Discrimination Against the Unemployed

A case can be made that chronic unemployment is the biggest problem facing both the US and many other countries around the world, especially the ones in Europe who are experiencing record unemployment levels lead by Spain and Greece at about 26% which are similar to the levels experienced in the Great Depression of the 1930s. 

And as high as the levels that are posted by governments, most agree that these numbers are understated since they don’t include those who have been forced to accept part time work instead of the full time work they are seeking, or those who are underemployed, or those who have given up in despair looking for work. For those who are not in the above categories, it is safe to say that most of us know of a loved one or friend who is struggling.
 

And make no mistake about it – it is a struggle, not just monetarily but with one’s self-esteem that often can lead to depression! So with all of that these people go through, surely we wouldn’t want to subject them to discrimination on top of all of that – but unfortunately, some people do!

When I heard stories about companies who refused to accept job applications from the unemployed, I couldn’t believe it! Just a bad joke or somebody got their facts wrong, I thought. But it’s true! Check out this link.

With the average length of unemployment steadily increasing, the requirement of being presently or even recently employed disqualifies millions of perfectly qualified job seekers. A recent Paul Krugman NYT op-ed, The Jobless Trap actually sites a recent study that supports this discrimination.

[A]s William Dickens and Rand Ghayad of Northeastern University recently showed, the relationship has broken down for the long-term unemployed: a rising number of job openings doesn’t seem to do much to reduce their numbers. It’s as if employers don’t even bother looking at anyone who has been out of work for a long time. 

To test this hypothesis, Mr. Ghayad then did an experiment, sending out résumés describing the qualifications and employment history of 4,800 fictitious workers. Who got called back? The answer was that workers who reported having been unemployed for six months or more got very few callbacks, even when all their other qualifications were better than those of workers who did attract employer interest.

So we are indeed creating a permanent class of jobless Americans.

It seems to me that someone who has been out of a job longer is going to be more motivated to perform well once they are rehired. But I guess I don’t have the mindset of the geniuses who run HR departments who equate long term unemployment with being lazy or just damaged goods because nobody else wanted to hire them.

Such a policy is not only stupid, but is downright cruel! If I for example had food to share, refusing to share it with the hungriest would obviously be considered to be cruel. But since most of us need a job to get food, is denying a job to a qualified applicant just because he or she has been out of work for too long any different?

Most of us would never do something this cruel to others because we know that the same situation could befall us and wouldn’t want to suffer in the same way. But there are enough others for whom empathy is not a strong point. Maybe they feel that those who have lost their jobs just aren’t as smart or well educated or hard working and that it couldn’t happen to them. In today’s miserable economy, that is little more than a denial of reality!

But wait, there’s more! For those who have been unemployed long enough to where they have been unable to keep up with bills, companies are now discriminating against job applicants based on credit histories.

About 60 percent of employers use credit checks to screen applicants, even though research has shown that people with damaged credit are not automatically poor job risks. Besides, the credit agencies that compile and sell records on about 200 million Americans make mistakes.

But the biggest elephant in the room may well be age discrimination. As someone who was unemployed and on the wrong side of 50, friends were telling me that this would work against me. I didn’t believe them. But after endless rejections for jobs that I was eminently qualified for and then reading this article in Fortune, 50 and Fired the anvil that fell on my head finally got my attention.

Getting fired during your peak earning years has always been scary. You'd scramble for a few months, but you'd find something. Today it's different. Get fired and you can scramble for years--and still find nothing. Welcome to the cold new world of the prematurely, involuntarily retired.

What makes this more alarming is that this article was written back in 2005, well before the Great Recession that started in 2008. So for those of us who are older, out of work, and falling behind in paying bills – we have little more than to hope for a miracle. It shouldn’t be this way. Many of us have so much to give – but we have been relegated to the scrap heap!

While some say that we should have laws that address these forms of discrimination, the truth is that such laws are for the most part unenforceable because it is difficult to prove intent. We presently have laws in the US that make age discrimination illegal but especially with the understaffing of government enforcement agencies that should serve as a watchdog, offending companies know they have little to fear.

Stripping this all to its essentials, what we have is too many qualified workers seeking far too few available jobs. When this happens, employers can become more and more selective to where things get out of hand. The only way this will change is when there are an adequate number of jobs that need to be filled which will require employers to be more reasonable with their requirements.

Experience has shown that increased government spending to create more jobs has worked, most notably the spending on World War II that effectively ended the Great Depression. Of course we don’t need another war – we have a decaying infrastructure that needs to be repaired and upgraded. And as cited at the beginning, the present unemployment woes of much of Europe have shown that decreasing government spending to try and balance budgets have made things far worse for them.

So which path will it be for the US? We can continue to follow the path of disaster that Europe is following but now even they are starting to reconsider the notion that cutting government spending will create jobs instead of destroying them. In the US, we have the land of the sequester where the debate seems to be little more than how much to cut rather than if we should cut.

It was comedian Stephen Colbert who recently commented in his best mock serious tone that "We have to keep cutting the government budget and laying off people until those people get jobs." While this was meant to be funny, what is sad is that too many people in the position of power and wealth really believe this!

Our Compassion Deficit

Same sex marriage has become a hot news item with the recent cases heard by the US Supreme Court over the issue.  And although there has been a recent parade of Democratic politicians announcing their support of same sex marriage, those on the Republican side have been standing their ground in opposing it. 

So it was noteworthy when Ohio Republican Senator Rob Portman announced that he now backs same sex marriage after learning that his son is gay. 

