Getting Skills To Beat The Recession

The hard part with a recession is we get lost in worrying about short-term concerns, like paying the electric bill. The important thing is to think long-term. It's a well known fact that people with college degrees will earn about $900k more in lifetime earnings than someone with just a high school diploma. If you ask me, it's easily worth taking student loans for that amount. Now, Obama has made it even easier.

Read the rest at The Loop21.com.

Why Obama Should Have Worked Harder On Economy

Forcing healthcare through Congress at a time when the issue was not a top priority for most Americans will likely cost the Democrats come November....as I have already mentioned. Obama & Co. should have at least been much more aggressive on plans for job growth while pushing for healthcare reform.... this would have helped in making them look less out of touch. His team of advisers are definitely not the most competent.

Now they want to tackle immigration... thinking (mistakenly) that the healthcare victory has somehow given them momentum for dealing with an issue even more contentious. Obama will end up wasting what little political capital he has left on Immigration Reform. Clueless doesn't seem adequate for describing Emanuel, Axelrod, Plouffe and all the rest.

There is still a little bit of time between now and November. Alot can change in that time. It looks like the economy may finally be creating jobs again.... after losing millions over the last two years. But it will take a long time to change the public's perception... especially when there are TV networks and radio stations dedicated to telling Americans that Barack Obama and the Democrats are devils, socialists, and that they are to blame for the economic collapse. (Americans are incredibly gullible and unfortunately they listen to the nonsense from Faux News and the rest).

Republican in Tennessee Says 'Unemployed Should Just Find a Job'

Benefits about to run out? Too bad. You lazy folks should shut up and find a job.

From the Young Turks:

No One Would Listen - A Story of U.S. Government Corruption and Incompetence

Hear a discussion with two financial analysts who tried to sound the alarm about Bernie Madoff's activities but were ignored by your federal government.

Madoff often bragged about his cozy relationship with regulators... (which allowed him to do whatever he wanted). Many of the holes in the financial regulatory system still remain. And it's a symptom of a wider problem of corruption in government that Americans have not only grown to tolerate, but to expect. There was the muzzling of Brooksley Born, former chair of the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who tried to warn the nation about a looming financial crisis; The FDA being corrupted and controlled by the drug companies; and even oil industry execs openly providing gifts & having sex with federal regulators from the Interior Department in exchange for less stringent oversight.

States Making Deep Cuts to Child Welfare Budgets

States are making deep cuts to child welfare programs, due in part to severe budget shortfalls brought on by the recession. This highlights what is really valued (or not valued) in this Country. The true character of a nation is reflected in how it values its people, especially its children. And we know that whenever finances are tight, social welfare programs and budgets for protecting children are all too often among the first items to be cut. What does this say about the Country?

With the severe difficulty in achieving health care reform, consumer protection, labor rights, equity in elections vis-a-vis corporate influence, and other human needs, (battles that have already been fought in other industrialized Democracies), it is abundantly clear that American priorities aren't geared towards protecting its people or improving the quality of their lives. The NPR report linked above supports what I wrote last year regarding Shaniya Davis.

Many Could Face Years of Unemployment

A New York Times article calls them "The New Poor".

See Related Post

Great Recession is Actually a Depression for Many When It Comes To Unemployment

Hear an informative discussion from NPR on the impact of the latest recession. Economists Andrew Sum & Barry Bluestone have broken down the unemployment numbers group by group and have been able to show huge disparities in terms of who is being impacted the most. The mainstream corporate media has been almost AWOL on this. Listen Here. See the findings of a new study from the Center for Labor Market Studies at Northeastern University.

I have been writing all along about the weakness of the stimulus efforts since last year when the legislation was passed. I thought that employment would be lacking because there was not enough focus on the creation of lasting, sustainable jobs, particularly in new industries. There was an opportunity to do something big & impressive by creating a public works program and/or grant programs for start-ups in new technologies. There was also a need for aggressive loan programs for small & medium sized businesses.

Even if you have employment, survival is becoming more precarious.

Bonus:

Also hear a discussion about the gridlock and paralysis in the U.S. Congress.

'Tent cities' of homeless on the rise across the US

Homeless encampments dubbed "tent cities" are springing up across the US, partly in response to soaring numbers of home repossessions, the credit crunch and rising unemployment, according to a report.

Homelessness, car camps and tent cities are certainly not new, but they are growing rapidly.

In Reno, Nevada, the state with the nation's highest repossessions rate, a tent city recently sprung up on the city's outskirts and quickly filled up with about 150 people. Many, such as Sylvia Flynn, 51, who came from northern California, ended up homeless after losing their jobs and home.

Officials say they do not know how many homeless the city has. "But we do know that the soup kitchens are serving hundreds more meals a day and that we have more people who are homeless than we can remember," Jodi Royal-Goodwin, the city's redevelopment agency director, said.

In California, the upmarket city of Santa Barbara is housing homeless people who live in their cars in city car parks while Fresno, has several tent cities. Others have sprung up in Portland in Oregon, and Seattle, where homeless activists have set up mock tent cities at city hall to draw attention to the problem.

Meanwhile, new encampments have appeared, or existing ones grown, in San Diego, Chattanooga in Tennessee, and Columbus, Ohio.<Story>

Some quick internet searching uncovered many others, in Dallas, Olympia, L.A., Athens, Georgia, Columbus. Others, like Tenessee and St. Petersburg have been shut down.

MSNBC has a photo essay on a large tent city in Sacramento, juxtaposing it with the Sacramento tent city of the Great Depression.

