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And another thing, raise the minimum wage, it actually should be something like $9 or $10/hour nationwide adjusted for inflation, based on what it was in the '70s.
I understand that, but be reminded that there's a human cost to unemployment. The unemployed can't and won't just disappear. Either hire them or the government should make direct cash payments to citizens so they don't become homeless and can still feed their kids. That's actually been proposed.
That is how one becomes Greece. We need a friendlier business climate conducive to adding jobs, as we have done in prior years.
In Dec, 2006, unemployment was just 4.6 percent, with the U6 number not even double that.
Problem is, government is funded by tax receipts. No workers with earned income, no income taxes. Where is the government to get the money to pay all these unemployed people? Presumably (I don't believe it, actually), corporations moved offshore to get away from high corporate taxes. That, of course, isn't true. Corporations move offshore to employ people at 1% of what they have to pay American workers and to expand their foreign markets.
Corporations are now reporting lower earnings and the US economy is perceived to have slowed to growth of about 1.5%.
Duhhhhh!
When 22% of the working population is unemployed, eventually that will happen - at least here in the US. It will ripple to the emerging middle classes in China and elsewhere whose jobs depend on the American consumer.
But, it appears, these international corporations may soon be hoist on a petard of their own making. Americans don't buy, the Chinese economy suffers. Corporate profits flounder.
I understand that, but be reminded that there's a human cost to unemployment. The unemployed can't and won't just disappear. Either hire them or the government should make direct cash payments to citizens so they don't become homeless and can still feed their kids. That's actually been proposed.
But then people say nobody is owed a life or a living. Except them, the hypocrites saying this.
What role are employer's playing in the high unemployment rate? Surely they must be too picky and doing unrealistic and unfair things. Let's talk about their role in all of this, since many want to assume that the unemployed are always at fault.
What about incompetent and unreasonable hiring managers?
But then people say nobody is owed a life or a living. Except them, the hypocrites saying this.
Which is why I am not, and shall never, support the conservative way of thinking and voting.
And I strongly disagree that we will become Greece by simply being a little more like Sweden.
There are many thoughtful and doable proposals out there, that if applied, will END this recession, almost overnight.
Pro-business, "free market", "business-friendly" conservatives are frankly holding the economy hostage trying to force their way back into power in this country, and refusing to honestly consider them.
They are Social Darwinists and don't care if the poor and homeless die. That attitude and mindset is utterly disgusting and unacceptable, and will result in massive civil unrest (at minimum) in this country in the coming years and decades if not stopped.
People should be quite glad the Occupy Wall Street movement wasn't more violent than it was/is.
Sorry, but I am just totally, utterly angry at the direction this nation is going, and it's so unnecessary.
I believe one of Greece's main problems is a huge, non-taxed black market and a laughably low early retirement age (somewhere in the early 50's). If you thought the funding of retirement was bad here, imagine if people could retire a decade earlier. Oh, and the horrible unemployment rate in that nation doesn't help, either.
There is definitely a sense of "I've got mine, so drop dead!" in America, mostly by advocates of the Just World fallacy. They believe that everyone always gets what they deserve. Thus, if you're out of work, you "deserve it." This world-view falls apart under any serious analysis: how does a hard-worker "deserve" to be seriously wounded by a drunk driver and lose his job thanks to increased insurance costs? How does a starving child "deserve" to be born into poverty? How does a good worker "deserve" to be declared "unemployable" thanks to policies like "no unemployed need apply?"
In the end, the bootstrappers fail to understand that there are simply not enough jobs, so no matter how one shuffles around the musical chairs, you're still going to have a huge number of perfectly viable people out of work.
Employers are creating this mess for themselves:
1) Some of it is politics - they don't like the current president, despite him being another corporate tool. One can look that up online, but the guy has continued every Bail-out and money printing policy created by the previous president, and basically turned a blind eye towards every form of nonsense committed by corporations, up to and including inviting another 800,000 illegals into the nation as more cheap labor. I shudder to think what a more "business friendly" president would do... start selling off our citizens? But some companies won't hire as long as he's in office... as if we're supposed to believe they'll hire here if he leaves!
2) "No unemployed need apply" is a huge barrier to people finding jobs. There's no good way around this since the automated resume filters can just trash the applications of anyone who's out of work. This policy is insulting, sadistic, and a guaranteed way to create a permanent underclass of poor people dependent upon the government... I guess this passes the costs onto the tax payer, which is why companies don't mind doing it, despite the sheer evil and stupidity of it.
3) Absurd job qualifications. You can dig around online and easily find these - jobs where the list of "must haves" are so narrow that the only people who can meet them are those who already work at the company. Here's just one stupid example, where 25,000 people applied to a single software engineering position, and the company's resume software decided that NONE of them were "qualified:"
Nobody takes accountability for this, of course, and rarely does one run into a real leader with enough guts to challenge this insane system and demand to actually be able to interview candidates or even - gasp! - hire them.
I've run into all this nonsense in my job search: impossibly narrow requirements, being denied jobs because the employer doesn't like the unemployed, and so on. So, yeah, a lot of the problems are being created by the job creators, who often have the nerve to whine about "not be able to find qualified candidates!" Ha!
You know, I was thinking, and forgive me if this has been covered earlier, but isn't there legal recourse for people who are not hired in certain, specific situations? Is it possible for an employer to be sued in court if someone isn't hired if it can be proven that the reason was totally and completely inappropriate?
Even in "right-to-work" states employers still have a duty to follow the law, and not all of these situations can be honest "s/he wasn't the right fit".
You know, I was thinking, and forgive me if this has been covered earlier, but isn't there legal recourse for people who are not hired in certain, specific situations? Is it possible for an employer to be sued in court if someone isn't hired if it can be proven that the reason was totally and completely inappropriate?
Even in "right-to-work" states employers still have a duty to follow the law, and not all of these situations can be honest "s/he wasn't the right fit".
Not really.
1) In 1 state (New Jersey), "no unemployed need apply" is officially banned, but corporations can just come up with other BS excuses not to hire the "undesirables."
2) Unless a company flat-out states "the reason we didn't hire you is because of race/religion/age/some other protected class," there is nothing you can do about it.
Basically, while discrimination is wrong and should be illegal, it is very easy for companies to work around it and just claim, "Oh, they didn't meet our requirements," which could easily be "currently employed white guy under 30" - so long as they don't admit to that.
1) In 1 state (New Jersey), "no unemployed need apply" is officially banned, but corporations can just come up with other BS excuses not to hire the "undesirables."
2) Unless a company flat-out states "the reason we didn't hire you is because of race/religion/age/some other protected class," there is nothing you can do about it.
Basically, while discrimination is wrong and should be illegal, it is very easy for companies to work around it and just claim, "Oh, they didn't meet our requirements," which could easily be "currently employed white guy under 30" - so long as they don't admit to that.
I agree Rambler. Instead of posting "unemployed need not apply" for public view, some will just scour the resumes and ingore those that are unemployed. As if all of the unemployed don't have anything to bring to the table.
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