“It allowed me to think of this issue from a new perspective, and that’s of a dad who loves his son a lot and wants him to have the same opportunities that his brother and sister would have — to have a relationship like Jane and I have had for over 26 years.”

It is nice that he is so considerate of gay people having the same opportunities as straight people – once he learned that his son was gay.  A similar observation can be made of former VP Dick Cheney who although he is as conservative as they come, supported same sex marriage after one of his daughters became a gay rights activist.  Both can be said to have had both an empathy and a compassion deficit.

So what exactly are these?  The best way to describe empathy is the ability to feel the emotional pain that others are feeling while compassion entails also wanting to do something to relieve that pain. 

Of course it is easy to feel empathy or compassion for those who are much like us.  What is more important is whether we have these qualities when dealing with those who are different from us.  For example, when retiring Georgia Republican Senator Saxby Chambliss was asked whether he would he would follow Portman’s lead on same sex marriage, he said "I'm not gay. So I'm not going to marry one."  So for those who find this attitude to be acceptable, perhaps it would be appropriate to ask them if they are against equal rights for women or minorities if they themselves don’t fall in those categories?

There’s a lot of this going around in America.  For example, many of the well-to-do seem to have a dismissive attitude towards those who need to rely on our shrinking safety net programs to keep their heads above water.  According to a new documentary film A Place at the Table... 

50 million people in the U.S.- one in four children - don’t know where their next meal is coming from, despite our having the means to provide nutritious, affordable food for all Americans. 

How would these people feel if they or a close friend or loved one had to struggle for their next meal?

America is the only industrialized nation in the world that does not provide universal health coverage for its citizens, leaving as many as 50 million people without health insurance – a serious problem that “Obamacare” has been created to address.

While financial hardship including bankruptcies hit those without health insurance especially hard, what is less well known is that despite former presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s ignorance on the subject, people do die for lack of health insurance in America.  The estimated number is about 44,000 annually or about 120 every day.  But instead of addressing this problem, we have people like Michele Bachmann whose latest crazy rant is that Obamacare "kills".

It is tragic enough to lose a friend or loved one prematurely due to an incurable illness.  My question to Bachmann and others of a like mind would be this:  How would you feel about losing a friend or loved one prematurely due to a curable illness – a death that could have been prevented by having adequate health insurance?

So what’s going on here?  Is this lack of empathy and compassion a reflection of an uncaring attitude of many towards their fellow man?  Or is it just a growing disconnect between the haves and have nots in our society?  I say it’s both.

In the last thirty years, there has been a steady conservative narrative that those who are struggling on the bottom rungs of the economic ladder are there because of bad choices or laziness.  And in their minds, one of the best ways to shrink the size of government is to quit supporting those they feel are undeserving.  While there are always a few who will fit this description, it ignores the fact that so many more people have fallen on hard times through no fault of their own from the worst recession we have suffered since the Great Depression.

But what makes this narrative so pervasive is the growing income and wealth gap between the haves and have nots.  When this happens, those who have more affluent lives become more isolated and detached from those who are struggling to make do. When the in-between middle class starts to shrink as it is doing now, the upper and lower classes become more separated and polarized so the well-to-do seldom or never have the occasion to see or experience what those in the lower classes are going through.

The Great Depression gave us these photos of people in soup lines waiting for a meal which made poverty awfully difficult to ignore back then.  Although soup lines have mostly disappeared, we do have a growing number of food banks that are trying to keep up with the growing number of people who need them.  But again, those who live in affluent areas may have never seen a food bank let alone the people waiting there for food.

A more up-to-date example concerns food stamps.  It used to be that seeing people in supermarket checkout lines redeem food stamps made it obvious how many people were struggling to afford enough to eat.  But with these benefits now taking the form of debit cards, it is less obvious who in the checkout line is in need of government assistance to make ends meet.

To support all of this, there are studies of how wealth reduces compassion. 

Who is more likely to lie, cheat, and steal—the poor person or the rich one? It’s temping to think that the wealthier you are, the more likely you are to act fairly. After all, if you already have enough for yourself, it’s easier to think about what others may need. But research suggests the opposite is true: as people climb the social ladder, their compassionate feelings towards other people decline. 

It doesn’t help when the average net worth of those in Congress is close to a million dollars.  This is the same Congress where a number of its members back in January, opposed Hurricane Sandy relief after supporting disaster relief for their own states.

The biggest irony is that the US with its safety net in tatters is a more strongly religious country than most while the countries that make up Scandinavia which are renowned for how well they take care of their people from womb to tomb are largely secular.

Why this is so would require a whole separate discussion, but perhaps the religious community with its emphasis on compassion towards those who are less fortunate may be the key to helping us get our house in order.  This trend has already started with prominent faith leaders condemning Rep. Paul Ryan's budget plans because of the added misery they would impose on the poor to the benefit of the rich.

This is a good start, but it doesn’t go far enough.  Instead of focusing on the all-too-real problems of hunger and poverty in America, too many church groups tend to focus narrowly on issues like abortion or gay rights to determine whom they will support.  In addition, many anti-government people who do feel compassion for those less well off believe it is solely the function of charity and not government to address these problems.  But while charity is a wonderful thing, the scope of the problem is so large that charities can only scratch the surface.

I would like to conclude with this statement by Sister Simone Campbell who has achieved a level of fame as the leader of her traveling Nuns on the Bus tour preaching the gospel of compassion in response to Rep. Ryan’s latest budget plan. 

