A bloodied few.

The rest cry about socialism.

We have only ourselves to blame. NAFTA, CAFTA and “Free Trade” have gutted the American manufacturing sector of good paying jobs with good benefits. Those jobs have been replaced with low-paying “service sector” jobs.

I never thought I would see the day when I would be agree with Joe B on the so called “free trade” agreements. But I have to say he’s right. NAFTA also destroyed a lot of Mexican farmers, who in turn came north in droves in the late 90’s seeking work.

5 weeks of vacation plus furloughs? Not a bad idea. Maybe our “recession” will make us more like Europe, where month-long vacations are expected, and where they think we are slightly crazy to run like gerbils all our working lives. Perhaps we’ll learn that more money doesn’t equal better quality of life.

Been at my job for the last 3.5 years without a raise.
We all took a pay cut in the beginning of the year.

But, as of now I am doing the work on the same level as the rest of the people on the team and not getting paid the same for it.
Asked for a raise and was told to “be happy I have a job” and that no one is getting a merit increase this year.

I would love to get laid off as of now, so I can sit on my butt and collect unemployment for a year, rather than being underpaid, overworked and undervalued.

When layoffs or other cuts occur, the less experienced, less connected, or more expensive workers will always get hit first. The numbers are showing that this impacts certain groups disparately.

The real impact of layoffs, furloughs,voluntary programs or other cost cutting measures needs to be looked at across a few dimensions:

1. Declining vs temporarily distressed but stable industries
2. Workers with transferable skills vs. niche skill sets (”hot” or obsolete) vs. limited skills
3. Management and executive ranks ($$$) vs. lower ranking ($)
4. People with deep personal emergency funds vs. no savings

Some people are better able to weather the storm and bounce back while others will have to explore new industries or lines of work.

To Joe, I don’t disagree with what you’re saying, but NAFTA doesn’t explain all the layoffs of programmers, accountants and lawyers and other knowledge workers. To caller Rick, companies will never prioritize anything other than short term profits. Period. So workers will have to manage their own careers (invest in themselves) to minimize the impact times like this.

I’m a medical transcriptionist doing work on-line over the internet. First the hospitals started sending their transcription to India, where it could be done for $0.03 a line. The hospital I work for wants quality, so they won’t do that, but recently they told the docs to start inputting the work themselves on the EMR (electronic medical record). Some days I get 1, maybe 2 dictations before the “No Work” notification appears. Fortunately I at least have a social security check each month.

The cost to society (all of us) of job loss is enormous! Dr. Brenner of Johns Hopkins University has studied the “fall-out” fromincreases in unemployment.

For EACH 1% increase in unemployment, we see the following:
* Increase in the crime rate
* Increase in serious illness and hospitalization
* Increase in suicides
* Increase in alcoholism
* Increase in family abuse
* increase in endebtedness and credit problems

All of those cause an increase in the level of services required from healthcare providers and our governments.

As a 2-time layoff “graduate” (very educational experience!), I’ve
seen the fallout – divorce, bankruptcy, lost homes, kids dropping
out of college, suicide, and even murder/suicide.

There have also been numerous studies of the negative impact on the “survivors.”

Tragic for ALL of us! Yet, CEO’s get big bonuses the same year they
launch these profit improvement programs.

Can’t we do better than this?

