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We can't make it here: a political blog about joblessness & such

I wrote quickly an earlier version of this in the morning and posted it up on dailykos. Because I'm a glutton for punishment, I'll amend and publish here as well.

Paul Krugman's editorial of the day argues that we in the U.S. are in the midst of our third depression.

To which my first cup of coffee response was: duh!

I mean not to make fun of a ~~much-decorated~~ Nobel-prize-wining economist, for I am but a humble, barely employed former member of the fringe media.

But as the James McMurtry song from which I've stolen today's title argues (in part, and in part I simply like his bile), the problem is that that our economy is simultaneously in tatters from pathetic self-interested management, and undergoing a fundamental transition. Which may well be linked to the same self-interests. (And, yes, I'm playing nice and adding links and stuff...just this once.)

Here's how the job picture looks to me...

First off, I hit the Googles. I queried something about where are the jobs of the future, and this, from US News, came up first.

Maybe this is a strawman, and I'm sure y'all will tell me if it is, but I ran through all 50 of those top jobs as fast as my hillbilly internet would let me.

Notice anything?

(1) Almost all of them require advanced technical degrees. That's the first problem. Let's get this out in the open: Not everybody can or should go to college, and building an economy around the elite who can become genetic engineers (or whatever) is errant folly.

(2) NONE of those jobs (save plumber, which I'm sure they put in just to make a crack or two) involve actually MAKING anything.

(3) Most of those new and desirable jobs are not available to retrained oldsters like me (assuming I were retrainable). Sure, there are jobs in public relations. But y'know what? They go to young, pretty people, they don't pay well, and they don't lead anywhere. Sure, there are long-term careers in PR, but mostly it's a glass ceiling gig that one ages out from somewhere in middle age. To be replaced by younger, prettier, cheaper help.

(4) It's not on this list, but I keep hearing that there are jobs in retail (in fact, I have one). Which seems odd to me, since the meme remains that brick & mortar is dying.

(5) Software knowledge is an excuse not to hire old people. Older people. Employers keep forgetting that it's the work that matters, not what program you use to do it. And software developers keep writing new things that make the work more complicated, but not necessarily better. Or, rather, they write for a computer logic that is intuitive to one generation, and alien to the generation before, who was once accustomed to doing things by hand. (I am speaking, here, of graphics; I've done design since the mid-1970s, and on computer since the mid-1990s, but the software geeks keep making it harder and more expensive to stay in the game, so maybe I'm not in it anymore.)

Look...I never had a union gig, and so maybe I shouldn't comment, but I think we whip a dead bovine here by wishing for the era of the union to return. Ain't happening. We've built just enough workplace safeguards into federal law to give employers a figleaf. There is no such thing as job security in the new economy, nor will there be. (This is why we're now told to expect, what? five careers in our lifetime.) And unions were, best I can tell from history, a response to cruel working conditions in manufacturing. I'm not sure the logic -- nor the passion -- transfers to the new economy.

Anyway, the corporations would appear to have won.

We can't make it here. We DON'T make it here. Try to buy products made in the U.S. You still can, sometimes, but it's a lot of work.

We can't simply value the kind of intelligence which blossoms during standardized tests and manifests as a degree in biochemistry. We have to recognize that the guy/gal who can build something is not (see: Jesse James, West Coast Choppers, et. al) simply a cool retro thing, but an essential part of society. Or the folks who actually GROW things we eat.

The hegemony of the nerd (and I am one, just not the right kind, apparently) needs to come to an end.

We have to be able to make it here. Because if we can't, when petroleum does become prohibitively expensive and suddenly the overseas manufacturing plants are less than viable...

...when they begin to unionize in China, to demand fair wages...

...we're going need to be able to make it here. Just a reminder to the defense establishment: if we can't make it here, we're not going to be a very competitive empire for long.

Tags: alden, james, jobs, krugman, mcmurtry, paul, politics, rant

Comment by Adam Sheets on June 28, 2010 at 8:04pm: Great post and you hit the nail right on the head. Portsmouth, Ohio went from being one of the fastest-growing cities in the state in the mid-20th century to a town where half of the people are unemployed and decent jobs cannot be found. Most of the time the people who can't work behind a computer or who can't make it on Wal-Mart and McDonald's wages have to travel all the way to Columbus to work (a two hour drive on a good day).

This is the real world and while the decline of American industry can mostly be blamed on Ronald Regan, I have to put some of the blame on Bill Clinton as well. As much as I respect the man for most of what he did, NAFTA is one of the worst things to happen in American history.