“We had already strongly protested his budget cuts since it was clear they would harm already struggling families. During our journey we listened to the personal stories of those families and our hearts were deeply touched. Today we are convinced more than ever that the voices of the people must be heard and that Rep. Ryan’s cuts to vital human-needs programs to benefit the wealthy must be defeated. We are a nation for the 100 percent, and his budget cuts are both immoral and counter to our values.”

America's Real Moochers

Happy Sequester Day!  For those living in a cave, the sequester here in the US is a large indiscriminate slashing of government spending designed to be a poison pill that was so terrible that both Democrats (wanting to prevent large non-military cuts) and Republicans (wanting to prevent large military cuts) would be motivated to come to an agreement on revenues and spending.

But as it turned out, this was all a miscalculation.  While Republicans have been traditionally in favor of spending cuts, they have normally treated military spending as a sacred cow, never to be touched.  But increasingly, there are more Republicans in Congress who are so anti-spending that they don’t care anymore about even cutting military spending.

So the result was largely Republican indifference about negotiating a deal before the March 1 deadline, and some were even cheering Speaker Boehner for allowing the sequester to happen by refusing to deal with President Obama.

What is behind this impasse?  In short, it is about the power of corporate America over our government.  In the recent debt ceiling agreement at the beginning of the year, the president got the Republicans to finally agree to let the Bush tax cuts expire for those making over $400,000 a year.  But while that is a good start, the government is losing vast amounts of revenue from what can only be described as corporate welfare – subsidies to hugely profitable industries like oil and big agriculture along with tax loopholes that allow very profitable companies to pay little or no income tax.

The president wants to address the corporate part of the revenue equation in this round while the Republicans desperately want to keep the corporate subsidies and loopholes intact, arguing that the expiration of the Bush tax cuts counts as a tax hike and that no others will be considered.  

So how do large multinational corporations manage to make profits that can be in the billions while often completely avoiding paying any taxes?  One major way is for these multinationals to establish subsidiaries in havens for low taxes such as the Cayman Islands.  Through an abusive practice called transfer mispricing, corporations can manipulate where they report most of their profits for tax purposes.  So to take advantage, an artificially high percentage of profits are reported as being made in the tax haven countries while a low percentage is reported for US tax purposes – and thus little or no taxes on those profits.  The interested reader can check out the documentary We're Not Broke available on hulu, Netflix, or for free in this link which offers an excellent background on these practices that the average viewer can understand.  And Democrats, including the president are not spared from criticism.

Ah, but there’s only one problem from the corporations’ standpoint.  While they have their cake, they can’t quite eat it – yet.  Profits reported as being made in a foreign country cannot be brought into the US until their US tax obligation is satisfied.  It has been estimated that as much as a trillion dollars is being stockpiled overseas which does nothing to address our deficits or in general, help our economy.  So what to do?  Simple. Congress just asks for a corporate tax holiday to allow this money to come home either tax free or at greatly reduced tax rates under the guise of this money being able to help the economy.  But we’ve been there and done that! 

Goaded by battalions of corporate lobbyists, members of Congress are working to give a select group of U.S. multinational firms like Apple, Oracle and Pfizer a lavish tax break on a trillion dollars stashed offshore.

The avowed goal is to generate jobs and investment, but the offshore tax holiday was tried before, in 2004, and the lion’s share of the benefits went not to unemployed workers and their families, but to corporate shareholders and executives.

There is a lot of brainwashing of America by and on behalf of corporate America.  There is the cry that “America is Broke” so we are told that to fix the economy, we are forced to cut government spending (also known as austerity) while ignoring the significant amount of additional tax revenue available from just making corporations pay their fair share of taxes.  How much is a ‘fair share’ is subject to debate, but certainly at or near zero is clearly unfair. 

And then there is the ultimate big lie “We don’t have a revenue problem, we have a spending problem.” which ignores that much of our present deficit is due to the Bush tax cut giveaways to the wealthy with the result that individual tax rates in the US have been at or near historic lows.  And while the US statutory corporate tax rate of 35% is among the highest in the world, the largest corporations pay an effective tax rate (after deductions and loopholes) that is among the lowest in the world.

So how much will the sequester hurt America?  Some say a lot, others say not so much.  But there is now at least some agreement on both sides of the aisle that cutting government spending will result in the loss of jobs rather than the gain of jobs.  So why would corporate America favor a policy of austerity when the result has been demonstrated in Europe to be a disaster for those who have tried it?  Are these people just ignorant of basic economic principles?  Or do they have an agenda that benefits their self-interest at the expense of others.  After reading the following comment to an op-ed on European austerity by NYT reader Jeff Anderson-Lee, I just wished that I had written this. 

If austerity appears to be the correct answer to some, then what is their goal? Certainly not the recovery of the general economy. The time is long passed to give them a pass on simply being ill-informed, but rather ill-intentioned. Even many Republican governors are now expressing fear over the potential negative economic effects of the forthcoming "sequestration" in the USA. So they are not unaware.

Which means they must be desiring the outcomes: A poor economy provides cover for asking for tax-cuts for "job-creators", for increased "corporate-welfare", for cuts to social programs, for more "right-to-work" laws, for practically free overnight funds from the Fed to the banks, for opportunities to "privatize" government services in the name of "efficiency", and so on. Productivity is up as salaried workers put in unpaid overtime out of fear for their jobs. Wage demands are lowered and wage increases forgone because of "tough economic times" and high-unemployment, yet somehow many large corporations are having record profits (and record executive compensation).

No. The heads of Europe are not calling for austerity out of ignorance, but rather malice.

