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To drive this point home even further, I have a dear friend that's been staying under my roof for two years now, unable to support himself due to his inability to find a job, any job. And yes, he talks about suicide quite often, and if something doesn't come through for him, I really think he's going to go through with it. If he does, I'll go through his notebook and write each and every place he's applied to over the past two years, which number in the hundreds, and explain to them that due to his not being hired, he's now a dead man. Hopefully they'll not be able to sleep at night knowing that they, too, have blood on their hands.
This won't bring him back, but yeah, I can empathize....
(gosh Im talking like yr friend is already dead!!!)...no..what I mean I know of people in similar straights tho they havnt talked of suicide.
Julian, I don't know who you are but you sound like an extremely kind person. And I'm not surprised. I was thinking of moving to Pittsburgh and so I was on the CD Pittsburgh board for about 6 months (or more). I couldn't have asked for kinder, more helpful posters. I've never found the same level any city board I've been on.
Well, don't read the comments at the bottom of the article. They will break your heart. But I've never been so impressed by any comments re any article. These posters were letting it all hang out. It just killed me.
Just want to echo that the Pittburgh C-D Forum is just terrific. Wonderful posters there.
Yes, this is a heartbreaking time for many. Kindness is something we should all aspire to. It seems like political nastiness has been in full force during this period too,and it just seems so wrong.
No one cares -- certainly not the politicians in power right now. They care more about unlimited cheap labor for their elites who are doing so well in the DOW. Cheap labor is what it's about.
Illegals are doing quite well actually --remittances to Mexico are way up during this recession. It really is about replacing the American middle class so the politicians really don't care at all if American middle class types off themselves.
You're right. No one cares. I've been out of work for more than a year. I'm a burden to my partner, bless her heart, but if I can get the drugs, I'm going to commit suicide on my 59th birthday, away from everyone, alone in my ancestral homeland, and I'll end up at the bottom of a lake, but not before drinking 20 grams of nembutal.
To drive this point home even further, I have a dear friend that's been staying under my roof for two years now, unable to support himself due to his inability to find a job, any job. And yes, he talks about suicide quite often, and if something doesn't come through for him, I really think he's going to go through with it. If he does, I'll go through his notebook and write each and every place he's applied to over the past two years, which number in the hundreds, and explain to them that due to his not being hired, he's now a dead man. Hopefully they'll not be able to sleep at night knowing that they, too, have blood on their hands.
Has he looked into North Dakota? If not, then he's not so serious about job searching. So he would be depressed and suicidal for some other reason.
Yes, many of my friends with nothing, nothing, nothing moved to other areas of the country far from home and family to find jobs.
Yes, many of my friends with nothing, nothing, nothing moved to other areas of the country far from home and family to find jobs.
I did that...back in that early 1980s recession, which I recall was a hard recession...ended up in Chicago and eventually California to find work. From Kentucky.
I can only hope that those who are responsible for hiring people into jobs come to the realization that they have blood on their hands for not hiring those that need work the most, seeking instead the ever-elusive "best and brightest."
To drive this point home even further, I have a dear friend that's been staying under my roof for two years now, unable to support himself due to his inability to find a job, any job. And yes, he talks about suicide quite often, and if something doesn't come through for him, I really think he's going to go through with it. If he does, I'll go through his notebook and write each and every place he's applied to over the past two years, which number in the hundreds, and explain to them that due to his not being hired, he's now a dead man. Hopefully they'll not be able to sleep at night knowing that they, too, have blood on their hands.
This is the reason I hope and pray that an ELE (Extinction Level Event) befalls the human race, as we certainly don't deserve to reside on this beautiful planet with the way we treat each other. We, as a species, are a miserable failure, an evolutionary mistake if you will, completely deserving of whatever fate Mother Nature has in store for us. I can only hope it comes sooner, rather than later.
So Mr. Misanthrope, what would you do if you were in charge of hiring for two open positions and you had 50 applicants? Forty-eight of the applicants are going to be disappointed no matter what you do. It is your job to make the choice, and if you hire bad, incompetent workers out of some misplaced sense of pity, then you yourself are going to be out of a job and your company will eventually have to fire them anyway. I don't buy your logic and I don't see how anyone has "blood on their hands". Can you say "overly emotional"?