FractalFannie says: “To caller Rick, companies will never prioritize anything other than short term profits. Period.”
I have been trying for years to get my retirement investments into something that looks to invest in strengths, in a viable future, versus “profit,” which to me says “doctoring the numbers” and warping the better judgment of the industries invested in, in order to satisfy the various funds that undergird them.
The retirement funds offer that at great cost I can select for myself particular stocks (”not my job,” I say). But apparently our brand of capitalism has run aground, has hit the “bottom line” with a tearing crunch. Can’t some economist offer guidance/help?
To the medical transcriptionist whose work is outsourced to India, what are the possibilities of organization for her trade? I also transcribe (using digital/internet technologies), and being independent find myself competing with all the individuals I shouild be making common cause with. No raise in 20 years, health care costs going up by a factor of six in that period, and of course it is our skin that is easiest to take in this battle. Work for less or be eased out. I see us independents as a nonstop bargain since we never have vacation, retirement, sick days, or any benefit; we are never at work unless something is immediately needed. But I have to threaten to move on to something else, “investing in my own career,” as FractalFannie also puts it. I don’t like the idea that some people should have months of idleness. For me, an evening is fine. The world should need its people, or else someone Hitler-fashion will rise up and say that these or those are expendable, and people like Pope Benedict XVI, viewing the sanctity of human life, will have a huge challenge.
A ruler might say that a large underemployed, publicly supported underclass is a big advantage. The more people pushed to the edge the better. They can be manipulated easily, told to vote for x, y, z or you’ll lose your health care, your housing, your food stamps, and so there is an ever larger constituency for the greater tyrant.

The Dutch work about 35 hours a week have long vacations and maternity leaves for both parents. They are also a lot more productive then Americans as are the Germans and the French by the way. We spend a lot of time at the office doing nothing. I used to work for this start up software company doing design work and most of the days were spent in very absurd meetings with managers, we had 17 of them for a staff of about 120, which always struck me as kind of odd. Anyway every place I have ever worked has been like this. To many meetings about nothing. Most of them could have been done once a week if that.

I had one manager who hired a freelance designer while the ones on staff sat around. Go figure. This guy was not good at managing.

Anyway we work too many hour with to little retrun.
Having a month off of paid vacations (not to be taken all at once mind you) is a good idea. People can recharge their batteries. The other issue is more companies are using the economy to play games with the staff. The average wage has been stagnate in this country for about 10 years or more. We have worse health care coverage, make less money, have less rights as workers and if you speak up your told your lucky to have a job or get a better one.

Here’s another thought, you keep laying off enough people and freezing wages know one is going to buy stuff.
Given that at this point in time 70% of our economy is based on us buying stuff it would seem counter productive to keep adding people to the rank and file of the unemployed.

I think the 40-hour week is bad for human psychology and physiology. People can get a lot more done when driven by a word that came up in today’s program: morale. In my case I really really enjoy what I do and get so lost in it that I could be in Florida or Hawaii. The world disappears. I am gone-zo. Mine is a skill hard-won (many years of application) and probably serviceable for a while. I count my blessings and exercise a pace that is, for me, sustainable.
If there is a rhythm to work that is bio-compatible, as mine is, a model for it might be in the farmers. I think of one I know who indulges in watching March Madness each year, as religiously as could be. He may have to pay his bills in maple syrup in April, but he has his sense of balance.
If robots and technology make much of human labor unnecessary, I do question what people would hang around for.

In discussing the furloughs taking place in California, mention must be made that they are the result of the Governor’s and the State Legislators’ failure to reach a budget agreement, along with the recession woes. My husband is a State worker, and while he is willing to share the pain by taking the cuts, he is demoralized by the Governor’s attitude that State workers are some kind of “on the dole” baggage; there is no apology made to them, in fact quite the contrary. It’s also maddening that California state government is refusing to raise taxes on the wealthiest citizens and corporations, who have NOT been paying their fair share. If only they could be more like the woman business owner who called in at the beginning of the show – now there’s a real American hero!

In my company they took the money they got from the government (within the top 7 banks even know its a investment and holding bank) and used it to outsource jobs and creating a system to help with this. Once the first part was outsourced they laid off 2000k people Than the second part was ready to outsource they laid off another 1600 people. Both reasoning was to keep the share price up through a email from our President and the simpler work would go to india involving mutual funds and trading .

while adding twice the workload and telling use that we are still responsible in the end if the india people mess up.(often).