So we have a situation where because of the wealthy and large corporate interests being able to avoid taxes so skillfully, those at the middle and bottom of the economic food chain have to pay the price by way of cuts in their safety net along with other vital functions such as education, police and fire fighting.  In effect, the middle and lower classes are subsidizing the rich.

To add insult to injury, because of this depressed economy, many companies while making handsome profits that benefit those at the top, are taking advantage of downward pressure on wages so that many of the working poor have to resort to government assistance to have enough money to live on and/or secure some form of health insurance.  This is not only unfair because this is another subsidy for corporations, but when more people are put out of work (no longer paying taxes) and need more help from government safety net programs, the deficit usually increases.

There is the argument that corporations are the ‘makers’ and that those at middle and bottom who need help to stay afloat in this miserable economy are the ‘takers’ or for the Ayn Rand devotees like Paul Ryan are ‘moochers’.  They argue that corporations exist to make as much profit as possible while paying as little in tax as possible.  So what’s the harm in that?  This overlooks that those who gain their wealth do so because they benefit from a country that has allowed them the opportunity to get to where they are.  They benefit from publicly funded education to give them workers along with the infrastructure and other vital taxpayer funded services too numerous to mention that many of us take for granted.

Taxes are the dues we must pay to keep our government and our society running properly.  When corporations and the wealthiest among us don’t pay their fair share of taxes while calling others who must sacrifice because of their greed, moochers, they need to look in the mirror to find the real moochers!  

The Pope Resigns After All

With the sudden, surprise announcement of the Pope resigning, I thought it would be worthwhile to revisit a previous posting of mine from almost 3 years ago, Will the Pope Resign? which I hope you will check out.

Back then, despite this not happening for almost 600 years, I was convinced that he would eventually resign because of the ever increasing toll that the child molesting scandals have taken on the church.  Of particular interest to me was the paragraph near the end of the posting on how the legal bookmakers with their ever shortening odds really thought it could happen.  Although the link on the current odds of the Pope resigning is no longer there, at the time of this posting, there are still a number of other categories under the amusing heading of “Pope Betting” such as on the future Pope’s papal name, age, and even how long it will take to pick a successor.

But I thought that it would happen sooner than 3 years later.  If you look in the previous posting, you will find plenty to support that the former Cardinal Ratzinger had his fingerprints all over the ongoing scandal.  So why now and not back then?  While at this time, we don’t know, I have my own guess on this that I would like to share with you.

A few nights ago, I decided to watch the recently debuted HBO documentary, Mea Maxima Culpa: Silence in the House of God which at the time of this posting is available on-demand to HBO subscribers.  It is incredibly compelling viewing no matter what one's faith (or lack of faith) is.

The main story focuses on some now middle-aged deaf men with both sadness and anger, recounting their days when they were molested by Lawrence Murphy, a charismatic Milwaukee priest who was in charge of their school.   Even more despicable, according to the movie, deaf children were a favorite target of molesters since they couldn’t hear the priest approaching them.  In addition, the priests knew it was especially difficult for these children to communicate with their parents about their situation, especially the ones who were not fluent in American Sign Language, the way these children are taught to communicate.

But the online synopsis has this incredible double-barreled indictment of both Benedict XVI and his predecessor, John Paul II. 

In addition to the Murphy case, MEA MAXIMA CULPA: SILENCE IN THE HOUSE OF GOD spotlights similar sex abuse cases in Ireland and Italy, and highlights the horrific actions of Marcial Maciel Degollado, a prominent church fundraiser and ruthless sex criminal beloved by Pope John Paul II. The film also reveals that in 2001, Cardinal Ratzinger – now His Holiness, Benedict the 16th – ordered that every sex abuse case involving a minor come through his desk, essentially establishing him as the most knowledgeable person in the world regarding priestly sexual abuse of minors.

While there has been more than ample ‘smoking gun’ evidence about the Pope’s involvement in the scandal, this documentary reveals documents from some of the secret Vatican archives that points the finger squarely at the Pope.

Although the film debuted in September, 2012 and had a limited release this November (which the Vatican must have surely viewed), the recent release on HBO is exposing this to a much larger audience.  And if other more mainstream media outlets follow-up on this story, the Pope’s situation at the top could well have become untenable – and thus the real reason why I think he decided to resign now.

So what now?  Some interesting questions remain.  The Pope has been immune from lawsuits since the Vatican is a sovereign state separate from Italy (something the documentary asserts was a cozy arrangement between Mussolini and the Vatican.)   So if he is no longer Pope and lives outside the Vatican, even temporarily, is he then vulnerable to lawsuits or maybe even prosecution?

And will he make some changes in the church during his last days in power to perhaps someday help divorce it once and for all from this scandal?  A recent NYT op-ed The Pope Can Still Right the Wrongs suggests that the Pope should force out the dean of the College of Cardinals “the man who, more than any other, embodies the misuse of power that has corrupted the church hierarchy.”

But more important, a release of all of the secret Vatican documents pertaining to all of the molestation complaints through the years would be a powerful disinfectant that would help clear the air.  Yes, there is still some denial by some over all of this.  But that will never completely go away.   And there have been some apologies by the church and in some cases by the Pope personally.  But to many, these apologies ring hollow because they focus more on the anger over those doing the terrible wrongs instead of the young victims whose lives have been scarred or even ruined.  More than anything else, this is about them!

It's About the Jobs

The New York Times wrote that President Obama’s second Inaugural Address Speech Reveals an Evolved and Unapologetic President.  Indeed it did.  Instead of his usual words that have been conscientiously chosen to appeal to a centrist audience without coming across as too liberal, this speech had a lot of red meat to appeal to liberals. 

