Too Numb to Cry So I'll Try Laughter

Have I mentioned today that I NEED a FREAKIN' JOB?

Well I do and as I search for employment sometimes it's all I can do to stop myself from just curling up in a fetal position, cursing the fates and furies/Gods and Goddesses or any other entities or "supreme beings" that I can blame.

But now that I've gotten the obligatory whine out of the way, I'm going to talk about some of the folks who are in far worse straits than I am, as difficult to believe as that may be.

If you want to have your heart torn out, watch the video with this Seminal Diary from Michael Whitney. Or read this diary where Michael talks with some of the fishermen effected by BP's environmental catastrophe (it seems Tony Hayward decided to upgrade it from the moderate environmental impact he first called it).

I'm only without a job. The folks in the Gulf of Mexico that are dealing with this disaster are out of a life style. As Michael reports in the second linked diary above:

Now he has nothing but oil. Raleigh estimates that, since the oil sinks into the soil where the oysters grow, it will be at least 10 years before Grand Isle fishermen can harvest oysters again.

Ten years can flash by in an instant it seems, but not when you are waiting for the return of your livelihood. I'm six years into my unemployment/underemployment life now and can't imagine facing another four years of this. I never anticipated I could go this long; yet as I say, I'm blessed compared to what these folks are looking at. And there are thousands more who lived and worked along the Gulf who are looking at years and years of lost wages, lost lives.

Jobs and the Cat Food Commission

Have I mentioned recently that I NEED a FREAKIN' JOB?

Well, I do. As do many millions more of my fellow citizens. I'm feeling a bit too lazy to go get the official figures but just last week, the official Unemployment rate was 9.9% (roughly 15 million). Add in another few million for the Underemployed and a few million more to cover the folks who have given up, "self-employed," and the other groups not counted and the figure is probably doubled or more.

So what do we get? Scaling back of the so-called Jobs Bill to appease the Deficit hawks.

Under fire from rank-and-file Democrats worried about the soaring national debt, congressional leaders reached a tentative agreement Wednesday to scale back a package that would have devoted nearly $200 billion to jobless benefits and other economic provisions while postponing a scheduled pay cut for doctors who see Medicare patients.

Nothing about scaling back on fighting two wars of choice. Nothing about raising taxes on Hedge Fund managers who pocket Billions and pay taxes at the Capital Gains rate. (Parenthetically, why is "unearned income" felt to be so much more valuable than "earned income" that it is taxed at less than half the rate of earned income? Doesn't that fly directly against the traditional Horatio Alger effect that hard work is one of the primary positive attributes in the US and should be rewarded?)

Jobs, Unemployment, Firings

Yesterday, Digby hit on one of my favorite talking head idiocies about how folks collecting Unemployment Compensation are just lazy bums getting a free ride vacation. I like to call this the "Larry Kudlow School of Economics" since I've heard Kudlow spout this piece of uninformed gibberish multiple times over the years.

This post by Digby was brought about by Congress's dithering once again on passing a further extension of Unemployment Benefits, currently set to expire on June 2.

Yeah, these tens of millions of our fellow citizens are just a bunch of lazy asses who are living it up on 300 a week. There's plenty of jobs, these people just refuse to work because they like all this cushy free money.

I just don't know what to say about this. You have a 10% official unemployment rate which doesn't count all those who never qualified (small business owners, independent contractors etc.) and it doesn't count all those who have already fallen off the rolls. And yet politicians are buying this nonsense that there are plenty of jobs but people just won't work? That's completely ridiculous. These people should be ashamed of themselves.

This article is from 2/2009 and shows the maximum weekly Unemployment Benefit for each state. The payments range from $230 per week for Mississippi and $240 for Arizona (lowest two states) up to $628 for Massachusetts and $584 for New Jersey (the two highest). California pays a maximum of $450 and New York maxes at $405.

But it's not just the non-existent jobs. From yesterday's NY Times, we have the story on cutbacks to Child Care subsidies. More exercises in penny wise, pound foolish operations.

Despite a substantial increase in federal support for subsidized child care, which has enabled some states to stave off cuts, others have trimmed support, and most have failed to keep pace with rising demand, according to poverty experts and federal officials.

That has left swelling numbers of low-income families struggling to reconcile the demands of work and parenting, just as they confront one of the toughest job markets in decades.

