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Related: Editorials & Other Articles, Issue Forums, Alliance Forums, Region ForumsHardly Confident About The Long Term Well Being Of The Younger Generation
Even though I have a lot of confidence about the advance of technology that will improve life and living in unimaginable ways. On the other hand I have little confidence about the future economic prospects of the younger generation. The Reagan revolution has set into motion events that will make their life much more difficult and leave them with a "Blade Runner" world. And you can thank the GOP for all of it.
With no job security and the loss of 90% of mid range jobs in the economy $25,000 will look good in the future. At this point 70% of the jobs being created by generous big business will NOT feed a flee. 20% will be marginally living wage. And only about 10% will be viable jobs.
And article just came out in the AP that verifies what is going on. Right to work, work at will, end of labor laws et al will guarantee that this generation will not enjoy any of the work benefits their parents and grand parents did. What is amazing is that their parents and grandparents voted for the Reagan revolution over time. Or enough did anyway. The GOP was kept in power long enough to guarantee what is happening.
Now the chickens are coming home to roost.
physioex
(6,890 posts)I have been watching Tavis Smiley this week and he has been discussing poverty in America.
TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)jwirr
(39,215 posts)liquor store with only a high school education, wants to go to college but has no idea what to go for. His future does not look all that good either - only good thing is that he has not run up a huge college loan debt yet.
flamingdem
(39,319 posts)or don't have up to date skills.
It's not just the young people who are suffering this turn but the
problem is when they never get to experience what it means to
have a good job.
I also blame globalization. So many are sent to the USA by their
families to get a start and the competition is brutal.
TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)Employers simply do not want ANY liabilities. If you are imperfect in any way your are toast.
flamingdem
(39,319 posts)for an older worker. It depends a bit on the area, sometimes they want reliable vs. young.
It seems in the past to have been partially about health insurance expense. I hope that at
least changes with ACA, though there was premium support before but I don't know how
much for hires over 50.
So you could say the young benefit from this distaste for older workers. Many factors here.
Selatius
(20,441 posts)However, it seems, from its inception, the point of globalization was to commit labor arbitrage on a world-wide scale. It may be true that nations that trade with each other are less likely to go to war against each other (see China and the United States), but it'll be cold comfort to those who watched their living wage jobs go overseas to workers who make 60 cents an hour when one converts their wages back into American Dollars, and still, prices continue to rise, not decline, another point that was advertised as a plus with globalization.
flamingdem
(39,319 posts)and then those who train here go back and compete against us, undercutting at all levels. So the future will be super competitive, and the life of the thinker, artist will be only for the 1% ... thinking dystopian here!
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)and lets all who get degrees here stay to take our jobs.
Recursion
(56,582 posts)send textile jobs to China, tax the more profitable companies more, and hire the laid off workers to do socially useful things. Triple win: Chinese workers get richer, Americans get cheaper shirts, and labor gets to do more socially useful things.
we just kind of forgot to do the important step there.
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)Milton Friedman was one of the most evil men who ever lived. A total crackpot, but his "theories" justified something that cannot be justified.
elleng
(131,074 posts)environment and societal attitudes, meanness, VERY distressing.
RKP5637
(67,112 posts)concept in this country of a job for all, the distribution of wealth, what it means to be a contributing member of society and the rewards thereof are all woefully obsolete. If we continue to try to patch with band-aids hemorrhaging wounds we will not make it ... some will, but most will likely fall by the wayside.
flamingdem
(39,319 posts)Now some people make a living off the books renting their space through Airbnb and doing tasks for others, and you could call that entreprenurial.. People are more willing to enter into small business with little start up and experiment. It's a bit beyond me but a twentysomething probably has a different view of "work".
Demo_Chris
(6,234 posts)TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)And yes he is to blame as well. Lest we forget, Bush I negotiated that treaty in the first place. That fact does not make Clinton blameless unfortunately. And as long as we are stuck with this radical free trade it does not look good.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)It was really bleak for the poor in the 1920s. Then the pendulum started swinging back, and things were so good in the 1950s and 1960s that people decided they didn't need unions anymore. And so the pendulum swung back and once again it's really bleak.
The pendulum will swing again. And it will be really good again soon enough. Leading to another swing back.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)The world really is changing in ways we have never seen in the past. The world is smaller and has much less resources. We are also running out of new realistic ideas which were the hallmark of past economic strength. Now, ideas are what are undermining progress and forcing us into a hole that has never existed. The fact in a nutshell is that EVERYTHING must change. How we look at life, progress, business, politics, everything must be reinvented. If we don't change for the best outcome for humanity and it's survival, then there may be a time when those that "have" will live and those that don't..... ??
jeff47
(26,549 posts)Your statements could have come from a 1920s newspaper.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)but does that make the possibility less relevant? In the 1920's they did not have the concept of the planet and it's constituents as we do now; their lives were still very local. Nothing is local now and our understanding of how small the earth really is in every aspect, ie. physically, politically, economically, socially is far more advanced than it was 10 years ago let alone the 1920s.