Included were references to gay rights, climate change, and the growing gap between the haves and have-nots as eloquently stated in his address. 

For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class.

But what about jobs?  Or more specifically, the lack of them.  There are so many priorities that beg for the president’s attention.  Making things worse is that he only has a limited time to accomplish his goals before his lame duck status makes any progress even harder to come by.  As laudable as the other issues to address are, I believe that unemployment should be at the top of the list and not just something that was remarked about in passing in the address.

In President Obama’s first term, he spent most of his political capital on reforming health care.  There are many who second guessed him saying that the emphasis should have been on jobs,  jobs, and jobs.  But not me.  For as important as jobs are, tens of millions in the US were without health insurance, and tens of thousands each year were dying from lack of health insurance, despite Mitt Romney's ignorance on the subject.      

Fortunately, Obamacare was passed to help address this crisis. But it’s far from perfect.  For many on the left, it was a half-assed compromise to appease the private health insurance industry.  Instead of the for-profit insurance industry sucking money out of the health care system, the so-called “single payer” or “Medicare for all” system successfully used by most of the industrialized world would result in more efficiency and since health care costs are driving much of the deficit, would help to reduce it.

But back to our lack of jobs crisis.  And make no mistake about it – it is a crisis!  Back when the unemployment rate was around 10%, everybody was concerned about it.  When it got down to near 8%, there was some relief but the Republicans made an issue about it being continuously over 8% under President Obama.  But when it slipped just under 8%, the Republicans lost an issue to contest and the Democrats could assure everybody that we were in a recovery.  So it seems that nobody in charge really cares anymore.

But there are so many people who are still really hurting!  It’s easy to say that we are recovering because of the relatively lower unemployment rate.  But most people agree that the numbers underestimate the suffering that’s going on.  Those who cannot find full time work but have accepted part time work along with those who have accepted jobs that pay far less than their previous jobs aren’t counted among the unemployed.  And neither are those who have dropped out of the job market because they gave up looking.

What really distracts us from trying to solve this crisis is the insistence by some that there are indeed plenty of jobs and if enough people would just get an adequate education they would then find work.  One of the biggest offenders in my mind is NYT op-ed columnist Thomas Friedman with this from his latest column which to his detractors, seems to be a recycling of his same tired ideas on what ails the economy and what to do about it.

How to adapt? It will require more individual initiative. We know that it will be vital to have more of the “right” education than less, that you will need to develop skills that are complementary to technology rather than ones that can be easily replaced by it and that we need everyone to be innovating new products and services to employ the people who are being liberated from routine work by automation and software. The winners won’t just be those with more I.Q. It will also be those with more P.Q. (passion quotient) and C.Q. (curiosity quotient) to leverage all the new digital tools to not just find a job, but to invent one or reinvent one, and to not just learn but to relearn for a lifetime.

Liberal economist Dean Baker offered this rebuttal to Friedman.

Yeah, it would be great if people had more passion, curiosity and learned more, but it’s not clear that this would affect wages much for the 14.9 million people working in retail, the 10 million people employed in restaurants and the 1.8 million employed in hotels. In other words, even in Friedman’s hyper connected world, a very high percentage of jobs still do not offer many opportunities for passion, curiosity, and learning. 

But even ignoring the most obvious argument that not all of us can be above average, if there are so many jobs that go wanting because there aren't enough of us with the “right” education, why aren't wages rising instead of going down or stagnating? It stands to reason that if wages and job opportunities increase in a particular sector, this will attract more students to fill the slack.  On the other hand, if wages and job opportunities are decreasing, fewer students will be attracted which is what is happening now with law schools.

Indeed many young college graduates are finding out the hard way that a degree can often be a ticket to longtime crushing debt from student loans because of a lack of professional jobs that earn enough of a salary to enable entry into the middle class. And student loans are not dischargeable through bankruptcy.

The problem is that there simply aren't enough jobs for qualified people who want them.  And while there are other causes like outsourcing and automation, most economists feel that the main cause of the job shortage is simply a lack of consumer demand for products and services.  If companies already have the manpower and capacity to meet all of their present (reduced) level of demand, why would it make any sense at all for them to hire and expand?  

What makes things scary is that this can all feed on itself to make things progressively worse.  Lack of consumer demand leads to more layoffs – which leads to less demand because fewer people have money to spend.  Liberal economist Paul Krugman likes to make the point that “Your spending is my income and my spending is your income.”  So if everybody stops spending at the same time, the economy grinds to a halt.

If one accepts the above, then the question is one of how to revive demand (spending) to get the economy moving again and people working.  Keynesian economic theory (which is considered to be mainstream except by those on the hard right) says that government can and must provide the missing demand by additional government spending on things we need anyway like infrastructure improvements.  These so-called stimulus programs have been used by presidents of both parties when a slow performing economy demanded it.  The money pumped into the economy creates work along with paychecks that are used to spend money that creates demand for other products and in the process, more jobs.

And this theory has been shown to work in practice.  When President Obama inherited an economy in free fall that was shedding a massive number of jobs, he resorted to a stimulus that a consensus of economists agreed saved us from a second Great Depression.  And when speaking of the first Great Depression, it was a massive increase in government spending to fight WWII that brought us out of that.

The only real problem with all of this is that it is counter intuitive.  Increased government spending while already running a deficit seems like the wrong way out.  After all, if we run our home budgets through deficit spending for too long of a time, we would eventually go under.  But a government economy is far different than a home budget since it can borrow or print money to temporarily finance its deficits until the economy recovers.   (This is a huge advantage that the US has over a struggling country like Greece that cannot print money since it is on the euro instead of its own currency.)

