How will you fare in this economy?

[eots]

Make them all enlist. We need more troops to kill ragheads.

If a Muslim said the very same thing you would wrap it quotes and call it proof they are .. different than us ..and consumed with killing..and teach this hate..to their children

 

[indago]

This was certainly predictable...

Journalist Niki Kelly wrote for The Journal Gazette 13 November 2008:
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Indiana is one of five states whose Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund is insolvent, according to a recent report on the preparedness of the nation heading into what could be a severe recession. ...Other states in Indiana's category include Michigan, which has a $340 million deficit, Ohio, New York and South Carolina. "It is particularly troubling that so many states are facing insolvency so early in this economic downturn," the report said. "With all of the negative economic trends, it is likely that benefit payments will exceed trust fund revenues for several years, and these shortfalls threaten to leave a number of states deep in debt by 2010." ...Scott Sanders, chief financial officer at the Department of Workforce Development, acknowledged that the state will likely have to borrow money from the federal government to cover benefits soon, either by the end of 2008 or in the first months of 2009.
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[editec]

That's all fine and well, but when you council kids and try and point them in a direction, what direction do you point them too that will actually move them on to self sufficiency.

Easy to say...hard to do. One needs to know what direction will actually take them to self sufficiency.

I have five kids. Two went to college, one of those got a Masters, the other three enlisted because they had no idea what they really wanted to do. The Government is now paying for all three's college educations, all in Computer Science, a degree they can all three feed themselves with.

Talk to me once they're actually competing with all the computer science majors in the rest of the world. That class is already starting to feel the pinch. Just as once master machinists had the world by the balls, and then the world moved on, so too will the Computer Geeks suddenly find themselves redundant.

Remember I warned you, too, would you?

I've always counseled my kids to obtain skills and education that others actually VALUE, and never wasted time giving them that line of bull about "following your dreams". Daughter majored in Music for a year against my wishes, but I let her do it anyway. She finally figured out what Music majors made and what their employment prospects were, and she changed to international finance, and now does quite well.

Happy to hear she didn't get a job in international finance for some of the banks that are going down, right now.

Remember that I told you first that there will be too many international financiers, too.

I think you have to be honest with kids and tell them that if your job or career was twice as easy they would only pay you half as much because twice as many people could then do your job.

Okay, good advise.

But what do we tell kids whose abilities are not as computer scientists?

What do we tell those people who cannot be international financiers?

Those people lacking that intellectual horsepower are, after all, better than 80% of the population.

Shall I council them to come to you children's house and kill them and take their stuff because they are redundant people of average intelligence and have no futures anyway?

Or should I council them to kill themselves for the greater good?

 

[Old Rocks]

I think that for all of us, the speed with which the present economic crisis has affected us is stunning. I work in a steel mill as a millwright. On the last day of October, we recieved our profit sharing check for the summer quarter. It was the maximum, 40% of that quarters wages. There was also a note thanking us for a great quarter, and stating that while the economic prospects were less than rosy, that we looked to be in good shape for the coming year. A week later, most of upper management was looking as thought they were in shellshock.

We had a series of order cancelations that amounted to over 50% of the next years production. The week following, they laid off 50% of the production workers in the unit I work in. While, being a senior millwright, both experiance and age, puts me in a better position in our maintenance department, it will not take much more to start the layoffs beginning even for maintenance.

I knew both my grandfathers well, and know the story of their Depression experiance. My paternal grandfather was born in 1876, and my maternal grandfather in 1888. One owned 200 acres of farmland in Iowa,the other, with his brothers, 1600 acre ranch in Eastern Oregon. Both owned more than 50% equity in the land, and were rapidly paying off the loans in September of 1929. By 1935, both had lost everything. No crop failures, just no prices that paid mortgages and fed families.

In September, I had over 60% equity in some small properties in Portland, Oregon, and planned to sell this spring and summer, and buy a place to live in Eastern Oregon. It looked as if I had enough that we would have a choice of nice properties. Not now. Selling, and finding a place will mean choosing the cheapest livable property. And I am one of the fortunate ones.

Editec, you have the right idea. Those that did the best in the last Great Depression were those that learned to work and share with others. That skill will be a neccessity in the coming times.

 

[editec]

Old Rocks,

My grandfather Alois was also a millwright. He came from Bohemia to to the USA with the layout of a factory in his head. Can you say industrial espionage?

He did very well, too. After all he was, much like our digital engineers of today, a master craftsman of his age.

So he did very well, too ...until the Great Depression.

And by the time that depression finally lifted, he was too old to really recover his career.

One of the things I sometimes notice, when I discuss society with younger people, people who are doing well in thier time with their skills, is their faith that their skills and their ambition is all they need to carry on. They like to think of themselves as self made men or women.

History is replete with self made men and women who discovered that they too are just one more cog ina society, and their happy state was very much dependent on the overall health of that society.

NOw I know that I am boring many of you when I tell you what a terrible mistake our current trade policies are to this society. If you are doing well now, it is very easy to imagine that you are doing well because you made all the right choices, and those who are not doing well aren't because they made the wrong choices.

How they can overlook the fact that a million people were doing well a year or two ago, who are now redudant simply amazes me.

I assume that their blindness is willful, and is based on some sort of magical thinking. I presume they think if they stay optimistic enough they won't be effected by the macroeconomic forces which are crushing the rest of their nation.

But one I know for sure is this...we are a species which is interdependent because we are a social species.