We had allowed the mentality of Americans to allow its companies, to short sell companies to the ground for profit,profit on the suffering of many,allow tax payers to subsidies these companies and a small very wealth group of americans and creat large enough companies to be to big to fail.

Whatever happen to anti-trust laws? or a fair wage for a fair job,

I find for the short-run globalization has seem to benefit consumers by having a race to the bottom in wages, cost, and prices, but in turn screwed U.S. workers in turn in the long run is screwing over consumers.

Talk about free trade and global economy. I just saw AL “the” Gore in a speech overseas where he is talking about, get this, a Global Government is the solution to the world’s economic problems. The call for a global currency. This is scary, hints a year are so ago about supreme court judges considering international law in some American cases may be a signal of the death of the American way. For those still true Americans who would take pay cuts to help their fellow workers, you make me proud to be an American. Hang in there!

What!?! Re: wage stickiness… Real wages have hardly increased in 3 decades, yet they trend upward because they are “sticky”?

“If robots and technology make much of human labor unnecessary, I do question what people would hang around for.”

To not work for $, but to work for knowledge, depth, human relationships would be utopia. Well worth hanging around for, in my humble. If you ever waited tables to put yourself through school, you’d know what I mean.

At one point I thought college would enable a life of “knowledge, depth, human relationships … utopia.” Decades later, I thought retirement would allow the time for “knowledge, depth, human relationships … utopia.” Suddenly that dream vanishes, and something occurs to me: Those with the privilege or the attainment to forgo plain labor lose the very perspective (if they ever had it) that enables the “knowledge, depth, human relationships … utopia.”
In short, I wouldn’t entrust my world to those not tied to the responsibilities involved in answering to others, cooperating with others, determing value, all the parts of our economy.
Of course my work might seem to you like slave labor, but for me the reason my work suits me (for now, always in flux though) is that it does offer all the good things you cite.
Our economy hardly makes this an easy goal. But I suspect many people with furloughs are casting about for updated and better ways of using their energies. It would sure help if health care were not such a drag.

But I suspect many people with furloughs are casting about for updated and better ways of using their energies. It would sure help if health care were not such a drag.

Ellen with all due respect this is a bit delusional.
People how are laid off are depressed, worried, scared.
IF they are over 40 it’s worse. I had a friend a few years ago who ended up committing suicide after he was laid off.
He was 45. He had no health insurance and no mental health people to talk to. He self medicated, and it killed him.

A lot of things will happen in the coming months as the unemployment rises, crime will go up, alcohol and drug abuse will rise. People will lose there homes and some, a lot will end up homeless.

The majority of Americans are in debt, compared to their French counter parts how have little or none. Also when you get laid off in France the government pays you 65% for two years and your company has to pay out 35%. Not sure about this, but it would be nice to 50 to 60% of benefits to keep you afloat. The thing is we have to much debt, so if you get laid off your toast. No time to sit around and think about what ways to better use ones energies.

He was 45. He had no health insurance and no mental health people to talk to. He self medicated, and it killed him.

Sorry it’s late and I’m not paying attention to my writing, it should read:

He was 45. He had no health insurance and no mental health people too talk to. He self medicated, and it killed him.

Putney, I like that you seem to disagree but make all my points for me. You and others.
I surely understand where they guy who lost his job at 45 was “at.” I was 43 when I lost the job I’d had since I graduated. I had multiple chemical sensitivities, was allergic to everything I was tested for, was developing cancer that was spreading but fairly simple to diagnose and address, but other thus far undiagnosed conditions. I paid for my own health insurance of course. I can’t believe how I put a life together. I collected $400 in workmen’s comp, but was too dysfunctional to work except in my own self-controlled environment, though I did apply (making a fool of myself all over the place).
Why I seem delusional (optimistic) about what the country is going through now is that people sometimes are laid off only a day a week, or give up a portion of pay, maybe temporarily. People sometimes have separation packages. The nation is focused on what should happen.
There is even some recognition (as in this forum) that changes in our way of life have to be made.
But I know firsthand how tough this is, how lonely, how dangerous, all that. There is a roll of the dice.