But won’t all of this bring about inflation?  In a healthy economy, pumping in all of this extra money would result in too many dollars chasing too few goods which raises prices – that’s inflation.  But in this sick economy, the problem is the opposite one – not enough dollars are chasing the amount of goods we are already producing.  So the economy cannot produce enough jobs to employ everybody without some spending help from the government to create more demand.

But just as important, the converse is also true – cutting government spending (austerity) in a sick economy eliminates jobs which in turn creates more unemployment.  More unemployment means fewer tax receipts which usually makes a deficit worse!  So while there are plenty of examples of how government stimulus helps economies, the experience with austerity in Europe has been miserable as described in this NYT Paul Krugman op-ed.

So unfortunately, the discussion between the president and Congress is not about addressing unemployment by appropriately increasing government spending, but is instead about how much and where to cut government spending to try and balance the budget – which will only make unemployment worse like what has happened in Europe.

A long term shortage of jobs has been disastrous for so many people. Not being able to find a job that pays the bills not only creates financial hardship but is a tremendous waste of talent that could be put to beneficial use.  In addition, a shortage of jobs creates a lot of downward pressure on the wages of those who are employed.  With so little worker leverage over wages, it is no wonder that most of the productivity gains have resulted in much more wealth for those at the top of the economic food chain – while at the same time US poverty rates continue to climb. 

Perhaps most important, education has always been the most reliable path to upward mobility.  But if there aren't enough jobs for everybody, more education (assuming it is affordable) often just doesn't provide the same opportunities for the have-nots to escape their lot in life.  So much for the land of opportunity.

Before concluding, I wanted to suggest another effective way to increase demand in our economy.  Many of our problems are also the result of a so-called housing bubble that when if finally burst, put many homeowners in desperate financial straits – some being "underwater" which means that they owe more on their mortgages than what the home is currently worth.  Needless to say, these people are unable to contribute much demand to our economy. 

If the government were to force the banks to renegotiate the principal on these loans with an incentive that allows the banks to share in any appreciation of the house, these people would then be able to live more normal lives and help stimulate the economy by their added demand for goods and services.  If we were willing to bail out the banks that caused a lot of this mess to begin with so they could continue to pay out their large bonuses, why not also help the homeowners in need?

So the big negotiations over what spending will be cut to try and satisfy incessant demands for a balanced budget are coming up soon.  We can only hope that the president and his allies in Congress will see the light and conclude like Paul Krugman does in his op-ed:

It’s time to put the deficit obsession aside and get back to dealing with the real problem -  namely, unacceptably high unemployment.

Indeed, it really is about the jobs!

The Brainwashing of America

I think Wikipedia sums it up the best.

Mind control (also known as brainwashing) 

refers to a process in which a group or individual "systematically uses unethically manipulative methods to persuade others to conform to the wishes of the manipulator(s), often to the detriment of the person being manipulated"

The “unethically manipulative methods” is important here.  There is certainly nothing wrong in itself with trying to persuade others to agree with us which is a part of our normal interactions with others.

And furthermore, there is nothing wrong with a corporation trying to persuade us to say, buy its product or even agree with its positions on political issues – as long as they are up front about who is delivering the message!  And there’s the rub!

If for example, the health insurance industry openly identified themselves as part of an ad campaign about how Obamacare was bad for America, the viewer could not only consider the content of the message but who was delivering it.  Do they have a commercial axe to grind?  If so, then there is some reason for healthy skepticism and questioning before deciding whether to believe what we are hearing.

But what if the same anti-Obamacare message came from an ordinary sounding group called Americans for Prosperity.  That sounds a lot less commercial.  These are probably ordinary people just like you and me.  And then there are those “grass roots” street rallies against health insurance reform.  Hey, if ordinary people out in the street feel this way, maybe I should too!  And to clinch it all, there are all of those experts who appear on TV who work in those ”think tanks”.  You have to be smart to work in a think tank, so whatever they are saying, I’m buying it!

Of course, things are not always as they appear.  Americans for Prosperity is a conservative political advocacy group founded and heavily funded by the billionaire Koch Brothers who are relentlessly opposed to anything they feel is “big government” which has also led to their support of the Tea Party (more on that below).

And while many of the street protesters are indeed ordinary people who believe in their cause, AFP and other groups have resorted to busing people from elsewhere and furnishing them with picket signs to add more visual impact to their rallies when they are covered by the media.  So instead of these rallies being truly grass roots, they are often labeled with the derisive term Astroturfing.

Astroturfing refers to political, advertising or public relations campaigns that are designed to mask the sponsors of the message to give the appearance of coming from a disinterested, grassroots participant. Astroturfing is intended to give the statements the credibility of an independent entity by withholding information about the source's financial connection. 

Those who are not familiar with it would find the breadth and depth of this misinformation campaign to be astounding.  I invite the reader to check out the 55 minute documentary, The Billionaires' Tea Party which you can watch in its entirety in this link.

One of the most interesting parts of the movie occurs at the 43:00 minute mark where the maker of the documentary goes undercover and attends an AFP workshop where attendees are taught and encouraged to manipulate the social media outlets with practices like finding as many conservative books and movies as possible and give them 5 star reviews while giving 1 star reviews to their liberal counterparts.  Taking the time to read or see any of them was said to be completely optional!