Some human beings have always treated each other badly, going back to cave man days. Others have treated each other with kindness and compassion, and continue to do so. I have done extensive reading on the Holocaust, certainly one of the nadirs of human cruelty on a massive scale. Even in the midst of that, however, some people risked their lives to hide and shelter potential victims.
You are hoping for the slaughter of all of us, the compassionate along with the cruel. What does that say about you? Don't like the world as it is? You have options.
People are struggling because they are forced to pay taxes and fees as a business pays....even if they re not a business.
We had a trade name created from our real name. Trade name is in all CAPITAL letters. When the computer program receives the all capital name...it identifies with a business. And that is how we are billed, even if we are or do not own a business.
When a busienss pays fees and taxes, it pays from income (profit of sales, investments etc...) but when an employee pays the these and taxes, they are using their own energy and labor to pay for them .
You should be able to see how this will put a strain and drain on the average working employee.
So Mr. Misanthrope, what would you do if you were in charge of hiring for two open positions and you had 50 applicants? Forty-eight of the applicants are going to be disappointed no matter what you do. It is your job to make the choice, and if you hire bad, incompetent workers out of some misplaced sense of pity, then you yourself are going to be out of a job and your company will eventually have to fire them anyway. I don't buy your logic and I don't see how anyone has "blood on their hands". Can you say "overly emotional"?
Some human beings have always treated each other badly, going back to cave man days. Others have treated each other with kindness and compassion, and continue to do so. I have done extensive reading on the Holocaust, certainly one of the nadirs of human cruelty on a massive scale. Even in the midst of that, however, some people risked their lives to hide and shelter potential victims.
You are hoping for the slaughter of all of us, the compassionate along with the cruel. What does that say about you? Don't like the world as it is? You have options.
As always, you speak with reason, compassion, balance and understanding.
As usual the economics forum is a great place to review the wide divide between those who are doing alright and those others, who aren't. This is the one outstanding and usually ignored aspect of any economic theory, the divide. It's been an integral part of human development since humans began to document the changes in societies. You can't read too far down the posts before it becomes evident who is on one side or the other, what's in your pocket ($) alters your view. Those who are feeling the pain of all that financial ruination of the last seven years have my sympathy, going down is something that one has to experience in order to fully realize the fact that most of what we learned with regard to economics doesn't take into account the personal grief brought about by various economic policies.
The anger that shows in so many of the posters comments is evidence of that grief, and often enough, people respond to grief with thoughts of self destruction. The other noteworthy aspect of this is the fact that American's have long associated wealth as the most important defining attribute of a person. Without money you are now descending down to the level of contempt, friends look away, and society chides the poor with the age old mantras of pulling oneself up by the bootstraps, "chin up mate", "things'll improve", "get retrained", "be sure to downsize", but, when all fails, most people just can't stomach the thought that there is little one can do now in a world changed well beyond the average persons comprehension.
This collapse of the old economy isn't simply a blast from the past, it signals the huge change that most of the world will experience at some level. In his book, The End of Work, Jeremy Rifkin laid out his view of the future of western societies and their dilemma concerning the disappearance of so much of what humans did to survive. The question now is, what are we to do with so many people who have become economically marginalized? On the face of it we are looking at the possibility of creating a kind of mega-welfare program, in fact most states are already loaded down with a rising number of their citizens looking for financial relief. This is happening at a time when the American pie is steadily shrinking and people are starting to look at their unemployed neighbors with suspicion, "are you living on MY DIME?" For myself, I can only hope that we all ask ourselves if it isn't possible to end up like those who have lost their job, friends, and ultimately their dignity.
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If he does, I'll go through his notebook and write each and every place he's applied to over the past two years, which number in the hundreds, and explain to them that due to his not being hired, he's now a dead man. Hopefully they'll not be able to sleep at night knowing that they, too, have blood on their hands. 
Blood on their hands? I don't think so.
