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I like anecdotes and personal experiences on the economy. Numbers give the overall picture, but they don't carry the flavor that stories do.
A big national professional services firm with offices in all major cities is offering early retirement to some lower level employees. If there are not enough takers, layoffs were threatened. The response seems mostly driven by fear. Now some higher level employees are worrying that they too may be laid off. Outwardly everything seems fine.
I spoke with 3 young males today who were doing a job for me. Two were white, one black. Good "kids". Intelligent. Willing to work. All high school grads but no college or vo tech as yet and none planned. They cannot afford college but don't want to take on debt for it. No direction. What they told me is they might be making a little over 12k a year at what they are doing (helpers to a heat/air business). They complained about the heavy taxes that come out of their paychecks which I guess means FICA/Medicare. They are all looking for second jobs. What happens to these guys down the road? Even if employment improves, what can they do? What will they do?
An awful lot of people are so stupid as to believe that a record low temperature somewhwre means that global warming cannot be occurring. How much progress can you make in a world like that?
The economy meanwhile very nearly collapsed as the result of cowboy capitalism and boneheaded laissez-faire oversight and regulation, but introduction of actually sane and appropriate fiscal and monetary policies in conjunction with innovative means for recapitalizing a crippled financial system had put us back on the right track, despite ceaseless partisan attempts at obstruction. Unfortunately in 2010 the obstructionists were able to take control of the House, and the pace of expansion has been slowed significantly ever since. We could and should have been much further along by now, but having to drag all these dead-weight elephants along is making it all be much more work than it should be.
Worse yet, with such a large fraction of the public caught in the clutches of the sensationalizing fear-and-emotion-mongering disinformation media, it's hard to see how a majority of sensible people from either party is going to be elected anymore. The Koch bothers could just win in the end with the rest of us just being screwed.
I spoke with 3 young males today who were doing a job for me. Two were white, one black. Good "kids". Intelligent. Willing to work. All high school grads but no college or vo tech as yet and none planned. They cannot afford college but don't want to take on debt for it. No direction. What they told me is they might be making a little over 12k a year at what they are doing (helpers to a heat/air business). They complained about the heavy taxes that come out of their paychecks which I guess means FICA/Medicare. They are all looking for second jobs. What happens to these guys down the road? Even if employment improves, what can they do? What will they do?
They are going to have to either suck it up and go to their local CC or trade school to get vocational training or get into an apprenticeship program or face an uncertain future of barely-more-than minimum wage jobs. All these people who diss going to college because of the cost, ignore the fact that there are simply fewer and fewer decent paying jobs for people without degrees/verifiable vocational skills. The days of getting a good paying, permanent job directly out of high school are over. Those young men need to realize that.
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