And what about all those pundits and think tank experts?  Many of them are financed behind the scenes by the Koch Brothers as you will see in this interesting video link from the Robert Greenwald documentary Koch Brothers Exposed.  In addition to the Social Security misinformation campaign in the video link, the Kochs who own a giant fossil fuel energy company have waged a similar behind the scenes campaign to debunk the scientific findings that climate change is real and man made.  And to make sure that young people are indoctrinated with their ideology, they are also providing major funding to universities across the country in exchange for control over their faculties and curriculum.

When talking about the TV part of the brainwashing campaign, it is impossible not to point a finger at Fox News which for many on the political right is the only source of information they trust. That Fox has a Republican/conservative agenda is not a problem in itself.  The problem is that they offer themselves as “News” along with “Fair and Balanced” which implies that they are journalists instead of propagandists.  The argument has been made that the evening opinion shows with Sean Hannity and Bill O’Reilly are different than the straight news shows offered at other times of the day.  The interested reader is invited to check out another Robert Greenwald documentary Outfoxed: Rupert Murdoch's War on Journalism which can be seen in its entirety in this link or in an interesting collection of clips in this link.  It shows the extreme top down control exerted on all of Fox’s content.

But as unfavorable to Fox as this documentary may be, it was released back in July, 2004 when George W. Bush, a Republican was president.  So it doesn’t even include the later emergence of Barack Obama who has been a target of vicious attacks on Fox along with the Tea Party whom Fox not only covered but actively promoted.  So much for journalistic credentials!

And while those like Newt Gingrich complain about the “liberal media”, more concentrated ownership of media outlets including radio stations owned by Clear Channel Communications, home of Limbaugh, Hannity, and Beck along with TV stations owned by Sinclair Broadcast Group which have engaged in controversial programming practices to promote a conservative agenda, have made it hard to find liberal outlets especially on the radio to provide some sort of balance.

But while big business, money and media certainly deserve their criticism, organized religion may indeed be the biggest offender when it comes to the political brainwashing of its supporters. While those in the more liberal and urban Blue States tend to be more secular, the more conservative and rural Red States are home to more deeply religious people who have been repeatedly lectured by their churches to never even consider voting for someone unless they are pro-life and anti-gay.  But liberal critics like Thomas Frank, author of What's the Matter with Kansas? makes what I believe is a convincing argument that these people are being duped into voting against their own economic self-interest. Or going back to our original definition of brainwashing, “to the detriment of the person being manipulated.”

So what’s the big difference between people who are persuaded and those who have been brainwashed?  Unlike others, those who have been brainwashed can find it nearly impossible to even find legitimacy in opposing viewpoints or the people who hold them.  Indeed, many of those on the far right who strongly oppose President Obama portray him as un-American and perhaps not even born here. 

And worse yet, not accepting a person and/or his views as being legitimate makes compromise difficult if not impossible.  Indeed, many of those in the Tea Party Caucus of the House of Representatives are proud of their total refusal to compromise with anybody – including those in their own party!  While this is something that may win elections, it makes it almost impossible to effectively govern in a democracy – as the Congressional gridlocks over the Debt Ceiling and Fiscal Cliff have demonstrated.

Normally in a democratic system, there is a mechanism to keep such extremist behavior in check.  When a legislator becomes too extreme like those in the Tea Party who vow to bring government to a halt instead of governing, enough people get fed up with that behavior and the person is voted out.  But because of a dubious political practice called gerrymandering, many of the Tea Party obstructionists in the House have had their districts redrawn so that most of their constituents are also like-minded obstructionists.  So for those in these districts who dare think about compromise with the ‘socialists’, there may be hell to pay in the form of a primary challenger who will promise to be even more intransigent!

But there is an antidote to brainwashing and that is critical thinking!  For the interested reader, I offer a previous posting The Importance of Critical Thinking where like in this posting, I take the Tea Party to task for its lack of critical thinking.

In the interest of critical thinking, it is right for the reader to question why my wrath on this subject is aimed at conservatives.  Honesty requires me to admit that I do have a liberal viewpoint of the world.  But in my defense, my beliefs are a product of being inquisitive and trying to unearth the truth as best as I can.  And while nobody is right all the time, my viewpoints are at least well thought out and without a hidden agenda.

Conservatives by their nature are more likely to adhere to authoritarian thinking.  If say, their preacher or even their favorite commentators say it’s so, it must be true!  And if a viewpoint comes from someone on the liberal side, it is automatically rejected as false – no need to even listen to what they have say!  And while I enjoy talking to conservatives to try and understand why they see the world differently from me, all too often I run into the frustration of talking to those who not only have their own opinions but their own facts.  When someone bases many of their strongly held opinions on what can be objectively proven as false, that is a pretty sure sign of  brainwashing.

So what can be done to help a polarized US whose government has largely become dysfunctional?  One effective political fix would be to have districts redrawn by nonpartisan committees so candidates from both sides of the political spectrum will have a fair chance to prevail in all of our election races.  While this would help in the House, the Senate needs to modify its filibuster rules to keep blindly partisan minorities from continuously bringing its proceedings to a screeching halt.

But ultimately, it is up to us citizens to place a value on critical thinking so we don’t succumb to those who wish to alter our minds.  While it may be too late to help many of our adults, we need to promote critical thinking in our children as parents and as educators.  They need to be taught to question and understand what they hear so when they adopt a viewpoint, it will truly be their own and not just something they have been told to believe.  Indeed, it is an educated and informed electorate that makes democracy work!

The Decline of the American Workplace

This time of year, there is the annual controversy over Black Friday.  Do we need an event where shopping is taken to such a ludicrous extreme with people standing in line sometimes for days and battling over the limited number of doorbuster bargains?  A previous posting some time ago, Tragedy on Black Friday was about how people have actually been killed by stampedes through the front door.

