Somehow, the Unemployed Became Invisible

[amborin]

Somehow, the Unemployed Became Invisible


Fourteen million, in round numbers — that is how many Americans are now officially out of work.
........What gives? And where, if anywhere, is the outrage?
The United States is in the grips of its gravest jobs crisis since Franklin D. Roosevelt was in the White House. Lose your job, and it will take roughly nine months to find a new one. That is off the charts. Many Americans have simply given up.
But unless you’re one of those unhappy 14 million, you might not even notice the problem. The budget deficit, not jobs, has been dominating the conversation in Washington. Unlike the hard-pressed in, say, Greece or Spain, the jobless in America seem, well, subdued. The old fire has gone out.

In some ways, this boils down to math, both economic and political. Yes, 9.2 percent of the American work force is unemployed — but 90.8 percent of it is working. To elected officials, the unemployed are a relatively small constituency. And with apologies to Karl Marx, the workers of the world, particularly the unemployed, are also no longer uniting.

snip

No wonder policy makers don’t fear unemployed Americans. The jobless are, politically speaking, more or less invisible.
It wasn’t always so. During the Great Depression, riots erupted on the bread lines. Even in the 1980s and 1990s, angry workers descended on Washington by the busload.
“There used to be a sense that unemployment was rich soil for radicalization and revolt,” says Nelson Lichtenstein, a professor of labor history at the University of California, Santa Barbara. “That was a motif in American history for a long time, but we don’t seem to have that anymore.”

snip

“There’s an illusion that grass-roots activity just begins spontaneously, that people get mad and suddenly say, ‘I’m not going to take it anymore!’ ” says Michael Kazin, a historian at Georgetown University. “But that’s not how it happens.”
Intellectuals used to play a big role in organizing labor. In the 1930s, Communists and socialists were a major force. Later, labor unions stepped in.

snip

http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/business/the-unemployed-somehow-became-invisible.html?_r=1&ref=todayspaper

[Sarah Ibarruri]

1. The only issue we need to discuss re the unemployed is free trade agreements

We need to back out of and do away with the free trade agreements, or do something that brings jobs BACK from China and India. Period.

[Skittles]

3. CORRECT

[defendandprotect]

4. +1000% --

[Dept of Beer]

8. I agree with you 100%, but unless there are draconian measures

I agree with you 100%, but unless there are draconian measures put in place on corporation then it isn't going to happen.

One law I would love to see passed is that no corporation may own a news outlet so as to keep the US taxpayers free from propagandist corporatist pablum.

[adigal]

19. No tax breaks for any corporation that outsources

its jobs. Period. Never happen, but it should.

[Sarah Ibarruri]

20. God, yes. There are so many rules that could be passed to stop corporations from

running the U.S. into the ground!

[socialist_n_TN]

2. First it was the poor, then the poor and homeless

that became invisible. Now it's the unemployed. It's coming for all of us, a step at a time. Time to wake up and realize it.

[Kennah]

11. And then they came for the Middle Class, but there was no one left to stand up.

[Hydra]

26. The middle class thought they were untouchable

So they ignored the creep and believed they could be part of the 1%.

Too bad most of them will never know how wrong they were.

[Kennah]

28. From untouchable to Dalit

[Starry Messenger]

5. Well, workers are uniting in other places in the world.

There used to be a strong left in this country, that organized things. HUAC pretty much destroyed it, and later came diminished union participation. We're going to have to rebuild from the ground up here in many places.

[Starry Messenger]

6. Just read the whole thing.

Great article amborin, thank you.

[JDPriestly]

7. Wish I could recommend this many, many times.

[woo me with science]

9. Kicked and strongly recommended. nt

[girl gone mad]

10. k & r

[Kennah]

12. Wife has pointed out a couple of times to me ...

... that I lost my job, we didn't lose our brains.

We have a 2 year old so she gets WIC. She had to go for a nutrition class for WIC. This is a woman who worked in day care for 10 years, had to regularly attend classes each year, and she prepared snacks for the kids. She came out of the class and said, "It felt like they were telling me, 'Your husband lost his job so now you're stupid.'" We're both almost OCD when it comes to organic.

Talked to a bankruptcy attorney last week, and we're filing Chapter 7. If I find a job, and get back to work, we'll convert to a Chapter 13 and get on a repayment plan and keep the house. Anywho, there's a mandatory credit counseling class we both have to take. Wife got on that. "So, you lost your job, and that's because we didn't what we were doing with money?"

[Ruby the Liberal]

16. Loud and clear

I hear ya. I lost my job a few years ago and a condition of unemployment was to attend a counseling class with the state job loss group. I spent 30 minutes of 90 learning about how to go about getting my GED. I have a Masters Degree. I appreciate the attempt and support their efforts, but it was degrading.

[BlueCheese]

13. Once we cut Social Security...

... business will have enough confidence to hire again, and that will take care of everything.

Or so I'm told.

[krispos42]

14. Who?

Never heard of them since the Bush tax cuts got extended. I just figured that it created jobs, like Boner said it would, and they all went back to work.



You mean this didn't happen?

[Ruby the Liberal]

17. Zing!

Well played.

[krispos42]

23. Why, I have no idea what you're talking about!

;-)

[OmahaBlueDog]

15. I was talking to a business owner who said business was booming and he needed workers

I told him I thought it was odd that, in the midst of such high unemployment, that he was having diffuculty finding qualified workers.

His answer -- "a lot of people are unemployed for a reason."

So there it is...if you've been laid off, and you can't find work, it's probably your own fault. :banghead:

[spinbaby]

18. It's one of the stories they tell

If you're unemployed, it's your fault.

If the poor are starved, they'll be motivated to find jobs.

Rich people are oppressed.

Unions promote greed and laziness.

They just keep repeating and repeating the stories until people believe them.

[Le Taz Hot]

21. I agree with the article with one exception . . .

nine months my ass! In 93 weeks my husband has had exactly 3 interviews. Not one call back. I wonder what the stats are for people over 40 or (gasp!) over 50? And I wish to hell we would quit calling this a "recession." We've been in a depression for 2 solid years. Could we just be honest about it?

[fasttense]

22. I disagree with the numbers.

First, you have to be stupid to think that only 9.2% of the population is unemployed. Those are rigged numbers. Once you have been looking for a job for over a year you drop off the roles and are no longer counted as unemployed. The household survey is NOT sent to high unemployment areas such as Appalachia and inner cities. Also those who take part-time and Mc Jobs to keep from starving but would prefer full time real jobs are not counted. And have you noticed the the pool of workers used to calculate the unemployed percentage is shrinking by millions?

The numbers the government quotes are rigged. Some people estimate that the real unemployed percentage is as high as 27% others claim it is around 19%.

[Broderick]

24. Gallop has it much higher

you are right, you drop off the reporting when you no longer collect unemployment. It is MUCH worse out there and underemployment is huge.

[area51]

25. +1

According to this article, our real unemployment rate is 30½%. This is a national emergency which calls for the same govt. programs that we had in the '30s.

[hunter]

27. If you are a fifty year old guy whose unemployment runs out...

... and your house is foreclosed on, your car is repossessed, and you move in with your elderly parents...

... and the job applications and resumes you send out vanish into a black hole...

... MAGIC! You are no longer unemployed! ...

:woohoo: