Barbara Ehrenreich: Unemployed, and Not Getting a Job Anytime Soon? Why Not Build a Better World?

[marmar]

via AlterNet:



Unemployed, and Not Getting a Job Anytime Soon? Why Not Build a Better World?

By Barbara Ehrenreich, Madison Capital Times. Posted May 11, 2009.

You may be poorer than you've ever been, but you have more free time to express anger and urgency.



In most parts of the world, mass unemployment brings the specter of mass social unrest. Not in the U.S., though, where 13 million people have accepted joblessness with nary a peep of protest.

Many reasons -- from Prozac to Pentecostalism -- have been cited to explain American passivity in the face of economic violence. But the truth might be far simpler: In America, being unemployed doesn't mean you have nothing to do but run around burning police cars. Unemployment has been reconfigured as a new form of work.

Nowhere is this clearer than in the white-collar world, where the laid-off are constantly advised to see job searching as a full-time job. As business self-help guru Harvey Mackay advises: "Once you're fired, you already have a job. The job you have is tougher than the last one. It's more demanding." How demanding? He says you need to "plan on 12 to 16 hours a day."

Picture it: People across America rising at the usual time, suiting up in full corporate regalia and setting themselves down at their laptops to fiddle with resumes, peruse Monster.com and pester everyone on their address lists for leads.

Some people no doubt have found jobs in this manner, but there have been no scientific comparisons of the technique with, say, printing a resume on a sandwich board and parading around Times Square. .............(more)

The complete piece is at: http://www.alternet.org/story/139966/unemployed%2C_and_not_getting_a_job_anytime_soon_why_not_build_a_better_world/

[izquierdista]

1. Pantomime jobs

I believe John List was doing one of those just before he murdered his entire family. Probably not direct cause and effect, but a pretend job with no paycheck has to rattle the grey matter.

I'm in the situation Barbara describes, but the only time I put up the pretense is for dense people whose only small talk revolves around their job, your job, other people's jobs, how to get a better job, and who doesn't have a job. Otherwise, I keep myself quite busy with the business of life and making my world better.

[marmar]

2. It shocks me every time I talk to people who have no other identity but their job.....

...... Creeps me out.

[JVS]

3. Ha! That's irony worthy of Alanis.

[Orrex]

4. Maybe Babs could call Citimortgage and explain why I can't make my payments

"Don't worry about Orrex's mortgage--he's out building a better world."

The problem isn't that I'm poorer than I've poorer than I've ever been; the problem is that I have a family to support.

[Coyote_Bandit]

5. Written like

somebody that has a savings account - and apparently a fairly significant one - to rely on while making the world a better place.

Better use of your time if you are unemployable like me? Learn the skills to provide your own livlihood without having to work for somebody else. Better yet if those skills are transportable and permit you the opportunity to pursue small business creation in another part of the world. That means you might be able to get out if you want.

Funny how NOBODY ever suggests this. I guess they don't want you to be independent ande self-sufficient. They'd prefer you either be dependent upon corporate Amerikka - or willing to volunteer to work to make the world a better place (even though you personally may not benefit from those efforts even in the long-term).

If I have learned anything through my experience of long-term unemployment it is that my first priority and only loyalty is to myself and my family.

[DS1]

6. Barbara is far from that attitude.

[Coyote_Bandit]

9. Then

she hasn't walked in my shoes.

And I doubt she would be doing what she advocates if it meant doing so while living out of her car or sleeping on the street. Odds are she has some cash stashed away to finance her living expenses while trying to save the world. Or else she plans to rely on the earnings of a spouse or the benevolence of family members. Those are not an options for some of us.

[Bill McBlueState]

7. you should read the whole article

Further down the page, she addresses why the push for "retraining" is not helpful.

[Coyote_Bandit]

8. I did read the whole article

Retraining may not be worthwhile for getting a job working for someone else - especially when that someone else is not hiring.

Getting some new skills to open one's own shop just might be worthwhile. Of course that suggests that you have the intestinal fortitude to take the risk and make the effort to create your own livlihood. Most Americans do not.

[Fumesucker]

11. I grew up in a self-employed family and have been self-employed

A good bit more than I have worked for others over the last forty plus years.

It's not for everyone by any means, you have to put up with a great deal of uncertainty and the skill set you need to be successful is truly vast.

Not to mention that the attitudes and skill set necessary for starting a new business are quite different than those needed to maintain and manage an ongoing business.

[Bigmack]

12. I'm being gentle here.....

so don't just jump me without thinking.

Small businesses have a very high casualty rate. They are very subject to the whims of a market that's out of our control. Starting a business is Las Vegas risky.

If it works for you, you must be very good, but also very lucky. The not-so-good and the not-so-lucky will end up poorer and more depressed.

It's not a solution for everybody.

I read E's piece several times. She does come across as a person who doesn't have to worry about buying her next meal, but I took her admonitions about building a different work world as a call for the rest of us... the employed... to change the whole paradigm of work. People who are out of work need to concentrate on survival, and the only people who can afford the luxury of working for a better world are the rest of us.

My son's in the computer field, and has been out of work off and on for a year. I would never ask him to heed E's advice, or even read her article. Too goddam depressing and hopeless.

Good luck, Bandit. We want you successful. We need you successful!

[JI7]

14. until corporations like Wal-Mart push them out of business

[The2ndWheel]

10. The Principles of Scientific Management

http://www.fordham.edu/halsall/mod/1911taylor.html

[JI7]

13. more like written by someone who understands the BS about wealth and work in this country

she knows how things are stacked against people who don't have much. she is well off now but she has studied and tried to experience how others live. she knows these people and knows they are smart, intellligent,educated etc. that most of the times their place in society is not because they don't have the skills.