But more recently, the controversy has been over the one-upmanship of stores opening earlier and earlier on Black Friday until inevitably, the sales have now started on Thanksgiving evening, ruining another holiday for people now forced to work that evening.  To make things worse, my nearby McDonald’s announced on their sign “OPEN THANKSGIVING & CHRISTMAS”. And more restaurant chains are following suit.

While it is good that restaurants and stores are catering to consumers, does anybody care about those who are now forced to give up their holidays?  To be sure, there are a number of places that simply cannot close for the holidays such as hospitals and police departments.  But anybody who works in such a place clearly knows ahead of time that holiday work is part of the deal.  And here, we are talking about professionals like nurses, doctors, and policemen who likely make a decent wage.  But is it fair to make those at the bottom rung at or near minimum wage also have to work holidays – especially at no additional holiday pay?  For these workers, this is the latest adding of insult to injury.

Of course, not everybody cares about working on Christmas or any other holiday.  If someone wants the extra cash from working holidays, there is nothing wrong with that.  And indeed, many places open on holidays say that they ask for volunteers before making their work schedules.  For example, when my younger son worked as a food server in a nursing home, he was offered double time to work holidays – an offer he gladly accepted!  But especially where there isn’t any extra pay for working holidays, it’s hard to believe that there are enough volunteers to run the business that day.

The disappearance of holiday days off is just part of a disturbing trend faced by many American workers.  Indeed, the US is the only advanced country without a national vacation or holiday policy.  So while most of those in say, professional and manufacturing jobs get some paid vacation and holidays, those in retailing, restaurant, and hospitality for example, are at the mercy of their employers.  At one time, this wasn’t such a big deal since many of those who worked in the latter categories did so as temporary or second income jobs.  But with the elimination of many professional and manufacturing jobs in favor of retailing and restaurant jobs, more and more Americans are forced to try and make do with these jobs to earn a basic living.

In addition:

- Those companies that do offer health insurance, usually only offer it to full-time employees.  Employees not offered full-time hours must pay for or go without health coverage unless they have a spouse who is covered.  Others who do have health benefits are sometimes forced to stay in jobs they may find to be miserable to make sure they keep that coverage.

- Some people working part-time jobs want or need a second part-time job to try and make ends meet.  But all too often, employers force their part-time employees to accept work schedules that are constantly changing which makes accommodating a second job either impractical or impossible.

But while the white-collar workers have it better than those at the bottom of the economic ladder, they are not without their woes.  Companies seeking to maximize profits are constantly downsizing and those who are left working often have to do the work that was previously done by two or more workers.  This often leads to workers forgoing part of their vacation time since they know that without someone to back them up while gone, the backlog of work they left will be there to greet them upon their return. And more workers are now being given laptop computers and/or smart phones to be able to respond to E-mails or other work requirements during their time away from the office.

But what is most disheartening is that this is just the tip of the iceberg if one is to believe the accounts in The Big Squeeze: Tough Times for the American Worker by Steven Greenhouse, the labor and workplace reporter for the New York Times.  The Amazon link here includes an online preview of the book that is interesting, if not disturbing reading about the hell that a number of workers have gone through.  And check out this link for an interesting list of Greenhouse’s most recent articles which include coverage of recent labor protests against (believe it or not!) Walmart and the fast food industry.

It is obvious that the recent financial collapse and its resultant high unemployment has made things much worse for the American workforce.  In a normal thriving economy, if a worker was mistreated or underpaid, he or she could look for and find a better opportunity elsewhere.  But with jobs so scarce, employers know they have most if not all of the leverage over their employees – and they are not shy about taking advantage of it!

But even before this recent financial collapse, wages and working conditions in America have been stagnating or even declining in the last several decades even with greatly increasing productivity and corporate profits.  Many who support unions feel that this trend started with The Strike That Busted Unions when President Reagan fired nearly 13,000 air traffic controllers and continues to this day with Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker stripping public sector unions of their collective bargaining rights.

The article concludes with this interesting observation: 

With Mr. Walker’s militant anti-union views now ascendant within the party of a onetime union leader [Reagan], with workers less able to defend their interests in the workplace than at any time since the Depression, the long-term consequences continue to unfold in ways Reagan himself could not have predicted — producing outcomes for which he never advocated.

It doesn't have to be this way.  Companies like Costco have bucked the trend in spite of investor complaints that the company could make more profits by paying its employees less. 

Good wages and benefits are why Costco has extremely low rates of turnover and theft by employees, [CEO Jim Sinegal] said. And Costco's customers, who are more affluent than other warehouse store shoppers, stay loyal because they like that low prices do not come at the workers' expense. "This is not altruistic," he said. "This is good business."

It would be nice if more companies would adopt this attitude.  But there is no sign of this happening, especially in a depressed job market.  It is nice to think that employer-employee relations can work perfectly fine in a totally unregulated environment without any governmental intervention.  But the fact is that every other industrialized country has felt the need to adopt basic labor standards for their workers while America lags far behind to the detriment of many of its workers.

Our government has done many things in the past to help the American worker from the 40 hour work week to the minimum wage and yes, the right to collectively bargain.  But in the pro-corporate, anti-worker political environment we have in many parts of the US, these gains have been severely weakened over the years and need to be addressed.  It’s nice to have low prices and robust corporate profits.  But we also need to think of the welfare of our workers to make sure our economy works for everybody and not just those at the top!