Unemployment Pain
10 % unemployment in America. Horrible. The real number is much higher if you count those that have given up and those that are underemployed. The real number is about 17%. For some minority groups the number is much higher. With our population growth, we need 125,000 jobs per month created just to hold even on the percent unemployed. Depressing as it gets.
Have you ever been unemployed. You want to work, you want to take care of those you love and you have no job. No one will give you and job and you don't have a clue of what to do. It absolutely sucks. It destroys your self worth and it hurts as you see your life savings disappear, your house be repossessed, and your children become homeless. It is a very helpless feeling that happens to people that have done everything right their entire life, or at least what they were told to do, to see the lives unwind. Go to school, get an education, work hard and everything will be okay, and suddenly it is not okay.
To a man where his identity in life is what is what he does for a living, it can be absolutely devastating. This can be as bad as not having health insurance, well actually the two go together in this country. Not having health care is just another thing that happens to the unemployed in this country.
Did the recession cause this problem? Of course, you say, its obvious. Not really. The jobs we had before the recession where not built on reality, they were built on loans from China, et al. We borrowed money to buy stuff that kept most of us employed. It was not real, it was not sustainable. On average, Americans were living 20% above their means buying goods, which of course kept a lot of employed for awhile.
10 % unemployment in America. Horrible. The real number is much higher if you count those that have given up and those that are underemployed. The real number is about 17%. For some minority groups the number is much higher. With our population growth, we need 125,000 jobs per month created just to hold even on the percent unemployed. Depressing as it gets.
Have you ever been unemployed. You want to work, you want to take care of those you love and you have no job. No one will give you and job and you don't have a clue of what to do. It absolutely sucks. It destroys your self worth and it hurts as you see your life savings disappear, your house be repossessed, and your children become homeless. It is a very helpless feeling that happens to people that have done everything right their entire life, or at least what they were told to do, to see the lives unwind. Go to school, get an education, work hard and everything will be okay, and suddenly it is not okay.
To a man where his identity in life is what is what he does for a living, it can be absolutely devastating. This can be as bad as not having health insurance, well actually the two go together in this country. Not having health care is just another thing that happens to the unemployed in this country.
Did the recession cause this problem? Of course, you say, its obvious. Not really. The jobs we had before the recession where not built on reality, they were built on loans from China, et al. We borrowed money to buy stuff that kept most of us employed. It was not real, it was not sustainable. On average, Americans were living 20% above their means buying goods, which of course kept a lot of employed for awhile.
The challenge is simple, seven billion people on the planet want the life style that we have become accustomed to in the U.S. and they are willing to work harder and smarter than us to get there. In athletics, we say they are hungry. In contrast, we are not. We expect the good life, we wait for it to come to us. We use our military might, mostly in the Middle East, to protect our energy resources to try to maintain the life style we have become accustomed to.
Side diversion, the 2016 Olympics. Brazil won the right to host it as we all noticed it. We were shocked that Chicago, the city of 37 child homicides this year, came in last. Sadly, that is how the world now sees us, as Has-Beens. And, there is too much truth to it, i.e., 17% unemployed if you count those who are no longer looking and/or no longer qualified for unemployment.
The government can help and is doing so now with infrastructure projects, and it can do more. Government has to leverage its actions through small business. It is simple, helping small business helps create jobs ... since most job creation in this country comes from small business. What does small business need? Credit, accelerated depreciation schedules, investment tax credits, medical insurance for its workers, and respect. The government can also help with education, our only real long term path from being a Has-Been to being the Come-back-Kid.
But, in the end, recovery and full employment has to come from us the people. We have to stop blaming everyone else for where our path has taken us and turn inward, and as JFK said, "ask not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country."