There are homes sitting empty, while people have no place to live. Excess supply coexisting with excess demand. The invisible hand has failed these people.

Call for Submissions to Briarpatch

I like this magazine and it seems they are looking for submissions for their upcoming edition "How I learned to stop destroying the planet and love the global recession"

What if the economic recession we're presently experiencing
is not just a regrettable temporary setback in the never-ending
march of growth-fuelled prosperity, but the beginning of a
painful but ecologically necessary process of scaling back
our footprint to a more sustainable level?

How would we manage the decline so as to ensure the burdens
are shared out equitably? How would we go about reorganizing
our society and economy around conservation and community
well-being rather than economic growth and short-term profit?

The revolution envisioned above would require a fundamental
transformation in every aspect of our lives -- our jobs, our
homes, our food system, our arts and entertainment, etc.
It's certainly beyond the scope of a single issue of Briarpatch
to describe, but in our July/August 2009 issue, we hope to
sketch out some of the broad contours and specific
opportunities so our readers can get to work on the rest.

What principles should guide our efforts to reorganize our
lives and communities on a human scale? What initiatives
already underway deserve to be profiled, celebrated, and
imitated? What can we learn from what other people are doing
in other parts of the world? What books and films shed light
on the key issues and should be reviewed? How can our
efforts to cope with the global recession pave the way to
a more stable and sustainable future?

If you've got something to contribute to this discussion,
then we want to hear from you. We are looking for articles,
essays, investigative reportage, news briefs, project profiles,
interviews with luminary thinkers, reviews, poetry, humour,
artwork & photography that explore how we can unplug
from the growth machine and cope with the global recession.

We seek to cast a broad net in our approach, profiling
initiatives in energy alternatives, housing and urban
planning, transportation, job (re)training, ecological
economics and much more -- this is not an exhaustive list!

Queries are due by March 23, 2009. If your query is
accepted, first drafts are due by May 1, 2009. Your query
should outline what ground your contribution will cover and
include an estimated word count and a short writing sample.

Please review our submission guidelines before submitting
your query. Send your queries to:
editor AT briarpatchmagazine DOT com.

We reserve the right to edit your work (with your active
involvement) and cannot guarantee publication. Briarpatch
pays $0.05/word. http://www.briarpatchmagazine.com

Some of my blogging friends (and the non-bloggy ones too) have certainly been opining on exactly this topic - perhaps one of you wants to submit something. If I can get my act together, I just might as well.

Gender, Jobs, Recession... and bad math

Usually the Toronto Star has pretty decent writing, but this was one of the poorest pieces I've seen in a while. There are some good points made, but the headline ("In shrinking workforce, women may surpass men") is misleading, and the writing jumps around without leading to any reasonable conclusion.

Perhaps this is nitpicky, but there is some sloppy math here. The article claims "there's a possibility women will soon outnumber men in the job force." The numbers quoted in the same article don't really bear that out, unless you define "soon" as "probably never".

According to StatsCan, there were 7,295,900 men with full-time jobs in January 2005 and 6,297,400 women working full-time.

By January 2008, that number had dropped to 7,186,800 for men and to 5,339,200 for women. And as of last month, it fell further, to 7,095,000 full-time jobs for men and slightly for women, to 5,339,000 full-time positions.

So the trend shows in the longer term women losing significantly more full-time jobs than men (from 2005-2009, men lost 200,000 while women lost 958,400 jobs, or put another way men lost 2.7% of their full-time jobs while women lost 15.2%). From 2008-2009, men lost 91,800 jobs and women lost only 200. Now there are 1,756,000 more men than women employed full-time. If this trend were to continue, exactly as is, it would take over 19 years for the number of men and women employed full time to equalize. I don't know about you, but I don't consider 19 years as "soon". In addition, most stimulus money is targeted to male-dominated industries, so if the stimulus package has any effect, traditionally masculine industries will see a boost, slowing or reversing this trend.

If they had included part-time work as well, maybe the conclusion would be justified (women's part-time job participation is about three times that of men). Here's the most recent Statcan numbers.

If it were true that women were surpassing men in the full-time paid workforce, why is this a problem? Aren't we supposed to be living in the land of equality?

One reason this is indeed a problem is that women still make less money than men, partly because pink-collar jobs typically offer lower pay and fewer benefits. Women-headed households are on average much poorer, even when there are two parents.

Economists also point out that men have lost high-paying jobs with health care and pensions but women are supporting families with jobs that are not necessarily as good.

The article also points out:

This trend can also mean a shift in family dynamics. "If more men find themselves home, that has important implications for the way families operate," said Julie McCarthy, assistant professor at Rotman School of Management. "It's not a bad thing – most men are amazing parents but traditionally, it's not their primary role. Perhaps this trend will facilitate that."

Why shouldn't men stay home and watch the kids half the time? Many men I know would love to have more time with their kids. And most kids would love to have their fathers around more.

Wouldn't it be nice if mommy's salary was enough to support the family while daddy took care of the cooking, cleaning and kids. Or perhaps, his EI benefits could help the family pay the bills (except that like Diane Finley said, "We do not want to make it lucrative for them to stay home and get paid for it, not when we have significant skills shortages in many parts of the country." This government wanted to make it easier for women to stay at home, but I guess the same doesn't apply to men.) Or perhaps a decent subsidized daycare system could help out when both mommy and daddy need their crappy minimum wage jobs, or when mommy is single.

Then I don't think we would worry so much about equal job participation rate among men and women.