“Those with the privilege or the attainment to forgo plain labor lose the very perspective (if they ever had it) that enables the “knowledge, depth, human relationships … utopia.”
In short, I wouldn’t entrust my world to those not tied to the responsibilities involved in answering to others, cooperating with others, determing value, all the parts of our economy.”

Once technology meets all our basic needs and then some (molecular replicators), we will experience a great freedom. That doesn’t mean that that freedom will be squandered by all or that new structures won’t arise to help people adjust to a better life – a freely chosen life and a life connected to people. Not a Howard Hughes shut-in. Not an economic slave “answering to others.” While it is good to make lemonade from lemons, to find meaning in “plain labor,” I see no reason to elevate our modern way of life into a “best possible world” fiction. Over the long span of history humans have lived under extremely varied conditions and our modern way of existing will pass, as the other ways did. Hopefully, something better awaits. Technology (under our control) can provide the freedom for creating new structures to live under.

Ellen people are not finding jobs in a week or two, or a month that’s why the unemployment rate is at 10% and most likely is really somewhere in the 15 to 18% range.

With the health conditions you describe I’m surprised you were able to find insurance.

It’s clear your taking a optimistic approach here, which is fine. I’m not seeing it that way, I see that this was a huge moment for our country, one when we could have made some very significant changes to how Wall street effects our lives and also finally getting rid of our Kafkaesque health care market. It’s not going to happen, the status quo has one the day and health care is dead in the water. Wall street and the banks have made off with trillions and we Americans are sitting around in a daze hoping it will all be alright.

Sorry but it wont.

Corrected comment:

Ellen people are not finding jobs in a week or two, or a month for that matter. That’s why the unemployment rate is at 10% and most likely is really somewhere in the 15% to 18% range.

With the health conditions you describe I’m surprised you were able to find insurance.

It’s seems your taking an optimistic approach here, which is fine. I’m not seeing it that way, I see that this was a huge moment for our country, one when we could have made some very significant changes to how Wall street effects our lives and also finally getting rid of our Kafkaesque health care market. It’s not going to happen, the status quo has won the day and health care is dead in the water. Wall street and the banks have made off with trillions and we Americans are sitting around in a daze hoping it will all be all right.

Sorry but it wont.

It’s a downer to hear the skepticism, but it’s an important point of view. Use it like a weapon to get us somewhere good.
When I lost my job, sick as a dog as I was, it was 1989, and I had COBRA coverage with Blue Cross for a year, per law. After that, I found an employee benefits firm that assists the colleges in the area, and they found me an insurance company Arbella. I can’t remember the problems with it, but Massachusetts passed a law so that self-employed persons had to be offered insurance. Blue Cross didn’t come and tell me. I think the rule was that I could not have gone uncovered for any time at all in between. I forget how I figured out Blue Cross was available. I was really struggling to get my footing in my work as well as health, but somehow I landed the Blue Cross coverage, which considers me an employer and lands me enough paperwork to keep an entire department busy reading it.

To Ellen Dibble. Hi, it’s Rick from Lexington. I think statement in your July 14 AM post, “It’s a downer to hear the skepticism, but it’s an important point of view. Use it like a weapon to get us somewhere good.”, is by far the most healthy and productive way to look at it.

It took me almost 3 months after losing a job that I deeply loved just to stay out of bed for an entire day, I was so angry and depressed. In the end, what helped most studying to try and find the root causes of what happened to me and my colleagues and then how it relates to what is happening in the broader world. I have learned that in our schools and our daily lives we are systematically taught that maximizing cash profit is the primary and often the only goal for a business or, sometimes, a person. What really alarms me is that economists can’t agree on a precise, universal definition for “money”, let alone “value” (I have this on good authority from several top-notch economists at leading institutions in the Boston area) and yet they and their B-school colleagues teach that monetary profit maximization is the be-all and end-all of business and, to some extent, society. There is no concept of “enough”, unless “enough” means “maximum”. It’s no wonder that our economy is in such a mess when such ridiculous, unsustainable garbage is taught and accepted as truth.