I'm sure if we had newspapers available from the time of the ancient Greeks, they probably would have had similar viewpoints of their world that coincide with my comment as well. But there is a point of saturation, and if there were ever a time where we could begin to see that saturation, it's now. The planet surface is not getting any smaller, and those who live upon that surface are not decreasing in number.
jeff47
(26,549 posts)And then it got better.
Yes, today's problems are different from yesterday's problems. But they are not unsolvable, just like yesterday's problems were not unsolvable.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)are solvable or unsolvable. My position is also not to state that the playing field is different or not, but that the playing field has become smaller. So small in fact, that the game can no longer be played. There needs to be a new game because there will be no new field. Or you could say that it is no longer a game we play as organisms on an infinite plane; it's a fight for survival.
Maybe those from early last century were prophetic, and we are still in the same process.
Hoyt
(54,770 posts)DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav
(408 posts)change in the economy he promised. I wouldn't have voted at all this past election because I didn't see any big change in employment, but voted for him again only for fear Romney would get in, and the few of us who have jobs would be replaced by Chinese slave labor.
I see a lot more police state laws being enacted and no jobs being created. I don't see him standing with us on marijuana issues or against big banks. I'm feeling betrayed and my children s future depends on about 600 rich people who don't seem to give a damn.
TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)If you look at the leaders who pushed for social and economic justice in the past like King and the Kennedeys they were all assassinated.
And if you really think deeply about those events, they are still not satisfactorily explained.
DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav
(408 posts)If we can't vote people into office who do what's best for the country and her people, then what good is any of this? Have we really gotten to the point in this country where we expect that they'll murder our leaders if they do what's best for us the 99 percent?
And we're ok with this because?
TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)I am looking at it with a different perspective. I actually saw President Kennedy in a motorcade in Springfield, Illinois in 1962 as I remember. And I remember his assassination. And even then I felt the Warren Commission was a fraud. And a lot of files are secret until after every one today is even dead. Then came King And Robert Kennedy.
Now I look at assassinations of those leaders as more than coincidental. They happened for a reason. And I have seen all and every institution or organization like the NAACP marginalized or eliminated.
What is going on in the country is very dark to me and I now recognize forces that I never thought existed when I was a young man.
Like you I have notices how brutally the Occupy movement was beaten down and infiltrated. The Democrats themselves did not come to their support.
Too many things do not add up in the country. I am sure that you can lay the blame on many of the billionaires and millionaires and their allies because in my youth we NEVER had such huge wealth held by individuals until after Reagan was elected.
I cannot read where the electorate is at this time because the country is so balkanized and fragmented.
DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav
(408 posts)why is it that no one on either side of the government seems to be talking about this? Bush and Obama both bailed out the banks. WTH? Maybe if that money had been put into jobs programs those people would still be living in their homes and the banks wouldn't have needed bailouts. The whole thing was a huge scam, we all know it, and no one is even being charged for the crimes while "we the people" are beaten down and tazed. What's it going to be like 10 years from now?
Mojorabbit
(16,020 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)are stellar.
Thank you.
TheMastersNemesis
(10,602 posts)woo me with science
(32,139 posts)MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)The generation that just retired saw the best America was ever going to be. I'm not going to do as well as my parents did and my kids are going to do worse. Ironically, it's that last generation that voted for Reagan and assured none of us would enjoy what they had.
They outsourced our jobs, busted our unions, depleted the treasury, robbed everything that wasn't nailed down and bought the Congress. And it's not just the Republicans, the Democrats sold out too. We're the goddamn party of Reagan, they're just nuts.
Forget about anything good ever happening for the people again. It doesn't matter what we think, it doesn't matter what we say. They own the media, they own the government and only the approved corporate line will be toed.
If we protest they'll beat us into submission and crush us in the media as they did to Occupy.
It's all over but the shouting.
DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav
(408 posts)failed my kids. I hate not being able to do anything other than pass the buck and point fingers at the other guy. We're all at fault here. We're all sitting by watching like a deer in the headlights. I'm sick, I'm tired, I'm scared.
MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)Out of work over a year and a half, only worked in 18 of the 48 months of the Obama administration, savings gone, retirement money nearly depleted, unemployment running out in 8 weeks. My poor wife is working three and four part time shit jobs just to keep us from starving to death. Unemployment barely covers the rent.
No one has money for side work either.
I'm beyong frustrated. I'm infuriated, trrrified and getting desperate. I never thought this would happen to me. I never thought the goddamn Bush years would be the height of my career.
And all this because the greedy sons of bitches that own our congress can't plunder with full impunity. They're going to punish us for the next four years as they did the last four.
Something's got to give.
DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav
(408 posts)teetering on the edge. I don't care who's fault it is, someone (hopefully the president) needs to address the jobs issue. We're on a sinking ship, we're sending out SOS's and there's no help on the horizon. We don't want welfare, we want jobs. I never thought I'd hear myself say that.
Sending you good vibes and wishing your family the best.
MrSlayer
(22,143 posts)And the same back to you and yours.
socialindependocrat
(1,372 posts)I grew up in the 60s when we marched against the war and protested.
Back around 1997 I was working with a group of people 10 years younger than I
and I wrote a letter to the chief of security about something I thought needed to be
corrected.
When I told my workmates they got all excited and siad I'd netter stop rocking the boat or I was going to get into trouble and they would let me go.
I had noticed when I first started working for this very large corporation that the workers didn't start to speak up until they had worked there for 15 years or more.
This defeatest attitude just reduces the number of people we have that can lend their energy to writing and voting and marching and occupying and whatever it takes to get these things corrected.
Have heart people! We will make things turn around!
Stay focused and keep your spirits up.
Whoever said you can't fight cith hall was wrong.
It just takes some committed and angry people to make changes.
Look at all the corruption that has been exposed over the past 4 years.
Now that it's been exposed it can be dealt with.
flamingdem
(39,319 posts)but so far so good with Obama, and now he's starting that outside group to organize his peeps.
We won't go down without a fight!
elleng
(131,074 posts)and that of many others I think.
Good that we'll fight, but sheesh . . . .
flamingdem
(39,319 posts)cold water on the future and a disrespect for the voter's wishes. Oh well, the la lucha continua!
DogPawsBiscuitsNGrav
(408 posts)The corruptions been exposed and the banks are still giving great big bonus's. We get the Patriot act, NDAA, TSA, drones and no jobs. Good spirits don't keep food on the table. I wish I could be as positive.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)But you're heading the right direction for whatever it's worth. But now is now. You are us and we are you.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)Unless everything changes, and I mean everything. To have jobs is a whole different ball game than the past. It will take monumental government changes that PUT people to work, not wait for the wealthy corporate establishment to have pity on us or simply become benevolent. Things have to change.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)alittlelark
(18,890 posts)....I'm not a survivalist, I'm a realist.
JDPriestly
(57,936 posts)You're on your own is the motto of the Republican Party.
They have pretty close to drowned government in their hot tub and now we are left to roast on the coals.
yorokmok
(33 posts)...it is not from the gun nuts because we are taking away the last vestiges of their manhood but from the people finding more and more hopelessness. Desperate people do desperate things. When they find themselves in a growing population of people in the same situation there will be upheaval and their will be change. As jobs are outsourced and become fewer and fewer because we are just a service economy more will be left by the wayside. But that 'wayside' will become a sizable number which will not be able to be ignored. The only reason that group is not recognized at this point is because they are not large enough...they are growing...it is coming.
wishlist
(2,795 posts)The unemployment/underemployment situation is not simply due to the recession and outsourcing but also technology that allows much higher productivity with many fewer workers. There was a show on TV last week that showed how factories and online retailers are employing robotics causing huge reduction in jobs.
Computer technology and automation has eliminated many mid level good paying jobs in offices too, including govt offices. The office where I worked was able to go from over 50 employees in the 1970's down to 30 now, even while the office services more than twice as many clients.
duffyduff
(3,251 posts)that workers are not "skilled" in the jobs that are available.
It's a bunch of CRAP. Outsourcing and trade policies are the reasons our economy is the ditch. Automation has been going on forever.
moondust
(20,002 posts)many of the machines now have brains (computers) so a human operator is no longer needed.
RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)I'm feeling very depressed. And am not alone.
bluestate10
(10,942 posts)RedCappedBandit
(5,514 posts)Hopefully I get into grad school this fall. Then I can delay hopelessness for another two years.
bluestate10
(10,942 posts)that businesses can't pay workers poor wages or pit one state or country against another to extract government assistance and even lower wage costs and prosper. The more progressive argument that spreading wealth downward as much as possible make not only good economic sense, it is also good for business growth and creation of wealth.
defacto7
(13,485 posts)Response to TheMastersNemesis (Original post)
woo me with science This message was self-deleted by its author.
kimtjj195_tx
(23 posts)But then I remember that our older generations struggled with the same problems, and eventually prevailed. So I try to be hopeful.
woo me with science
(32,139 posts)datasuspect
(26,591 posts)block by block gang wars in major cities fighting for expired pallets of ravioli-o's and Canadian bottled water.
120 degrees in march in dallas.
complete lawlessness and the breakdown of social order.
grandparents will tell fireside camp tales to young people of things called "jobs," $5/gallon gasoline, acres and acres of aisles of FOOD you could just go in and fill a basket with.
CLEAN water from faucets - each time you turned it on, the water came out.