You brought up James McMurtry and that is as good a reference point as any. But I think the best song to address this issue in the modern era was Springsteen's "Youngstown": "From the Monongaleh valley to the Mesabi iron range/To the coal mines of Appalachia the story's always the same/Seven-hundred tons of metal a day now, sir, you tell me the world's changed/Once I made you rich enough, rich enough to forget my name".

Comment by Easy Ed on June 28, 2010 at 8:29pm: I just finished going through two weeks of snail mail and it sure doesn't feel like we're in a depression when Citibank sends each of my boys (13 and 16...non-working students) pre-approval notices for their own credit cards. They also foolishly pre-approved me for a $50,000 auto loan I didn't ask for at 2.9% APR. So the recession or whatever it is thins out the [banking competition] herd, bails 'em out, lets them to write off the bad stuff and now we're back to business as usual. Happy days.

My friend Cedar who blogs from time to time somewhere else also picked up on Krugman's editorial this morning and makes an interesting point. This third depression he speaks of is very real, but not for everyone. You have one person out of work for a year with a home in foreclosure and no health insurance, and a neighbor down the street working steady, getting a promotion, putting money into 401K and college saving funds, buying a new Prius and taking a family vacation to Rome. It's not touching everyone or at least not in the same way.

From my personal perspective, our town has been identified as ground zero of the housing bubble with massive foreclosure rates, and unemployment is at 15.5% in our county. We "lost" 65% of our home's value (if we would or could sell now) and I closed out a 35 year career with nine months of "retirement" before someone knocked on my door. I'm indeed fortunate and grateful, because of the thirty or so people who used to work for me just a few years ago, about a third are employed, a third are working jobs well below their skill and previous pay levels and a third have been out of work for anywhere from 1-2 years. Ouch.

Now on the other hand, I spent some time visiting family who live outside of NYC in a rather affluent community. (Yeah...I'm the black sheep.) There were only two foreclosed homes I saw out of about a thousand, young couples send their kids to camp each summer, they can pay babysitters $15 an hour, every morning the buses arrive full with domestic workers, there are European cruises and trips to Aruba planned, golf club dues in five figures are paid and so on and so on. Not to say that in tough economic times they don't think twice about spending, but the impact is not so dire.

So what I see would be the end of the post ww2 middle class as we have defined it, with a much sharper and divided "have and have not" class structure. And yes...those corporations have won. The unions are gone, the people have no power, the spirits are broken and the fat continue to get fatter. Isn't that the goal of capitalism anyway? Isn't this the end game? Isn't this the way it was designed to be?

Manufacturing, farming, making stuff...it seems to have slipped away from us.

Comment by hyperbolium.com on June 28, 2010 at 10:12pm: I highly recommend Wigwam socks, made in Sheboygan, Wisconsin since 1905, and available from numerous brick-and-mortar and Internet retailers. I'm also fond of Tharco boxes, manufactured in San Lorenzo and Santa Fe Spring, California.

Comment by Grant Alden on June 29, 2010 at 3:41am: Ed: The Depression -- not even the Great Depression -- struck at everyone. Hell, I'm sure fortunes were made, then (and the Baltimore Art Museum has a stunning collection, much of it purchased by the heirs to a manufacturing fortune, much of it acquired during the Depression).
I think it's a mistake to think that where we are right now is the worst it will get. The BEST outcome I see is continued 10 percent unemployment as the new normal, with another batch of us (principally we over 50 sods) barely employed, or forced to give up the careers we had in favor of anything we can find. Which seems a tremendous waste, all around.
And my instincts, now, are that it's going to get worse. Businesses which have been hanging on will be less and less able to continue hanging on. Energy prices will rise; god help us if there's another terrorist attack, or a bad year for crops, or anything else which might tilt us downward at a hard rate. Unemployment will grind on upward, slowly, until we wake up and it's 12 percent, and then 15 percent.
And, yes, I do hope I'm wrong.

Comment by Reno Sepulveda on June 29, 2010 at 4:45am: I think the age of the union is far from over. It's just different workers. Public sector unions control California, and yes I am including teachers as public sector workers. We might as well include healthcare as the public sector now and they have their union. Walk into a Kaiser facility and you se those purple SEIU shirts everywhere. And GM and Chrysler too are now the public sector too.

What you need Grant is a government job. That's where all the economic growth is in America today. The problem is no matter how many new government employees are paying taxes, those revenues still add up to much less than what the government is paying them in salary and benefits. The unions respond by promoting policy and candidates that will keep them afloat. And the federal government at least can keep printing money.

At the state and local level though reality is setting in because they can't print their own money. In California the biggest employer is ...California and the boss is broke.

Comment by Steve Mullen on June 29, 2010 at 4:46am: Thanks for the post. I just keep hearing Jimmy Stewart saying, "Don't you get it?! Potter's not selling - he's buying!"

