[BoomRShine]

Originally Posted by Broadrippleguy

Michigan used to have the nasty title of Highest Unemployment rate in the Midwest and even country.
Not anymore Illinois holds that title and ironically they are still run by Democrats.

How did you arrive at Illinois having the highest unemployment rate? Several states are higher:
Nevada 12.6
California 11.1
Rhode Island 10.8
Mississippi 10.4
Florida 9.9
North Carolina 9.9
Illinois 9.8

Current Unemployment Rates for States

[michmoldman]

Originally Posted by BoomRShine

How did you arrive at Illinois having the highest unemployment rate? Several states are higher:
Nevada 12.6
California 11.1
Rhode Island 10.8
Mississippi 10.4
Florida 9.9
North Carolina 9.9
Illinois 9.8

Current Unemployment Rates for States

I think he did say Midwest.

[VM1138]

Originally Posted by urbanliving99

Please give us the details on your new employer and the purported state that is teaming with so many new jobs that there is no unemployment.

There's a movie line from a lady who moved from NY to LA - and she said "everyone in LA is just as miserable as in NY. But at least in LA you can be miserable with a tan." haha

Point being - your attitude towards life/others/government/politicians won't change because you move X miles into a new state. Save the Atlas van fee.

Well, in my case, it's not just grass is greener syndrome. There are literally 0 jobs for me in Michigan, and there are way more in other states. All states have unemployment, but not all states have had their economy gutted. All this "recovery" talk about Michigan, and all I've seen are fast food joints hiring.

[northstar22]

Most of the new jobs created have been of the low-wage type.

[urbanliving99]

Please provide factual support for this statement "Most of the new jobs created have been of the low-wage type."

Then again - all of us have low wage jobs compared to Prince Fielder =)

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by northstar22

Most of the new jobs created have been of the low-wage type.

I'd say most of the new jobs created are high paying but requires education that the most of the general population does not have yet. At least not Michigan's population outside of the Auto Industry.

If many low-wage jobs were being created, then unemployment would be falling faster because there's such a high number of people who qualify for those types of jobs.

[northstar22]

Here are a couple sources to back up what I said earlier:

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/12/30/bu...pagewanted=all

Economy Creating Mostly Low-Paying Jobs - US News and World Report

New Manufacturing Jobs Feature Lower Wages | FDL News Desk

[Cal_Lotto]

Everybody likes the Michigan Rag.

The Michigan Rag - YouTube

[VM1138]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

I'd say most of the new jobs created are high paying but requires education that the most of the general population does not have yet. At least not Michigan's population outside of the Auto Industry.

If many low-wage jobs were being created, then unemployment would be falling faster because there's such a high number of people who qualify for those types of jobs.

The phenomenon of low-wage job proliferation has been going on for two decades at least. There may be a lot of high paying jobs out there, but the over-specialization required to get them is making it so that even educated people can't land those jobs. It sometimes seems like you need a very specialized graduate degree to land a job that you used to be able to get with related job experience.

At any rate, creating low-level jobs first is common, especially in our consumer-reliant economy. The trouble is you may get that job, but it's not a full time job and you can't live on it. Perhaps if the low-wage jobs offered some kind of stability it might actually help the economy, but at present these jobs won't generate tax revenue or help these people pay off their debts or even cover their living expenses.

I read a really good article from the Economist I think weeks ago that went into detail about how the modern corporation can generate tremendous wealth with a very small staff. See: Facebook, which I think employs only 2,000 people.

[Indentured Servant]

I think that it becomes an existential threat to the system when the system cannot live up to its often repeated mantra of opportunity for all those willing to play by the rules, educated themselves and those willing to work hard. I think that it serves the interest of the system to propagate the notion that failure in the system is the product of not following the rules and road map for success that is advertised. Thus, the people need to be led to believe that their failure is the result of personal causes and not systemic causes. People will seek to overturn the system if the system fails the people, but if people believe that their failure is their own fault, they will internalize the failure instead of externalizing the failure which threatens the system.

It’s a total farce that education is the solution to the problem of unemployment and poverty, because there is not enough demand in the economy for educated people, yet, that continues to be the mantra. Indeed I would go as far as to suggest that it would be in the systems interest to sabotage a certain percentage of the population to ensure that educated people do not become oversupplied in the economy because to oversupply educated people will create dissension when demand does not meet supply. Imagine millions of college educated adults each with tens of thousands of student loan debt to pay back but rather face unemployment or underemployment to the degree that they cannot get a return on their college investment. You will see such people take to the streets as they do in every country.

If college degrees are oversupplied it will reduce the value of college degrees, like the oversupply of any commodity would do. Not only will it reduce the value of the degree it would also reduce the value of going salary and wages that the knowldge set feeds occupationally. For example, if you oversupply engineers then the salary of engineers will fall overtime as workers compete for jobs by underbidding their competition in the market. The undersupply has the opposite impact in that it makes salaries artificially high. Thus, for the class of people who are educated and middle and upper class, their standard of living is directly linked to the scarcity of educated people relative to the demand for it in the economy. Hence, the poor becoming educated will thus oversupply the market and threaten the premiums these people once earned from the educated being undersupplied. If people are as SMART as they claim to be then opposition to programs to help the poor is often a conscious or subconscious attempt to preserve one's own status in absolute and relative socioeconomic metrics.

Don’t let me even start on the racial aspect of how these fallacies play out……because I could do a dissertation on it.