"someone set fire to all the rules and burned all the maps"

[phantom power]

When Ms. Barrington-Ward and I got on the Big Career Escalator years ago, we believed certain things to be true because we could see them in operation all around us. Usually, honest labor had value. Tangible value. So did persistence. So did excellence. And even if you were kneecapped by bad breaks or bad times or bad people, after you got banged up and bounced downhill once or twice, you got up again and worked your way back into the labor force.

Of course you could get a job -- a real job -- if you set your mind to it.

Of course you could.

But while we were very busy working those hard, long hours -- while we were excelling at what we did -- someone set fire to all the rules and burned all the maps.

Suddenly, no, you cannot get back into the workforce.

No, we will not tell you why.

Try as hard was you like. Beat your brains out until it finally becomes clear that you will never have a full-time job with bennies again.

Never.

Never. Ever.

That's the new reality: the quiet, lethal, zombie apocalypse no one prepared you for and which swarms over you and takes you down by sheer weight of numbers. Which, by the way, leads us to the other ironic difference between Ms. Barrington-Ward's situation and my own: the fact that my last full-time job was helping people exactly like Ms. Barrington-Ward find work.

I spent a long time building a righteous portfolio as a economic development and labor force expert. Over the years I helped thousands of people find work, either directly by helping them think through their options, rework their resumes, learn interviewing skills and find internships and training, or indirectly by setting up and funding programs to get unemployed people like Ms. Barrington-Ward back into decent sustainable work.

I worked with the whole, sad rainbow of the unemployed: kids in tough neighborhoods, young adults without prospects, ex-offenders, single mothers, and the suddenly and unexpectedly jobless like Ms. Barrington-Ward.

So like a physician who gets a bleak diagnosis, I am intimately versed enough in the arcanum of labor market data to be in a unique position to understand just how bad things are and how bad they are likely to remain for years to come.

My former profession has blessed me with the knowledge that there really are ways to solve the problem of long-term unemployment and underemployment that would give the millions like Ms. Barrington-Ward back their dignity and economic autonomy.

My understanding of political reality as cursed me with the knowledge that as long as we live in a culture that treats poverty and unemployment as signs of moral depravity, none of those solutions has a prayer of being realized.

Good luck to you, Ms. Barrington-Ward.

Good luck to all the Ms. Barrington-Wards, everywhere.

http://driftglass.blogspot.com/2013/11/are-there-no-workhouses.html

[JimboBillyBubbaBob]

1. Wow,

a hallelujah and right-on to you!

[Laelth]

2. k&r for the truth, however depressing it may be. n/t

-Laelth

[FreakinDJ]

3. Those Union Thugs told you this would happen

Yet you dismissed them until it affected your upper middle class job

[Brigid]

7. And we have our thread winner.

[Egalitarian Thug]

19. For years and decades.

[The Wizard]

4. Reagan brought back

the feudal system with bells and whistles. Hate radio and Pox News sold it like is was going to make life better for the working class.

[hughee99]

5. Hate radio and Pox News sold Raygun's agenda?

Pox didn't even come on the air until 1996 and even Limbaugh's show didn't go national until 1988. Surely, someone sold this, but I think you're pointing fingers at the wrong groups.

After 8 years of Clinton and 5 years of Obama and we're still upset that some of the SAME policies are in place? I don't think the problem is JUST Raygun.

[meanit]

9. By the end of the 80's

and into the early 1990's the Reagan agenda was obviously a complete disaster, even to the dim bulbs. But Limbaugh, FOX and the other right wing propagandists have been pushing it 24/7 since they went on-air and they have not stopped.
Couple that with the right buying more and more media and here we are today.

[hughee99]

11. Raygun's agenda was sold to the people in the 80's.

The people were already (unfortunately) "buying it" by the time most people were even listening to the RW radio and LONG before Faux News even came on the air. No, those organizations didn't help the problem, but they aren't the ones that started it either.

[meanit]

13. Yes, people first bought the pie in the sky BS

from Reagan, who was a trained actor. It was "something new" and he pulled it off.
But when things started to fall apart in the late 80's and in the early 90's, right wing media was there propping the Reagan agenda up, spreading lies and perpetuating the myth.
It continues today as an industry.

[hughee99]

14. And my point was, in the late 80's early 90's,

RW talk was just getting started and Faux news didn't even exist yet. Yes, it's an industry today, but when things started to fall apart in the late 80's/early 90's, most people were still getting most of their news from newspapers, the 3 major networks, and (maybe) CNN.

[meanit]

15. ABC had the Rush Limbaugh TV show

in the early 90's and the major networks were getting more and more conservative prior to then. Talk radio was well into conservative domination during the 1980's.
Reagan didn't just swoon everybody with his charm. He had a lot of help from the media, in many forms, way before today's current circus.

[hughee99]

16. Limbaugh's TV show was on from 92-96

and if I remember right, it was on sometime around midnight. I'm not saying Raygun didn't have help from the media, I'm just saying you're not looking at the right people for this time period. RW talk and a yet to exist news channel didn't pick up this mantle until WELL into the Clinton years (maybe 1997/98). To influence enough opinions to get (and keep) the general population on board with Raygun's programs, you need to have a MUCH larger audience than RW talk did at that time. The major networks and "establishment" media were the ones carrying his torch from the early 80's until at least the early 90's.

[meanit]

17. Things started to really explode

once the Fairness Doctrine was abandoned and media deregulation happened. Those were not overnight feats and had been in the works for years, right through the Reagan years and even before.
The mask finally came off with the advent of FOX news, etc. and we now have open conservative saturation of the airwaves.

[hughee99]

18. Absolutely.

Certainly Faux News and RW talk have been carrying the Raygun philosophy since the late 90's, but it was more established outlets that were pushing it for the years before that explosion.

I think it was in 84 when then FD took it's first major legal hit and it's been downhill since then. I think it wasn't until 2011 that it was formally revoked, but by that time it hadn't been really enforceable in more than 25 years.

[truedelphi]

21. Thank you. Glad to see someone else here not

Drinking the kool aide.

I opened the newspaper a week or two back, to find out that my county, a county here in California with a mere 89,000 people, now has available to it some 22 millions of Fed dollars. Great, right? Except the money is for one and only one purpose: to renovate and expand the county prison.

Less than 100 prison cells and prison beds will be affected. For 22 millions of dollars!!

Meanwhile the school district has seen its revenues decline from 16 million back in 2009-2010, to 9.5 million in 2012-2013.

This Prisons not schools, surveillance not social programs is not solely because of mean old Republicans. The state legislature is Democratic, our governor is a Democratic man, the Oval Office is held by a supposed Democrat, and the Dems had a majority in Congress from Jan 2007 to Jan 2011. So how can we spend all our time blaming Reagan?

[cantbeserious]

6. The Empire Is Dying - Rotting From Within

eom

[ErikJ]

8. How can that be? Obama is a commy Marxist!

I guess he needs retraining.

[woo me with science]

10. K&R

[Blecht]

12. This is exactly right

No matter what your field is, you are closer than you may think to joining the ranks of the un- or underemployed. And once you are there, it is impossible to get out.

[Blue_Tires]

20. kick for truth