This is the downside for most all of the various legislation passed by Congress that provides "subsidies" for poor individuals. We'll most likely see it with the subsidies from the Health Insurance Reform. In order to achieve some faux "bi-partisan" ideal against deficit spending, it is always the poor and least able who bear the brunt of these actions. Never shall it pass that taxes are raised for those who have the most of course. After all, only the poor people who actually need support are worthy of sacrificing.

We're not looking for hand outs. We're looking for the little bit of support to help us make it together as a society.

And because I can:

Mr Bernanke, It Really Is Time For You To Do Your Job

What's that you say? You're already doing your job?

No, no you're not. Or at least, not that part of your job (pdf) that is supposed to

promote the objectives of maximum employment, stable prices,
and moderate long-term interest rates.

You see, the weekly Job Report (AP via NY Times) came out today and once again "surprised" the economists by showing an increase of 25k more initial jobless claims for the week instead of the expected decrease of 4K. That is 471K new jobless claims for the week.

(As an aside, is Economics known as the "Dismal Science" due to the abysmal record most economists have in their predictions? It sure looks like a group where getting one thing correct over the years allows an economist to dine out for the rest of his/her career on the accolades, no matter how p*ss poor every other prediction they make is.)

Now a quick check of der Google shows various news stories over the past few years (here and here for example) where Bernanke and others are talking about how "inflation concerns" are the driving economic force, even more than employment issues (you know, 9.9% Unemployment rate and such things).

Jobs, Elections, Corporate Cluelessness, and Reading the Tea Leaves

Have I mentioned recently that I NEED a FREAKIN' JOB?

Whew. OK, now that I've gotten that out of the way, let's move on to the top stories of the day.

It seems there were some elections yesterday of the Primary type nature with the results being a confounding mess primarily to those Beltway Villagers who sit and talk amongst themselves about how wonderful all their fellow eaters of cocktail weenies are but have no clue about life out here in the rest of America.

So we get to read the "analyses" from the pundits who latch onto the easiest theme that reinforces what they already felt, regardless of reality (such an unreal concept reality is). Hint: the elections in KY, PA, and AR were NOT purges from the left or right.

Let me see if maybe a few headlines from today's news sites on the web can maybe explain a bit of the disconnect. From the NY Times we have this

Teaching Candidates Aplenty, but the Jobs Are Few

and this:

Clients Worried About Goldman’s Dueling Goals

From the Washington Post comes these gems:

Voters' anger at Washington may overpower any fixes

Dodd backs off alternative derivatives proposal in overhaul bill

I Can't Whine...

Well, I CAN whine but it doesn't do any good. The reality is, no matter how bad off things are for me right now (and I assure you they are bad) I know that there are many many folks in worse position than I.

A scary thought, that.

I have no job and few prospects. I've been looking for more than six years now. For most hiring managers, it doesn't matter that I might well have the exact skills they are looking for; the fact of my being out of work for so long makes me damaged goods by definition. Throw in the admitted holes in my skill set and my age and things look bleak.

But even when I see things at the worst, I still know that there are many many many others in far worse shape. Single parents with children losing their homes. Folks with life threatening medical conditions and no insurance or way to pay for the treatment.

I do have friends and family that will help me keep a roof over my head. My feline companion is pretty good about sleeping on my lap and allowing me to dissipate stress with the head and belly rubs. My health is generally OK (though I could use some dental work and probably need a new prescription for my glasses).

The official unemployment rate is 9.9%. The low end calculations of the Un/Under-employment rate is over 17%. I spend a lot of time at Firedoglake and there are many other folks in similar or worse situations. It does make it tough to whine about a situation when there are so many others in the same boat or worse.

Trying to Make Sense of it All

Where to begin? Wednesdays seem to have a dearth of stories on Jobs, Unemployment, Underemployment and all the various ramifications of these.

But Thursday seem to bring an overabundance of articles on these topics.

First off was this little gem of a story from the AP via MSNBC on an Indian IT firm outsourcing Call Center operations to a prison. I'm just not real sure how to deal with these issues (outsourcing in general and outsourcing to prisons in particular) without sounding like a racist or xenophobe. So, we'll set this aside for a while and return to it on a later day.

Then there's the Weekly Job Report. This from Reuters probably offers what I consider the best presentation (Best being most true to reality, that is):

The number of U.S. workers filing for jobless benefits fell only slightly last week, highlighting the challenges facing the labor market, while import prices pointed to tame inflation, according to government data released on Thursday.

Initial claims for state unemployment benefits slipped 4,000 to a seasonally adjusted 444,000, the Labor Department said, though the number was still slightly above the 440,000 expected by analysts in a Reuters poll. The prior week's figure was revised up to 448,000.