There is hardly anything for working people to celebrate this Labor Day.
It has been a year since the financial crash of 2008. Although layoffs have been going on for a decade, they accelerated beginning in 2007 and in the past 12 months, the unemployment rate, which is undercounted, has increased from 6.2 percent to 9.7 percent. Some say the real number is somewhere around 16 percent, give or take.
According to official numbers, about 15 million Americans are unemployed and that doesn't count the underemployed and the discouraged workers who have stopped looking for jobs.
Have you ever been unemployed for an extended period of time? It's awful. No money coming in, but the bills are still due every month. If you happen to have a home equity line of credit, you dip into that. When it's used up, you start cashing out 401(k)s at a terrible tax bite. Soon you're robbing one credit card to pay another.
You cancel every service you can – magazines, newspaper, cable TV, online subscriptions, club dues. The only good news is that the dry cleaning bill goes down when you're not going to work every day.
You cut living to the bone. You stop seeing friends for dinner or movies because you dare not spend the money. Before long, they stop asking. You become more isolated. In time, you can't afford COBRA premiums any longer, so you can't see a doctor without paying cash, which you no longer have.
It's discouraging every day. Almost no companies acknowledge receipt of resumes anymore. They might as well be going into a black hole. You're told to network, but your colleagues are out of work too and those who aren't, stop taking your calls; they can't help and feel guilty about it.
That was the good news about unemployment until a year ago. Now, home foreclosure is common, cars are repossessed and if you have anything to sell, there is no one to buy.
After discouragement comes despair and if you are in your fifties or older, there is soon the realization that you are unlikely to ever have a job again that pays as well as before.
It is the American corporatocracy that is to blame for all this. Long before they destroyed the economy by giving away, often fraudulently, mortgages buyers could not afford and by buying and selling worthless swaps and derivatives, they cut pension plans and health coverage, refused to give raises and offshored millions of jobs. In the decade preceding last year's collapse, salaries lost ground, not even keeping up with inflation which was relatively low during that period. Longer ago than that, they destroyed the unions in the U.S. which had been the little leverage labor had with management.
So here we are on this Labor Day with 15 million unemployed, many of the employed forced to take pay cuts or enforced, unpaid furloughs while Wall Street executives, with the consent of government that bailed them out with hundreds of billions of workers' money, continue collecting their million-dollar salaries, awarding themselves ever larger bonuses and the health care arm of the corporatocracy spends more millions to make sure there is no meaningful health care reform.
Happy holiday, everyone.
At The Elder Storytelling Place today, William Weatherstone: Alzheimer's: Part 5 – In Response to Comments Here
It has been a year since the financial crash of 2008. Although layoffs have been going on for a decade, they accelerated beginning in 2007 and in the past 12 months, the unemployment rate, which is undercounted, has increased from 6.2 percent to 9.7 percent. Some say the real number is somewhere around 16 percent, give or take.
According to official numbers, about 15 million Americans are unemployed and that doesn't count the underemployed and the discouraged workers who have stopped looking for jobs.
Have you ever been unemployed for an extended period of time? It's awful. No money coming in, but the bills are still due every month. If you happen to have a home equity line of credit, you dip into that. When it's used up, you start cashing out 401(k)s at a terrible tax bite. Soon you're robbing one credit card to pay another.
You cancel every service you can – magazines, newspaper, cable TV, online subscriptions, club dues. The only good news is that the dry cleaning bill goes down when you're not going to work every day.
You cut living to the bone. You stop seeing friends for dinner or movies because you dare not spend the money. Before long, they stop asking. You become more isolated. In time, you can't afford COBRA premiums any longer, so you can't see a doctor without paying cash, which you no longer have.
It's discouraging every day. Almost no companies acknowledge receipt of resumes anymore. They might as well be going into a black hole. You're told to network, but your colleagues are out of work too and those who aren't, stop taking your calls; they can't help and feel guilty about it.
That was the good news about unemployment until a year ago. Now, home foreclosure is common, cars are repossessed and if you have anything to sell, there is no one to buy.
After discouragement comes despair and if you are in your fifties or older, there is soon the realization that you are unlikely to ever have a job again that pays as well as before.
It is the American corporatocracy that is to blame for all this. Long before they destroyed the economy by giving away, often fraudulently, mortgages buyers could not afford and by buying and selling worthless swaps and derivatives, they cut pension plans and health coverage, refused to give raises and offshored millions of jobs. In the decade preceding last year's collapse, salaries lost ground, not even keeping up with inflation which was relatively low during that period. Longer ago than that, they destroyed the unions in the U.S. which had been the little leverage labor had with management.
So here we are on this Labor Day with 15 million unemployed, many of the employed forced to take pay cuts or enforced, unpaid furloughs while Wall Street executives, with the consent of government that bailed them out with hundreds of billions of workers' money, continue collecting their million-dollar salaries, awarding themselves ever larger bonuses and the health care arm of the corporatocracy spends more millions to make sure there is no meaningful health care reform.
Happy holiday, everyone.
At The Elder Storytelling Place today, William Weatherstone: Alzheimer's: Part 5 – In Response to Comments Here