Comment by Will James on June 29, 2010 at 8:04am: Um, as much as it pains me to say so, Grant Alden is dead on and saying things others are afraid to. I was laid off several years ago without warning with four others over 50 from the same department of a large medical/research institution, one there 34 years, all of us good/great reviews (since then all workers over 50 have been made gone). Reason given: restructuring. That's the new one, and it works for them. As long as you call any discrimination "restructuring" you're dead, under ADEA, any of your state laws, everything. The "Supreme" Court put the final nail in our premature coffins with "Gross" (look it up). And then with the sinking economy (for the reasons Grant outlines and more), we're expected to work into our 70s??? Uh, where? Only so many "greeters" you can hire at WalMart (where I refuse to shop no matter how poor I am). Interviews go great, until the paper hits human resources and they do a quick lookup of your age. Paranoid? Think again. If you're not there yet, you will be.

Comment by Jack on June 29, 2010 at 3:48pm: The link below leads to a very thoughtful analysis of WHY our country has come to be in the condition that it is in. If you can't get to the article by the link, google Peter Morici Chicago Tribune June 10, 2010 and it'll lead you right there. This is well worth reading.

http://articles.chicagotribune.com/2010-06-10/news/ct-oped-0610-del...

In his comments above, Adam Sheets attributes most of the blame for the decline in our manufacturing industries to politicians; mostly Ronald Reagan, with help from Bill Clinton. But entire industries were leaving our shores (electronics, steel - ask the folks in Lackawanna NY and south Buffalo or Gary IN about when steel left town, it was long before Reagan and Clinton) and foreign companies were penetrating our markets (electronics, cars, steel, clothing) long before either man was president. Forget for a minute foreign influences, changes in our own country caused declines in other places like East St. Louis, once a vibrant town, now a desolate, crime ridden version of Gary IN, or Camden NJ, and so on. Ask the folks in Buffalo what happened to the flour industry there once the St. Lawrence Seaway made the Erie Canal obsolete. Where'd the legendary Chicago Stockyards go? Getting back to foreign influences, let's see what happens to our west coast ports once the widening of the Panama Canal now underway is completed.

We hear Obama continually blame Bush for what he inherited, but many of our economic problems pre-date Bush by a long shot, and they definitely transcend partisan politics. It was Clinton who signed two of the more significant pieces of legislation that re-set the playing field that led to the financial meltdown we are still in; 1) Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, and 2) Commodity Futures Modenrization Act of 2000. You don't hear Obama blaming Clinton, only Bush. Why? Ironically, Bush did try - but not effectively or hard enough - to warn of the perils of some of the deregulation in these two bills, but was denied a review by...a democratic Congress. But blaming Clinton is too simplistic because the bills were largely republican sponsored (Phil Gramm) with bi-partisan support. Ever hear an objective view from any politician as to why the financial meltdown happened? Getting sick of the same tired partisan bullshit?

When was the last time you heard politicians of either party talking about ways to promote the return of industries to our country?

We remain a country with immense raw materials, including a large percentage of the world's fresh water, and capitalism remains the best economic system in history. We have to manage ourselves more effectively, and by that I mean through our government. Regulation is not inherently bad, nor is deregulation. We need responsible regulation based on real world realities. We need the government to be a responsible referee, but not the coach. Can we get that when big money controls elections and politicians of both major parties. I doubt it.

My feeling is that unless and until we get meaningful campaign reform (term limits, limits on political contributions, among other things), and we stop mindlessly voting along strictly party lines, we will not get responsible changes in our fiscal and trade regulations and policies based on real world realities.

Comment by Rudyjeep on July 1, 2010 at 9:24am: That is a GREAT article Jack and it hits the nail on the head. My only issue is where he says "Politicians have deluded themselves....". He should be saying WE have deluded ourselves and have been living a fairy tale for years. The American people will not accept someone who speaks the truth to them. As another of Grants posts exposed, the culture of "cheap goods" has contributed to our downfall by sending jobs overseas. Our dependence on cheap foreign oil has kept us from a coherent energy policy. There's also our inability to do any long term planning.

And I don't think campaign reform is the answer. Money will always make its way into the process; after all, how can you keep it out? But look at the people WE elect? George W. Bush, not once but TWICE! And as a reaction to that mistake, we elect an empty suit in Obama. My fear is that as a reaction to him, we elect an empty head like the Airhead from Alaska. Of course, what intelligent person wants to be put through such a degrading process?

And P.S. The TV and electronics industries left us when Japan dumped product at low prices on the US while artificially keeping prices high at home to pay for it. It's the same thing China is doing now by keeping its currency low to keep their export market chugging along. Trade reform will help, but how do you negotiate with someone who holds all your debt?