Our personal affluence depends, not only on our fgood fortune and hard work, but also on having those things in an affluent society

If my neighbors are getting poorer, even if I am still doing quite well?

Sooner or later their sorry state is going to effect my world, because my world and theirs is the same world, and that world depends on most of us doing at least okay.

There is no gate in any gated community in America high enough to protect their affluent residents from the devasting effects of growing poverty of the society itself.

Libertarian thinking is a goofy as communist thinking because both depend on the assumption that people will willingly accept the rules, even if the rules say they must be losers.

If we bankrupt half our population, being in the other half of that population which is not bankrupted is not going to be an especially happy state, either.

The disenfranchised do NOT just go away, and believe me when I say that they will not go gently into the night just because some of us think they're losers.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Those people lacking that intellectual horsepower are, after all, better than 80% of the population.

Shall I council them to come to you children's house and kill them and take their stuff because they are redundant people of average intelligence and have no futures anyway?

Or should I council them to kill themselves for the greater good?

That the cold hard truth of the human condition. We are NOT created equal. And we are still primal beings at the core. There are plenty of viable careers for those that lack intellectual skills, but they are very hard to obtain as well. Master plumbers, carpenters, welder, and electricians are tough to come by and it's not easy to obtain that level of skill either.

The truth is, our youth has become lazy, and feel entitled. They are only entitled to DIE and PAY TAXES, period. Nothing else.

Like it or not Darwanism still rules the planet. All you have to do is look at Sub Saharan Africa for an example of an entire continent that lack basic governmental skill and possess nothing anyone values.

That is the COLD HARD TRUTH of the world we live in.

And yes, that's another thing I taught my kids, high skill levels in firearms. All three of my military kids carry marksmanship medals with .38s and M-16s! Even the girl has bagged trophy game. So we can all protect ourselves very well in case your kids come calling some day. And if they fail to take advantages of all the opportunities available to them in the country, I suggest the latter choice, because as you can tell the former would be a fruitless venture for them.

 

[Zoomie1980]

Old Rocks,

My grandfather Alois was also a millwright. He came from Bohemia to to the USA with the layout of a factory in his head. Can you say industrial espionage?

He did very well, too. After all he was, much like our digital engineers of today, a master craftsman of his age.

So he did very well, too ...until the Great Depression.

And by the time that depression finally lifted, he was too old to really recover his career.

One of the things I sometimes notice, when I discuss society with younger people, people who are doing well in thier time with their skills, is their faith that their skills and their ambition is all they need to carry on. They like to think of themselves as self made men or women.

History is replete with self made men and women who discovered that they too are just one more cog ina society, and their happy state was very much dependent on the overall health of that society.

NOw I know that I am boring many of you when I tell you what a terrible mistake our current trade policies are to this society. If you are doing well now, it is very easy to imagine that you are doing well because you made all the right choices, and those who are not doing well aren't because they made the wrong choices.

How they can overlook the fact that a million people were doing well a year or two ago, who are now redudant simply amazes me.

I assume that their blindness is willful, and is based on some sort of magical thinking. I presume they think if they stay optimistic enough they won't be effected by the macroeconomic forces which are crushing the rest of their nation.

But one I know for sure is this...we are a species which is interdependent because we are a social species.

Our personal affluence depends, not only on our fgood fortune and hard work, but also on having those things in an affluent society

If my neighbors are getting poorer, even if I am still doing quite well?

Sooner or later their sorry state is going to effect my world, because my world and theirs is the same world, and that world depends on most of us doing at least okay.

There is no gate in any gated community in America high enough to protect their affluent residents from the devasting effects of growing poverty of the society itself.

Libertarian thinking is a goofy as communist thinking because both depend on the assumption that people will willingly accept the rules, even if the rules say they must be losers.

If we bankrupt half our population, being in the other half of that population which is not bankrupted is not going to be an especially happy state, either.

The disenfranchised do NOT just go away, and believe me when I say that they will not go gently into the night just because some of us think they're losers.

There are no such things as disenfranchised people in this country. There are plenty of stupid, and lazy people though. You show me any "poor" person that is not mentally or physically handicapped and I absolutely, 100% positively can PROVE to you where they made all the WRONG choices in their lives.

Some well to do people get lucky (lotteries and such) but by and large, most of the well to do, have done so ON THEIR OWN. They are SELF MADE. I am SELF MADE, not one damned person anywhere every did anything FOR me except offer my opportunity that I took. I took ALL the hard courses in high school, I graduated in the top 5% of my class, went to a service academy, again took the HARD stuff and double majored in science and math. I have reinvented myself from scratch three times in 30 years of my profession, each time recognizing my skills were being dated and obsolete and each time I essentially started over with a whole new set.

My mom was a hairdresser and my dad was used car salesmen, neither graduated highschool. My wife is now a head-nurse and like-wise a self made woman. Her parents were share-croppers.

I AM SELF MADE, period. I owe NOTHING to ANYONE. And that is the NORM in this country. Your sense of reality is better suited to Mars..... You philosophy will not server your kids very well at all, I'm sad to say, if this the useless bilk you fill them with....

In the United State of American where you are of sound mind and body and you are poor, it is because YOU HAVE CHOSEN TO BE SO, period and there is no debate on that.

Oh, and here's a hint, this is not late 18th century France or early 20th century Russia.....and it won't be for hundreds of years yet.... And if it ever does get to that, the establishment's weapons are capable of killing ratios of upwards 10,000:1.....