Sure, precisely defining forms of value other than money is hard work, but lack of an agreed-upon definition for money didn’t seem to impede its universal acceptance for measuring value. I think the answer is to find ways defining other kinds of value that we can compare on a level playing field with money. And I think that work must be done by economists, who have been, in my opinion, too intellectually lazy or frightened to challenge prevailing dogma and who continue to propagate unsustainable, damaging concepts to future generations. It’s not greed we suffer from so much as it is ignorance and intellectual laziness. The answer starts with our institutions of “higher” learning.

Rick from Lexington again.

One other item some might find interesting. Tom asked during my call if the layoff “worked out” for my former company and I simply said “no”, primarily because I was eager to hear the panelists responses.

The rest of the story is actually very ironic. The purpose for laying off the R&D program was to redirect the cash to development of a shorter-term project. Although the project was of significantly lower quality, its proximity to the market, and therefore short term profit, won out over the longer term investments in the R&D programs I led. Within a few months, the shorter term project encountered a predictable and devastating setback, the company’s stock plummeted, it was de-listed from the stock market, the CEO was fired and the Wall Street analysts who covered the company proclaimed that the former R&D programs, which were by then irretrievably lost (sold to another company with all hands lost), were the only things of value in the company. There’s a lesson, and perhaps some comfort, in there somewhere.

Rick

Rick, when you answered Tom no, your being laid off had not worked for your former company I did envision just what you set forth for us. I am not surprised. I do hope managers and schools of management (you mention higher education — yes, yes, yes) will take notice of what is happening and think hard.
In my own case, I was elated to be leaving the job because for a decade I had had an office with toxic air. The fresh air vent had never been opened. Other people avoided it but nobody believed the room was making me ill. A lawyer told me it was not the responsibility of an employer to provide safe air. (Then I noticed he began providing air purifiers in his own offices.) I take some satisfaction in that since then, safe workplaces have become a requirement, I believe.
I was so happy not to have to breathe air that made me nauseous, making me sleep-bound on the spot, curling up to a fetal ball, with deteriorating health and unending headaches. Because of my relief, I did not have the depression that losing a valued job can inflict.
And I had had the decade to sort of prepare, get other work under way.
The precipitating moment came when in fixing the problem vent, in late 1988, the problem air got redirected to the entire building, or so it seemed to me, so suddenly there was no location where I could work — though the critique was that I would not work “in her office.” I wouldn’t even let them open that office door. But they refused to comply.

Ellen et al,
The sooner we start assigning hard quantitative value to the so-called “soft” items (e.g. employee morale, the work environment, intellectual vitality) and start factoring those values into the Net Present Value (NPV) calculations with which financial analysts and business managers are so slavishly devoted, the better. Financial modelers and economists cry that this is too hard. There’s only one thing that can be said to the lot of them, “Grow up, stop your whining and get to work!”

Capital markets are unstable. In the past there was no way to make them stable. But today we have computer power that can be used to make them stable.

By using the greater computer power of today we can have a much higher turn over of capital in the capital market. This higher turnover will make the market harder to game or control and the market will no longer have the unstable run ups or declines. Who can change or control the market when say 20% of the capital is trading each day?

So now that we have the compute power to provide for all these transactions that will smooth out the market how do we force people to turn over at a rate of 20% a day? Easy, put a cap gains tax of 0% (zero) on all gains of 7 days or less and put a cap gains tax of 90% of all gains of more than 7 days.

The likes of Yahoo, Micosoft and/or Sun Micro Systems will give us the systems that will provide automated software agents to support turning over one’s investments every 7 days (based on the specs you give the agent).

A system like this will make the financial markets work as smoothly as the local fruit market.