Watchhttp://money.cnn.com/2012/02/09/news/economy/jobs_young_adults/index.htm?iid=HP_LN
The share of young adults with jobs has hit its lowest level since the government started keeping records just after World War II.
By the end of 2011, only 54.3% of those between the ages of 18 and 24 were employed
I had my own Van and about $2500 worth of Flooring tools, and was a subcontractor for 6 different interior decorators, by the time I was 19. I was one of the first down here, in south Florida to work as a free agent(if you will), other installers depending on one shop, Dolphin Carpet, Carpet Expo ect. for their day to day work. I used to sit home and take calls from decorators and and a Postman that sold carpet and tile to people in his Century Village route.
I was full of Piss and Vinegar, as the old people used to say about me. When carpet was slow, you find me at the FP&L pay station selling knock off Rolexes or knock off designer perfume to inner city patrons on their way to pay their bill. One thing for sure, you weren't going to find me behind a counter, or sitting in a chair waiting to be seen by the HR administrator, I was paving my own way. I knew where corporate America was heading, and what was in store for those dependent on the Corporate payroll.
I was raised with the emphasis on the ability to adapt and shift gears, and for god sakes don't be at the mercy of the company store ever. When life throws you a curve ball when you're playing football, then you better hit a home run or you will get tackled.
Somewhere along the way, that sense of independence and innovation got replaced with people longing to fit in the corporasphere, and those that are trying to be self starters. Their ideas are to play follow the leader. School for the last several decade has drilled individuality out of the kids. Oh it's fine as long as we're talking about fashion and disruptive behavior, that's encouraged. But the focus has gone from preparing kids for the future, what ever that future may be, and giving the kids the tools they'll need to get by, to a politicized next stage qualifier.
You're either headed to College and will chose a career in publicly traded company and are told you'll make high end 6 figure salaries right out of college. Hell they cut out the pay your dues part, these kids were told they are on the fast track. That's if they can afford an education that cost as much as the average High end sports luxury car in Monaco. The other group is destined to destitution and welfare, for the women, and the men folk are headed to prisons profit centers.
Let's take a moment of silence and mourn for the lost of the best system in the world and death of the American innovative entrepreneurial spirit, regardless of class, race, age, weight or education.
Be careful what you wish for.
You want change? You got it!
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clambo says
But what about the GIGANTIC costs of lowering the capital gains tax to 15% while productive people have to pay 35%?
That cost alone is so much larger than the cost of illegal aliens that it's comic. Like at least a trillion dollars, with no benefit at all to investment. No one ever skipped a good investment because of their marginal tax rate.
The key is this: you don't feel personally threatened by the very rich avoiding taxes, you feel threatened by illegal aliens.
And yet the tax evasion by the rich is costing you much much more.
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thomas.wong1986 says
Large corporations don't poof disappear. They go into bankruptcy court. The business continues to operate while the courts sort it out. If they are truly too big to fail and cannot operate under a bankruptcy court then they should be nationalized and dismantled, not given an endless supply of taxpayer money. AIG should be a bad memory by now. Any company too big to fail is too big period. Obama hasn't done anything to fix the problem, if anything the too big to fail players have gotten bigger.
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The thing is the banks effectively paid us back with our own money.
They would take the government money and loan it back to the state government or to Wall St. at a higher rate. IIRC there was also some really shady stuff going on where $billion would get loaned out and repaid only to be re-loaned out again on a daily basis for something like a year on end. A half assed way to be sure to lend out hundreds of billions but apparently it worked.
Anyways crap like this is why Wall St if flush with cash and pumping up equities while the rest of the country goes to shit. They're playing with our money and keeping nearly all the profits. And when things go tits up again they're all expecting to get rebailed out since TBTF is now established government policy.
So sad that people have to invent reasons to dislike Obama, or even worse: play the politics as football game, when there are plenty of real reasons already.
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Anyone who wines about Obama, bailing out/bankrupting Chrysler and GM. Should back up and remind themselves about the crap show that Paulson and Bush did with AIG. Flat out thievery, they didn't bankrupt the company, so all the executives still got their ill gotten bonuses, and Goldman and a bunch of foreign banks got 100 cents on the dollar for their loads of craptacular credit default swaps. I and my grandchildren just got the bill.
The whole euro/Greece bailout is a huge fiasco, but in allot of ways it's working out OK. If you lend money or a buy a financial product from a bunch of numnutz's you deserve to get pennys back on the dollar. It's called capitalism and a free market. The GOP go on and on about it, and they make me play by those rules but when it comes to their .1% buddies it's all bailouts, no bid contracts, and juicy earmarks.
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thomas.wong1986 says
So you're admitting that we need "socialism"?
Too big to fail = socialism
Too big to fail = corporate welfare
I have no particular fetish for "socialism." But I can't stand it when the far right complains about "socialism" but has no problem with bailouts.
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TPB says
Not suprising. Will Mitt "Yes Man" Romney do a better job?
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tts says
True. We should be out on the streets protesting with OWS.
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Devoid of any discussion on what Obama actually did to cause any of this.
Par.
I'm generally happy with Obama. He kills bad guys, he's trying to raise taxes on the right people, he increased the minimum wage, he nominates sane people to the Supreme Court, he knows we need national health care reform, he ended the war in Iraq and he has a plan to end the war in Afganistan.
The stimulus bill was the right thing to do. Saving GM was the right thing to do. Obama is an adult running against a pack of immature ignorant children. This is going to be a far easier choice than Obama vs. McCain.
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I have outlived six generations of American underclass. I cannot honestly tell you if one was better than another. It's all just a blur of wretched filth in my memory.
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The GOP says
Who cares what you said in the literal sense. It is quite clear who you were referring too.
Apparently all that is being asked of you is to base your attack comments on something. Is it too much trouble to back your claims up? Certainly you would not resort to baseless attacks without merit. What would be the purpose of that?
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I think there is a carefully cultivated set of unspoken assumptions about Obama, blacks, welfare, liberals, job preferences, taxes, and on and on. These assumptions are cultivated by the AM radio circuit, which liberally fertilizes the soil with large quantites of manure.
But the soil itself, which is the fears and insecurities of middle American aging white working-class people, doesn't really even need the fertilizer. Those people are afraid, because their position in the US has definitely eroded, and Obama is one more symptom of that erosion. At one time, white men in particular could be pretty much assured of getting better jobs than women and blacks regardless of personal merit. That's no longer true. Even worse, the outsourcing of most of the middle American manufacturing base to China means that total number of good jobs for the not-so-educated is also falling.
So the specific reasons for the hatred of Obama actually have nothing to do with Obama himself, who talks and acts exactly like the well-connected Ivy League establishment figure that he actually is. Obama is depressingly similar to Bush, except for the little fact that he's genetically half black.
The real but unspeakable reason for hating Obama is that he makes older white middle-American working class men in particular very fearful for their future in a multiracial globalized economy which is still rapidly shifting their jobs to China. It seems wrong that a black man with a Muslim name should be sleeping in the White House. He does not visibly embody the interests of white men, as all other presidents before him did by being white and having European Christian names. At least he's male!
Anyway, you're not going to get coherent answers about Obama because the truth is embarassing.
The way to argue all this, IMHO, is to present an alternate vision of the future which can give that class of people something to hope for. Facts and reasoning come later. The first thing they want is that vision of the future, with themselves playing a starring role in it.
How about this one: We should be more like Germany, which still has a very strong manufacturing sector, excellent technical and trade schools providing a viable alternative to college, much better middle class economic security, much fairer tax rates on the rich, universal health care, much longer vacations, and more authentically representative government.
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The GOP says
Oh bullshit. I'm not attributing a single thing to you. I'm pointing out the absurdity of you posting an opinion without being willing to defend that opinion or even give reasons why you might be right. Why not clear up the confusion and speak for yourself?
Yeah I know, actually asking you to support your opinion is unresaonable.
The GOP says
It's a moot point. McCain never got the chance to be president and is not running this year.
Now you've got three idiots who put circus clowns to shame. The flip flopper that makes Kerry look like a mountain of granite and will believe anything you want him to believe, the buffoon who was run out on a rail by his own party and was a paid 1.9 million as a "historian" for freddie mac, and Santorum who is not only one of the most hated politicians in his own state of Pennsylvania, but probably to the far right of Pat Robertson.
Too boot, all three are considered major assholes by nearly everyone who has worked with them and all three want to go to war with Iran. All three would put a justice on the Supreme Court that would join the 5 who decided in favor of Citizens United. All three would fuck up this country big time.
I would respect a vote for Ron Paul, (although I would disagree with it strongly) but Ron Paul can't win. I would respect a vote for John McCain because I think John McCain would ultimately do the right thing for this country even if it meant crossing his own party.
I cannot respect anyone who would cast a vote for Santorum, Gingrich, or Romney over Barack Obama. It's inconceivable to me, which is why I'm asking you to help me conceive of it. Instead of doing so, you create threads full of bullshit why you shouldn't be forced to argue the opinion you're arguing.
I will say one thing, you fit in well with the rest of the madness.
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zzyzzx,
No president has direct control of the economy. The economy is millions (billions) of people interacting and making deals with each other.
We're going to be suffering from the "hangover" of the housing bubble mania for a long time. Japan had the "lost decade" and we will too, I believe, no matter who is in office. Might Romney be better than Obama? Sure. But there's no easy way out of the mess we are in.
A lot of people don't like Obama because of "social issues" that are near and dear to "the left" like abortion, gay marriage, etc. If you look at Obama's economic record, it's not like he's some far-left socialist. There haven't been any big tax increases, not even on the "super rich".
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tatupu70 says
The price of my belly button lint is $26 million. However, I'll let you pay only 10% down and the rest on a 30-year mortgage at 5%. If value and price are synonymous to you, this is a really good deal.
As for how I come up with a number, I'm a fan of the Case-Shiller Index.
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Kevin says
That's not true!
Most people are willing to pay whatever the banks are willing to lend them. So prices are determined by lending.
Whether that price is fair or not depends on the cost of your alternative, renting. How much it would cost you to rent the same thing for the same time period determines the fair vlue. Not lending.
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Market price is whatever the greatest fool is willing and able to pay. Fair market price is what informed buyers who are not under pressure can and will pay.
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Dan8267 says
The house sells to the greatest fool though... Fair market in your sense is an imaginary number.
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Sometimes when I'm in a foul mood I always enjoy reading the comments in the political section- especially those made on behalf of right-leaning folks, and always get a good hearty chuckle. You can't write comedy as good as this.