One thing that always irritated me about Bill Clinton...

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

One thing that always irritated me about Bill Clinton... the political over-emphasis on job training.

Job and skills training is important. A more skilled work force gives us a competitive advantage versus other countries. But it cannot possibly create an all-manager, all-white-collar classless domestic dream world.

The bed-pans are not going to empty themselves. There are a lot of undesirable, relatively low-skill jobs that must be done.

The training thing is great but it ultimately fixes fault with the worker as defective and cannot work for everybody. What if all people in poverty suddenly had IT skills? Would that cure poverty? No. it would just collapse what IT jobs pay.

To say to people who are doing crappy jobs that they need to become web designers might be good individual advice but the fact remains that the upside is that they move to a better job and somebody else takes over the crappy job.

There's a blame-the-victim element to the thing and an acceptance of some things that should not be casually accepted.

People who empty bed-pans should be paid more, IMO.

Right now there is a wave of delusion afoot suggesting that America has a structural unemployment problem arising from skills mismatched with jobs.

This is music to republican ears. See.. unemployment is high because some folks (Democratic voters, mostly) just can't cut it in the 21st century. (And I wish Bill Clinton wasn't part of the misinformation with his recent comments about how there are plenty of jobs but not enough skills.)

What an amazing coincidence that everyone's job skills just happened to become obsolete the week Lehman went under... :facepalm:

The reality is that there are always some skills mismatches in any economy. They become more noticeable when unemployment is high. There is no reason to think that America in 2010 has a skills mismatch problem any worse than we had when unemployment was a lot lower.



Three good links about the "structural unemployment" con:

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/what-structural-unemployment-looks-like/

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/26/structural-unemployment-the-first-generation/

http://krugman.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/09/24/structural-failure/

[Greyhound]

1. K&Rugman.

:thumbsup:

[bluestateguy]

2. I'm all for job training as long as it is for actual jobs that exist

And not just a way to make an unskilled unemployed person a skilled unemployed person.

[Brickbat]

3. I think this is an excellent point and I totally agree.

On a microcosmic scale, I've also resented the push from manufacturing jobs to service jobs. When mining and manufacturing began to shrink in my area, many people claimed that if we would just boost our tourism, everything would be keen.

[senseandsensibility]

4. Why unrec this?

The motivation escapes me.

[sarge43]

5. The truly crappy job is rare.

There is crappy pay, crappy treatment, crappy conditions and no hope for anything better.

[peacebird]

6. software code and test is being shipped to India, not because we do NOT have the skills, but

because they cost less. Of course it costs less to live there also.

What jobs ARE listed in the papers here are service sector, low-wage jobs. What training would I need for them? "Would you like fries with that?"

[stevedeshazer]

7. +1

Pay more for all jobs.

[The Backlash Cometh]

8. Here's my thought on the over-emphasis of retraining when we didn't

have jobs waiting for all those people:

Schools, schools, schools. Do you know how much money went into the construction or revamping of education buildings in the last ten years? And all those classrooms need to be filled in order to justify the expense.

It was sort of a FDR social program that the Republicans could approve of since there was big money in the real estate business.

The only ones who got screwed were the people who got trained and realized there was no job waiting for them.

[Kolesar]

9. Ohioans are notably undereducated

The tradition here was to get a high school degree and go work in a factory. Well, automation and off shoring blew that plan away.

Jobs for machinists were going "unfilled" in Wichita a few years ago. (Yes, that is not Ohio).

[jtuck004]

10. You are right on. The problem is the undoing of our economy that

the mischief that the avaricious criminals investment banks foisted upon us, by selling mortgages for $724,000 to field hands who were making $14,000/yr, by switching paperwork on educated professionals so they wound up with ARM mortgages instead of fixed rate, by faking employment and income information to qualify otherwise unqualified borrowers, without telling the borrower what was happening. People have tried to cover that by insisting the borrowers were the problem. No they weren't. Even people who dabbled in "flipping" homes were fooled. Don't "blame the victim".

Getting homeowner loans to stuff into a collateralized debt obligation became far more important, because of its ability to generate cash for the bank than making sure borrowers were going to be able to repay. Internal documents referenced in any number of books show that these banks knew damn good and well that the only way this was sustainable was to increase the paper value of homes, so they made credit for homes not just easy to get, but a product to be jammed down people's throats at any cost.

This whole enterprise shadowed manufacturers who were busily moving their business out of the country to take advantage of lax laws or lower labor costs. We would have had to deal with this years ago, and from a far stronger position, if the faux economy had not given them cover.

People need to understand that "structural unemployment" is just another way to "blame the victim". The problem is not the workers lack of knowledge or living in the wrong place. The problem is that there are not enough jobs, and the cause was the financial crisis brought on by the investment banks which gave cover to industry as it shipped our jobs overseas.

Mike Konczal talks about it here... on rortybomb.

thank you for the post.

[merqz]

11. actually, it was both

it was neither the borrowers nor the lenders that were THE problem. It was both. It takes two to tango. Don't tell me that there weren't irresponsible borrowers. I personally know several. I was taught (fortunately) by my shrewd investor grandfather to never buy a house that I couldn't afford to make a 25% down payment on, and in general not to live beyond my means. Iow, I thank him to a large extent. My real estate agent (hardly an evil corporation) tried to sell me on the idea of buying much more house, because well... I could afford it. I didn't bite.

Sorry, but the two sides played off each other. People who wanted McMansions but shouldn't have bought them discounted reality and the uncertainty of future markets (no market goes up forever) because they WANTED to. Predatory lenders suck massively. So do irresponsible borrowers. Just because you economically qualify for something, under some absurd formula does not mean you should buy it. Many homeowners lost homes because of stuff well beyond their control. Others lost, or are struggling because they chose to make very bad decisions.

When I had guys at work telling me about their killer 400k home on their 85k salary with no down payment at 6% interest, and other outstanding debt (several years ago), I had to roll my eyes.

[jtuck004]

12. And what kind of bottom-feeding mortgage company would

write that, and what investment bank would take it?

What you are describing from a homeowner point of view is exactly what the investment banks created. The new world was housing prices that never went down across the nation, because they never had in the history of the country, buttressed by rating agencies paid to give the opinion the investment banks wanted. The investment banks at a later time in the game found that they could create mortgage risk out of whole cloth by simply purchasing a credit default swap, where there wasn't even a buyer.

That a few hundreds of people tried to take advantage of a system that was rigged against them is undeniable, but out of millions that would be like blaming the wheels falling off of your car on the drop of water in the gas tank.

[merqz]

14. Nope, sorry

It is not the sole responsibility of mortgage companies to ensure that people do not take on risk. Every loan is a risk - for both sides. You can argue (I certainly do) that their risk management metric was too forgiving. Great. But it's also a fact that many individual borrowers chose to take on massive debt, buy houses with ridiculous lending schemes (I had one offered to me. I refused. Many of my friends did too. Some DID NOT), way beyond their means, etc. largely because of greed, and because they chose to ignore that NO market goes up forever. Like I said, my agent was all for me buying a MUCH bigger house than I chose to (and eventually made a nice profit off of). If I chose to do that, that would not have been his fault. It would have been my fault. That's been true for CENTURIES. It's not friggin' rocket science here. Your laughable claim that a "few hundreds" of people (if you were referring to borrowers) screwed up is insane. Just in my small workplace I knew several. Drive through any neighborhood or city and you will find a million stories in that naked city of people who CHOSE to get a loan for WAY more house than they should have. Buying a home, or more correctly- getting a loan for one. The bank owns it until it you pay it off-- is the single largest investment decision most people will ever make. People who made such decisions cavalierly are a huge part of the problem. Do I feel badly for them? Sure. It doesn't mean they don't have responsibility for their decisions. Heck, I have a friend who lost several hundred thousand within two years of starting a hedge fund. He knew the risks, too.

[jtuck004]

17. You can keep arguing, but there are at least

a dozen books which describe the system the investment companies created, starting in the Clinton administration with Goldman's Rubin getting Glass-Steagall repealed, along with the Commodity Futures Modernization Act. How many homeowners were involved in those? Drexel Burnham created the first junk bonds, and Salomon Brothers perfecting the collateralized debt obligation. Don't recall seeing many homeowners invovled in that one. How many homeowners sat alongside George Bush and Alan Greenspan when he lowered the interest rate and kept it so low for so long that it made the housing market bubble possible? And when people were warning the banks, the adminsistration, and anyone else who would listen that the banks were out of control, are you saying homeowners prevented the regulatory agencies from taking action when the investment banks gave birth to this terror?

Are you seriously trying to contend that it was homeowners who, when AIG decided to quit writing credit default swaps in 2005, encourage Merrill's Oneal to take on hundreds of billions of leveraged debt, and when they couldn't get mortgage brokers to lower their standards enough to feed the pipeline paid $1.3 billion for their own brokerage so they could write their own dirty business? Did they call your friend in with his piddly-ass $700K mortgage to decide whether to take on over a trillion dollars in notional debt, and did they consult him when they decided to hold that debt on their books rather than expose it to the market where it would be, fairly, decreased in value? The standard homeowner, who can barely get through their day job, created the formulas used by the geeks from MIT that valued housing market risk? There is only about $9 trillion in mortgage value in the housing market - where in the hell did the other $5+ trillion that is overhanging all this come from - a $230K bungalow in Santa Barbara?

I know people want so badly to apply just their own experience to larger situtations (makes it sound controllable and understandable), but it is a fallacy of composition. Let's say a few billion in home loans were people trying to "game the system" - that doesn't come anywhere close to explaining the $160 trillion in notional value ascribed to the investment banks at the beginning of the crisis. Forget that. Let's just say that nearly every loan in Fannie and Freddie wasn't a 30 year mortgage with paperwork and good underwriting - and most of them were, (with a failure rate far below the rest of the industry until they decided to get into the subprime market). Then what would explain the nearly twice as much written by investment bankers with nearly non-existent underwriting standards - something that is clearly on the public record?

What explains the high percentage of sub-prime loans that were written for people of color, when their credit score was as good as the white people that were induced to come into the office? What explains the thousands of documented cases of fraud in which paperwork was fraudulently and recklessly altered to create a loan? Are you saying that homeowners had access to the title company files? What about the memos to rating agency personel who, when they inquired about the basis for these types of bonds, were told to just rate it with what they had?

You want to blame this on two people who had jobs and took on a 6% mortage, who lost one or both jobs because of the actions of these investment banks? That's a pretty low-life characterization that I would expect from Fox News, not here. It's a lot like blaming hte victim of a rape for the way they were dressed. What is forgotten is that sex had nothing to do with it - it was violence, pure and simple.

This is the same thing. The actions of a few hundred or even a few thousand homeowners don't even come close to mitigating the responsiblity and damage caused by the criminal and reckless behavior of the investment banks. There is not a credible authority who thinks otherwise.

You are, of course, entitled to your opinion, but I have lost interest.

[merqz]

19. except now you are erecting strawmen

you keep wanting to make it an either / or thing. a false dichotomy. All this about mitigating etc. You can falsely believe you've read more, experienced more, and/or are more educated on this topic. The greater fool theory, and the insanity of bull markets is neither a new phenomenon or a uniquely American one (it's a universal phenomenon and goes back to even before the great Dutch Tulip Bulb mania).

In an office of a few dozen, I knew several who made atrocious decisions of their own accord. Every home sale requires three parties - the seller, the buyer, and unless the buyer is paying cash - the lender. No buyer is forced to buy a 400k house when they already have other debt, with no money down, etc. and an insufficient income. That's a stupid decision. Has ALWAYS been true. People who bought stupid ARMS that they clearly couldn't afford once the real rates started kickin' in are also culpable.

I place blame where it lies. With BOTH sides. Frankly, I wanted the market to crash. It HAD to crash. Every overbought bull market in the history of mankind has done so. That's NOT a bad thing. It brought prices back to reality.

[jtuck004]

32. This Was Never about the Little Guy

To have a straw man there would need to be distortion, and there is none. This isn't the first post I've read that tried to spread those ideas, and they motivated me to read as much as I can about this, trying to figure out who was giving out the straight poop and who wasn't and why. Were there a few people who gamed the system? Sure. But even $1.3 trillion in sub prime doesn't explain the leveraged $130 trillion that eventually blew up. It is foolish and cruel to blame the victims, the vast majority of people that have and are losing their homes. It's a falsehood, yet it seems to be a common theme among the tea bagger, libertarian, "I got mine" crowd. Don't know what your motivation is, but there are places where beating up on defenseless people might be better received.

Here's some facts from Nomi Prins book "It Takes a Pillage". Some people write about this, she lived it as a managing director at Goldman Sachs and running the international analytics group at Bear Stearns in London.

It just smokes the argument that subprime played anything more than a minimal role. 13 Bankers, Bailout Nation, Econned, Broke, USA, others - lots of books explain various facets of this in detail.

By the way, prices aren't reality yet. Give it a few more years, there is more damage coming. And it will be a lot harder to blame defenseless people.

This Was Never about the Little Guy

The Second Great Bank Depression has spawned so many lies, it's hard to keep track of which is the biggest. Possibly the most irksome class of lies, usually spouted by Wall Street hacks and conservative pundits, is that we're all victims to a bunch of poor people who bought McMansions, or at least homes they had no business living in...But so you know, it wasn't the tiny loan's fault...Here are some numbers for you. There were approximately $1.4 trillion worth of subprime loans outstanding in the United States by the end of 2007.(4) By May 2009, there were foreclosure filings against approximately 5.1 million properties.(5) If it was only the subprime market's fault, $1.4 trillion would have covered the entire problem...Yet the Federal Reserve, the Treasury, and the FDIC forked out more than $13 trillion to fix the "housing correction," as Hank Paulson steadfastly referred to the Second Great Bank Depression as late as November 20, 2008, while he was treasury secretary.(6) With that money, the government could have bought up every residential mortgage in the country-there were about $11.9 trillion worth at the end of December 2008-and still have had a trillion left over to buy homes for every single American who couldn't afford them, and pay their health care to boot.(7)

But there was much more to it than that: Wall Street was engaged in a very dangerous practice called leverage... a ratio that ranged from eleven to one to fifteen-to-one for the major commercial banks. Actually, it's unclear what kind of leverage the commercial banks really had, because so many of their products were off-book, or not evaluated according to what the market would pay for them.(8) ... Leverage included, we're looking at a possible $140 trillion problem. That's right-$140 trillion! Imagine if the financial firms all over the globe actually exposed their piece of that leverage. But for $1.4 trillion in subprime loans to become $140 trillion in potential losses, you need two steps in between. The most significant is a healthy dose of leverage, but leverage would not have had a platform without...securitization. Financial firms run economic models that select and package loans into new securities according to criteria such as geographic diversity, the size of the loans, and the length of the mortgages. A bunch of loans are then repackaged into an asset-backed security (ABS). This new security is backed, or collateralized, by a small number of original home loans related to the size of the security. Some securities, for example, might be 10 percent real loans and 90 percent bonds backed by those loans. Some might be 5 percent real loans. Whatever the proportion, the money the mortgage holders pay to lenders on their loans is used to make payments on new assets or securities. Those securities, in turn, payout to their investors.

...the securities themselves were a much bigger problem than the loans. Between 2002 and 2007, banks in the United States created nearly 80 percent of the approximately $14 trillion worth of total global ABSs, collateralized debt obligations (CDOs), and other alphabetic concoctions or "structured" assets. Structured assets were created at triple what the rate had been from 1998 to 2002. Bankers from the rest of the world created, or "issued," the other 20 percent, around $3 trillion worth...issuers raked in a combined $300 billion in fees...Investment banks, hedge funds, and other financial firms could use the $14 trillion of new securities as collateral against which to borrow money and incur more debt (leverage them). There is no way of knowing exactly how much was leveraged, because the players operated in an opaque system-that is, a system without proper regulatory oversight or enforcement to detect or curtail leverage. But a conservative estimate of the average amount of leverage is about ten to one, considering the roughly eleven-to-one leverage of the major commercial banks and the thirty-to-one leverage of investment banks. So, we're talking about a system that ultimately took on $140 trillion in debt on the back of $1.4 trillion of subprime loans. How insane is that...In 2005, the mortgage on some little home in Stockton provided the capital for two or three ill-advised loans that soon disappeared into an ABS. But it was the global banks, the insurance companies, and the pension funds-particularly in Europe-that purchased the related ABSs. Like their U.S. counterparts, European financiers bought boatloads of ABSs with borrowed money. (13) They also shoved them off-book into structured investment vehicles (SIVs) that required no capital charge and little reporting.

By the fall of 2008 those ABSs, CDOs, and all their permutations would be known as "toxic assets." They were considered by many to be the major cause of Big Finance's failures and losses. The push for TARP centered on ridding banks of these poisonous creatures. But make no mistake:toxic assets are not the same as defaulted subprime mortgage loans; loans are merely one of the ingredients that make up the assets. All the subprime loans in existence could have defaulted and the homes attached to them could have been devalued to zero (which didn't happen), but without the feat of securitization, the banks couldn't have become nearly insolvent. Toxic assets became devoid of value, not because all the subprime loans stuffed inside them tanked, but because there was no longer demand from investors...

References:

1. Justin Fox, "18 Tough Questions (and Answers) about the Bailout," Time, September30, 2008, http://www.time.com/time/business/article/0,8599,1845816,00.html

2. E. D. Hirsch Jr., Joseph F. Kett, and James Trefil, The New Dictionary of Cultura Literacy (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 2002), p. 51.

3. Tracy McVeigh, "The party's Over for Iceland, the Island That Tried to Buy the World," The Observer, October 5, 2008, http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/oct/05/iceland.creditcrunch; Lee Christie, "Las Vegas Tops Foreclosure List," CNN Money, February 5, 2008, http://money.cnn.com/2008/02/05/real_estate/zip_code_ foreclosures/index.htm.

4. Subprime borrowers: "A classification of borrowers with a tarnished or limited credit history ... subprime loans carry more credit risk, and as such, will carry higher interest rates as well," Investopedia, "Subprime," Forbes Digital, http://www.investopedia com/terms/s/subprime.asp; Eric Petroff, "How Will the Subprime Mess Impact You?" Investopedia, http://www.investopedia.com/articles/pf/07/subprime-impact.asp.

5. Data from Realtytrac, http://www.realtytrac.com "Foreclosure Activity Decreases 6 Percent in May," press release, June 11,2009.

6. Nomi Prins and Krisztina Ugrin, "Bailout Tally," June 2009, http://www.nomiprins.. comlbailout.html; United States Department of the Treasury, "Remarks by Secretary Henry M. Paulson, Jr. at the Ronald Reagan Presidential Library," press release. November 20, 2008, https://treas.gov/press/releases/hp1285.htm.

7. Data from the United States Federal Reserve Board of Governors, http://www.federalreserve.gov/econresdata/releases/mortoutstand/mortoutstand20090331.htm.

8. Andrew Ross Sorkin, ed., comment on "As Goldman and Morgan Shift, a Wall St. Era Ends," Dealbook, comment posted September 21, 2008, http://dealbook.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/09/21/goldman- morgan-to-become-bank-holding-companies.

9. 2002-2007 data from Thomson Reuters Financial, http://www.thomsonreuters.com/business _ units/financial.

10. Sarah Butcher, "Sector View: Securitization Is Backed by Demand," Risk, October 12, 2004, http://news.risk.efinancialcareers.com/ITEM_FR/newsItemId-3542.

11. Gregory Cresci, "Merrill, Citigroup Record CDO Fees Earned in Top Growth Market," Bloomberg, August 30, 2005, http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=newsarchive&sid=a.FcDwf1.ZG4&refer=us.

12. Jody Shenn, "CDO Market Is Almost Frozen, JPMorgan, Merrill Say," Bloomberg. com, February 5,2008,
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?sid=aCk0Qr1f2Eew&pid=newsarchive

13. "EU Wants Banks to Come Clean on Toxic Assets," EU Business, February 26,2009, http://www.eubusiness.com/news-eu/1235566921.44.

[JVS]

22. It might take two to Tango, but the lenders are usually the more powerful of the couple and to...

extend the dancing metaphor they lead.

[merqz]

I agree, but they have no power to make anybody sign anything

and yet people did sign up for these ABSURD loans, for houses WAY beyond their means. Again, this is the most important financial decision most people will make in their lifetime - by a wide degree. I just recently purchased a house (thank god for the significant drop in prices) for about 1/2 a mil, 4.66% interest and I put 1/4 down. You can be damn sure I thought looooooong and hard, ran some different worst case scenarios through my head and only bought it because it was the right %age of my income AND I was able to keep enough of a cash cushion in savings/liquid stuff to make mortgage payments for 4 yrs. I'm not saying I would expect everybody to consult a financial expert before making these decisions, but I recommend it. The lenders are taking a big risk themselves. I guess I could agree with the dancing metaphor. They may lead, but if the woman refuses to dance, they can't make her.

[JVS]

24. While they can't compel a deal, generally banks have functioned as gate-keepers to those seeking...

credit. Also, the lenders are generally more experienced in making these deals because they do it every day, while borrowers might never have made such a deal or have done so at most several times. I can have sympathy for a borrower who ends up losing money in a deal. A lender who creates a deal that destroys themselves does not have my sympathy as they are more experienced and learned in such matters and are better suited to exercise caution.

[merqz]

27. Sure, but my point is this...

They are the gatekeepers, but we are the keymasters :)

And of course I have sympathy for people who end up losing money. Real Estate is NOT a zero sum game, but there ARE winners and losers. I am not saying that people who make galactically stupid decisions and not so stupid decisions don't deserve sympathy. I am just saying that is tangential to the issue that in many cases, they brought their misery upon themselves. We all have to pay (or profit) from our decisions.

[tblue37]

13. I think it says something about our society--or maybe about our

species--that the more fundamental and essential a job is, the less it pays and the less status it conveys, whereas the more trivial, useless, or downright destructive a job is, the more status it conveys and the more it pays.

How would we like to live without our trash collectors, nurses, babysitters, etc.? Even teachers are udnervalued--paid poorly compared to other professiosn requiring the same level of training and constant refurbishing of credentials. ANd aas we all know, teachers are given virtually no respect.

Yet CEOs and bankers of the sort that exploit people and rip them off and crash the entire economy get the big bucks and all the admiration, and so do entertainers, especially if they play sports. Why someone should be paid millions just because he is really good at a game kids like to play is beyond me!

[deaniac21]

15. Actually, considering the vacation time teachers get, they are

pretty well paid.

[vssmith]

20. Sounds like Republican talk

[JVS]

25. Considering the amount of wind blown about how we need great teachers, they are underpaid.

If we meant what we said about that, then we would raise teachers' compensation to the level of lawyers in order to attract the kind of talent that goes into that field.

[tblue37]

29. Actually, they are expected to take classes during that "vacation" time

to continually update their credentials. Also, they are expected to put in long hours at home, in addition to their time in the school, planning lessons and grading papers. They are also required to sponsor student organizations and groups and to chaperone dances and other such activities in their "time off" on evenings and weekends. Several times a year they also have to have conferences with parents all day long and into the evenings, to accommodate parents' works schedules. Often conferences run until 9:00 or 10:00 at night.

My sister, who has been teaching 8th and 9th grade English for 9 years, makes about $30,000/year. She takes classes in the summer towards a master's (It is expected that they do so, and teachers who don't make the effort to improve their credentials end up at the bottom of the list when time comes to decide who gets raises, who gets laid off, who gets tenure, etc.)

A student who takes a bachelor's in education often goes thousands of dollars into debt (as much as $30,00 for some, though that's insane, and my sis paid her costs out of pocket since she was an adult switching careers). They put in incredibly long exhausting hours at work and at home (and at school functions and activities). On top of that they have pretty crappy working conditions and also are given very little control in their own classrooms. And if you don't think working with some of these spoiled kids and their annoying parents isn't hard work--well, go here and read my article about the year I spend subnstitute teaching in our town's elementary schools:

"The Inmates Are Running the Asylum!"
http://teacherblue.homestead.com/inmates.html


My regular job is that I teach college English, but as an adjunct (since 1982!) I don't make much money, so I always have other jobs on the side. The year I did the substitue teaching in the public schools was incredibly hard, and I would never do that again. I am 60 years old and not in the best health, but I would take a job digging ditches before I would step foot in a public school classroom again! I can't begin to tell you how hard it is. I would rather do almost any other side job than that! I have taught since 1972 and tutored since 1980. I also ran a home daycare for 18 years (while still teachign, etc.). I also regularly did volunteer teaching in my own kids' elementaary school classrooms when they were that age--usually at least twice a week. (But the kids today are much ahrder to deal with than kids were back then, in the mid to late 1980s and early 1990s.) IOW, I am good with kids, even with large groups of kids, and good at teaching. But teaching in the public schools kicked my ass.

Those teachers deserve much higher salaries--and hazardous duty pay as well!

It is no wonder that most new teachers burn out and leave the profession within their first five years.

The regular public has a very skewed notion of what teachers actually do for their measly little salary.

SHOUT-OUT: Hey, public school teachers!:yourock:

[deaniac21]

31. My husband is a high school history teacher with 30 years on

the job.

[L0oniX]

16. Yea and on the other side is people coming out of college and can't get a job where they can...

pay off the college loan ...and they are over qualified for the lower pay jobs.

[femrap]

18. And all of the Day

Care workers.....they need higher pay. I think Dog Sitters get more than Day Care workers.

[JVS]

21. ROFLMAO

"What an amazing coincidence that everyone's job skills just happened to become obsolete the week Lehman went under... :facepalm:" :rofl:

[howaboutme]

23. Some jobs just can't be outsourced by the international corporations

Factory jobs were about as crappy of a job as you could find but they paid good money and they made our middle class, but they were all outsourced with the aid of some Democrats I might add, and Bill Clinton with NAFTA and GATT was one.

In their place are other hard and shitty jobs but they pay little such as Wal-Mart, and picking fruit, manual labor, landscape and construction and these jobs can't be outsourced. They must remain in place. So what do our corporate bribed politicians do to make sure Americans receive even lower wages? They refuse to enforce labor and immigration laws so that those Americans who lost their jobs to the Chinese, now must compete with illegal immigrants.

Every time I watch a Hollywood DVD and see the warning of imprisonment and $500K fines if one pirates their piece of shxt "intellectual property" it infuriates me, because business who break our own intellectual property/labor laws (meaning the rights of US citizen workers) are subject to only a slap on the wrist instead of the criminal action that copying a $9 DVD would create.

[JVS]

26. You know what bugs me about Bill Clinton.

We know that neither Bush I not Bush II created jobs, so that must mean that it was on his watch that we got the jobs that allowed people to be working 2 or three jobs to make ends meet. I don't think it's appropriate to laud the creation of lots of jobs when so many of them were shit jobs.

[Scuba]

28. The most critical job in a hospital...

...is cleaning the rest rooms. Dirty bathrooms means no patients.

[Kurt_and_Hunter]

30. BTW - this was posted the day before Krugman's column

Today's Krugman column (Monday) cites Bill Clinton as one of the 'structural unemployment' spinners. I knew (strongly suspected) today's Krug column would be about structural unemployment but didn't know the Big Dawg would be drawn into the fray.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/09/27/opinion/27krugman.html?partner=rssnyt&emc=rss



Recent Clinton quote;

http://www.eschatonblog.com/2010/09/rage_26.html