear faster than a Republican at a foreclosure auction, but the numbers of those who lost theirs in January and February was increased to a loss of 152,000.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel put some of those numbers into perspective. Only 62.6% of working-age Americans are employed, the lowest level in three years. 394,000 high-wage construction jobs have disappeared since September 2006, 51,000 last month alone. 48,000 manufacturing jobs shut down. This combination outweighed employment gains in education, government and health care.
It's clear that the Congress doesn't have a clue. A perfect example is Indiana Democratic Representative Baron Hill, who displayed his employment ignorance by sputtering, "I knew the manufacturing jobs were going away, but I had no idea there were so many construction jobs going away." Has he been too busy with fund raising and taking calls from Hillary to pay attention to the woes of his constituents?
Temporary agencies haven't been unaware, as Tig Gilliam, chief executive of temporary-employment company Adecco Group North America, reported, the latest job losses "aren't a surprise to us" considering temporary positions declined by more than 21,000 last month.
Article comments
— go to most recent comments1 - Dave Nalle
Just to dash a bit of the cold water of reality in your face, Fabulist...
I had a chat last week with a friend who works at a large retailer. It seems he and his co-workers have been dragooned into working 12 hour days 7 days a week at time-and-a-half because their employer cannot find qualified workers (18 and literate in English) to fully staff their retail locations, even paying almost double minimum wage as a starting salary. They're increasing hours and paying overtime because they need scores of workers and have been advertising the jobs for months with no takers.
The problem, of course, is that these jobs are in the middle range of skill between low skill jobs which can be filled by illegals or high school kids and technical jobs which can be filled by asian or european immigrants or outsourced overseas. These are jobs you need Americans to fill, and there's such a desperate shortage of workers they can't fill them.
Oh, and as for your figures on declining employment, those figures do not take into consideration the growing number of people who are self-employed or employed in the burgeoning underground economy. It also doesn't take into consideration the growing number of people who decide to be stay at home parents.
But by all means keep pushing the fantasy and encourage the protectionist and nativist morons to drive us into economic disaster.
Dave
2 - Ruvy in Jerusalem
But Dave,
America is the land of opportunity, where you could re-invent yourself and succeed. That is what drew my grandfather to your shores in 1910, along with millions of other hungry and abused Jews. They got in on the gravy train (after a generation or two of abuse and discrimination) and nos the idea of a "poor Jew" is alien to so many that it is hard to believe when you actually come across such a creature.
But it appears that the doors are closing rapidly. Many of those self-employed workers are so employed because they feel they have choice, and no opportunity in an economic system that spits middle class people out like apple pits, changing them into poor people in the process, while rewarding those who impoverish them. That is the ugly reality of the land of opportunity and what it has sunk to.
You want to defend this? Go ahead, be my guest - defend injustice in the name of "freedom". But don't ever forget that the flip side of the freedom to succeed fantastically is the freedom to die frozen and homeless on a cold winter night.
I know - I lived on the streets in Minnesota and have seen it happen.
3 - Dave Nalle
Ruvy, you just don't have the first idea of the real dynamics operating in the US. You get the propaganda fed to you filtered through the international media and little of the reality.
Do you know why the US actually has a shrinking middle class? It's because so many people moved up out of the middle class and into 'wealth' in the last decade. No other reason. The poor have not become more numerous and their quality of life is better than ever before.
Dave
4 - bliffle
Jeez, Dave, if you really want to help out your "friend who works at a large retailer" you'll publish his contact info so people who want those great paying jobs can apply for them.
How about it?
5 - Bennett
"so many people moved up out of the middle class and into 'wealth' in the last decade. No other reason. The poor have not become more numerous and their quality of life is better than ever before"
Quoted For Truth-Be-Damned
6 - Krutic A
Recently, one of my comment castigators whined, "Can we expect an end to your alarmist, Bush/Wall Street bashing propaganda now?"
I'm flattered.
The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel put some of those numbers into perspective. Only 62.6% of working-age Americans are employed, the lowest level in three years.
Certainly my source for the most astute economic data and analysis.
Wonder if you were so 'concerned' about middle class Americans when the dot com bubble was allowed to get out of hand and burst leading to a real recession..somehow I doubt it.
I also did not see you cheerleading for the Bush administration when the economy was doing quite well for the past 6 years and that too while the country was/is fighting two wars. So if the Bush administration doesn't get credit for keeping the unemployemnt rates under 5% for most of its term or adding value to the stock market or having record number of home owners, then it is quite hypocritical to blame Bush for the rising unemployment.
But then no one said left wing propaganda was objective and honest.
I mean why would you blame the lenders and borrowers for the housing mess, or compare the current unemployment to levels in the recent past, or try to understand bewildering concepts like supply and demand or business cycles when you have Bush to pile it on?
Oh, I have it on good authority that Bush caused last week's tornados in the south west.
7 - bliffle
Oh, I get it! The reason there were a million foreclosures last year is because so many middle class people became billionaires last year that they could just let go of their old homes because they simply didn't need them anymore after they bought new palaces in gated communities. Too much fuss to actually sell them, don't you know.
How lucky we are to have Dave to explain Modern Life to us heathens.
"...so many people moved up out of the middle class and into 'wealth' in the last decade"
8 - ObamaBoy
Mr. Ruvy,
"self-employed workers are so employed because they feel they have choice, and no opportunity in an economic system" Oh that is so true...the dispair of those forced to be self employed is just another ploy to keep people down and under control. These fools are tricked into borrowing money, taking risk, working hard and reaping the financial rewards...how dumb they are! They dont understand that the government uses them so they can acculilate wealth, hire people and invest just so the government can tax and gain more control on their spirit...what fools!
