10.5 Million Jobs lost

[TN_Hiker]

Well I just completed my last day of work as my store closed. I certainly wouldn't mind one of those jobs right now.

It certainly feels weird....

[kieefer]

I wouldn't say there's plenty of jobs out there, it's obvious that our economy sucks right know but, I went to Lowes today in MJ and they had a help wanted sign on the door.

You hear of businesses closing every week, Food Lion and AAirlines just recently but I think if you're in the right place at the right time there may be a job waiting, might not be what you want but it's a paycheck like Pfries is getting.

A lot of our entitlement problem is that it's just as easy drawing benefits than actually hunting a job that might not pay as much as the entitlement, that needs to change but first the work environment needs to improve.

Edited February 5, 2012 by kieefer

[Guest pfries]

Well I am undeemployed, what I kept hearing over and over is "you are over qualifide" or "we have canidates with the same skill sets and a Deegree". If I had not known the store manager and he had not talked to his GM I doubt I would have gotten a call back myself. I find it appaling that you have to "KNOW" somone to get a job as a clerk just because you have a good work ethic, proved your salt, and moved up the ladder on your merit.

[DaveTN]

Well I am undeemployed, what I kept hearing over and over is "you are over qualifide" or "we have canidates with the same skill sets and a Deegree". If I had not known the store manager and he had not talked to his GM I doubt I would have gotten a call back myself. I find it appaling that you have to "KNOW" somone to get a job as a clerk just because you have a good work ethic, proved your salt, and moved up the ladder on your merit.

Knowing someone trumps a good resume any day. There is a reason social networking is so big.

[TMF]

Of course it can. Obama has added 123,000 federal jobs.

- OS

Ha, well I guess that deserved a caveat... "The Government can't create jobs.... without spending our money".

[kieefer]

Is there any Government agency that makes a profit?

As I see it Government does nothing more than destroys wealth, redistributes poverty and takes away liberties.

[Guest Lester Weevils]

We agree on the cause, but I don’t think we agree on the fix. These politicians can only do so much; the majority is up to us.

I think we are nearing a time now when our kids and Grandkids will look us in the eye and ask “How could you have allowed this to happen to us?†Giving them a speech about the “Global Economy†or how American manufacturing couldn’t produce a product at the same or lower cost will make those that try look like idiots in their eyes.

Glad I won’t have to do that. I’ll have to apologize for my generation, but long after I’m gone my family will be able to tell them to look at my actions. Of course that won’t help them any, it will just show them we had a choice.

Agreed mostly. MAYBE in some cases the gov can change a law or spend some money to prime the pump, but overall it seems unlikely that a gov can do much to long-term boost the economy or create jobs? On the other hand maybe the gov has nearly unlimited power to screw things up and make the economy worse?

My tiny participation in the global economy seems working OK at least at the moment. But it is software rather than hard goods. Man does not live by software alone. I work with a small canadian outfit. Product is mostly created from USA and Canada, with a bit of input from a few programmers from other continents. It sells surprisingly well worldwide but is a niche product unlikey to become a huge biz. Am guessing that little biz helps canada's balance of trade. I kinda view the canadians as USA folk who like cream of wheat rather than grits, talk a little funny, slightly too liberal on some issues, though they somehow managed to be conservative enough to keep their banks fairly stable and at least somewhat prevent their banks from eating the entire economy.

If we can just get balanced trade, globalism would be fabulous.

Some of our industrial rot might be blamed on usa citizens buying on price alone, or evil plans of some nations to hog all the money. Dunno if it is possible-- Maybe there are super smart people who actually work on this issue-- Perhaps one solution for more-balanced trade is to develop products that we can make better or cheaper than China or India, that Chinese citizens want so bad they just can't help themselves but buy them. Maybe that is a nil set, but it seems unlikely that there are zero opportunities that could be exploited.

We need to keep some manufacturing because there are hard working people who can do those jobs, and are better suited to those jobs, and traditionally the jobs paid pretty good.

Many also mention national security aspects of domestic manufacturing, and the role Detroit played in winning WWII. On the other hand, WWIII might be over so fast that Detroit wouldn't have time to go into wartime production even if healthy, and might even be radioactive dust an hour after commencement of hostilities.

But we also need our hand in at least a little bit of manufacturing everything for common sense redundancy.

The little company I work with doesn't deal with lots of hardware, but we sell a lot of product pre-installed on 2.5" hard drives. Since last years Japan disaster, hard drives have got scarce and SPENSIVE. It is the only time I recall where the price of hard drives went up rather than down. This affects our biz a little bit but doesn't leave us dead in the water. Maybe the price wouldn't have got so volatile if we still had some USA hard drive assembly lines.

But consider low-probability bad things-- If an asteroid were to hit mainland china that was "just big enough" to hobble china's industrial output for a few years, but not big enough to horribly mess up the entire world. Not even big enough to long term mess up china-- Just big enough that for awhile they have bigger fish to fry than exporting lots of product to the USA--

The USA would be seriously hurting nearly overnight, having hardly any available shoes, clothes, computers, power tools or even hand tools. Most likely seriously hurting in many other niches as well.