In addition Mr. Ruvy it seems that you and your family understood the tricks of capitalism. Rather than be fooled like those other "hungry and abused Jews" who were tricked into working hard, geting an education, starting businesses and accumilated wealth...your lineage was much smarter...by taking public assistance, not investing on improving you or your childrens social or economic status and perputuating your cultures fines histrory of poverty and dispair...pure genius not to get tricked by the capitalist hucksters!
ObamaBoy
9 - Lee Richards
Re #3:
Then why is individual-and government-debt in the many trillions and ever-increasing?
Your comments could have been the rosy rationale offered on the eve of the Great Depression.
10 - ObamaBoy
Lee...I think its even worse than that! Bush and Cheney are coordinating this inorder to drive the world into a chaos to regain the power of the trilateral commision and the Masons...the are lying and have all of the senate and congress fooled into following them into the great abys...only one man on earth can help us through these uncharted waters..Obama..for change and hope!
ObamaBoy
11 - Dr Dreadful
Realist, I suppose I should be excited that Fresno has caused a blip on somebody else's radar, but in all fairness I feel I should point out that KMPH didn't do any actual work here. They simply picked up an AP news feed.
I can tell you that KMPH's idea of cutting-edge journalism is to make their own budget version of Cops by plonking some hapless reporter on a ride-along.
12 - Baronius
Realist, I guess that Fox News is more fair and balanced than you thought.
13 - Pablo
Baronius,
When you make a statement such as the one above regarding FOX News being fair and balanced, do you really believe whats your writing. Take Hannity and his puppy dog Colmes. Is that what you mean by "fair and balanced" Baronius? You take the one guy Hannity who is overbearing, aggressive, hateful, and quite frankly a very poor representative of humanity, and put a little puppy dog, smarmy character like Colmes to "represent" the other side. Fair and balanced my buttocks Baronius.
14 - Dr Dreadful
Baronius, KMPH in Fresno isn't Fox News, it's the local Fox Network affiliate.
Same megacorp, different method of turning the viewer's brain to blancmange.
15 - Clavos
Nobody with half a brain really believes Fox News's slogan, nor, I'll wager, does the vast majority of their audience want them to be, any more than Markos Moulitsas's audience or Ariana Huffington's want them to be "fair and balanced."
People will listen to the source that makes them feel comfortable; nobody understands that principle better than the Aussie mogul.
16 - bliffle
If nothing else, this economic calamity may stop the nuts from jabbering about "free markets" when what they mean is monopoly markets administered by the corporations that the government favors, and coppered by the Fedral Reserve when they start to suffer the consequences of their own actions.
Oh, and maybe it'll stop the hysterical "deregulation" mania of the past 30 years. I saw Paulson on TV declaring that "the regulations that congress instituted 70 years ago weren't designed to regulate these financial instruments". It's all congress's fault. The New deal congress of the thirties, to be exact.
No. Paulson has it backward. These modern instruments were specifically designed to circumvent existing regulations. It's not due to an oversight of thirties congress, it's because of evasive maneuvering by modern financial scoundrels.
But common sense would suggest that if a company acts like a bank, orrows money like a bank, loans money like a bank, etc., then it should be regulated like a bank. Especially if your Secret Plan is to bail it out like a bank.
17 - Dave Nalle
Jeez, Dave, if you really want to help out your "friend who works at a large retailer" you'll publish his contact info so people who want those great paying jobs can apply for them.
Well sure Bliffle, glad to oblige. He's not in HR so I'm not going to post his contact info, but here's the entry level job listing for the store he works at, and here's the search page for similar jobs nationwide. BTW, his store is also looking for managers and assistant managers. Office Depot is constantly hiring and opening new stores and running into staffing issues like the one I described the southwest.
So good luck with that new job, Bliffle.
Dave
18 - Dr Dreadful
Clav, I suppose Fox News could claim to be "fair and balanced" based on the fact that Bill "50th star to the Right and straight on till November" O'Reilly gets e-mails from people complaining that he's in bed with Obama and also from folks accusing him of sucking up to Clinton.
19 - Michael J. West
Krutic:
I also did not see you cheerleading for the Bush administration when the economy was doing quite well for the past 6 years
Since you've said this, I can then only assume that you were chearleading for the Clinton administration during the longest uninterrupted period of economic prosperity in American history, right?
20 - Baronius
Dread, that was sloppy of me. I was tweaking Realist for his "even Fox 'News'" comment, not referring to KMPH. The image of Realist taking notes while watching Fox News just kills me.
21 - Matthew T. Sussman
When I was 17 Office Depot turned down my application. So now I'm here.
22 - bliffle
I looked at those 2 Office Depot citations and there is no salary info. To the casual observer those postings look like the kind that retailers always keep posted in order to have a sheaf of apps on hand if someone doesn't show up for work one day. Doesn't look extraordinary in any way.
23 - Doug Hunter
My wife's parents are part of the foreclosure statistic. Built a luxurious 5000sqft dream home/investment putting almost none of their own money into it. They timed the market wrong and homes had quit appreciating when it was complete. They lived there a couple years waiting then realized it was loss, quit paying, and used the money to buy a new smaller residence plus a nice vacation home near the beach in SC. Quite a sob story, really.
24 - Dave Nalle
Yes bliffle, no one posts salaries in job listings anymore. So I must be lying. I just make things up for no reason. Maybe I'm Hillary Clinton.
And it's not extraordinary. Everyone around here is having a hard time finding qualified workers.
Dave
25 - Krutic A
I can then only assume that you were chearleading for the Clinton administration during the longest uninterrupted period of economic prosperity in American history, right?
Although Clinton was lucky to be president at that period in time (when the Y2K issue happened)which eventually caused the boom and the bust - I do give him credit for presiding over the boom period and blame him for the bust. But I also know enough about our economic system to know that the President has little control over it.