The Death of the Middle Class, Part 1

As an unemployed Floridian, I was eager to participate in their “Learn, Return and Earn” program, which was heavily hyped as providing unemployed residents with a chance to get further education and begin a new career.

My wife (also unemployed) and I attended a local session. After gathering in an auditorium for the obligatory introduction speech, we’re turned loose on career counselors like kids at recess. It went something like this:

Me: “As you can see from my resume, I’ve got quite a diverse background. I’d like to find out more about the educational opportunities I’m eligible for under this program.”

Angry, Indifferent Counselor (AIC): “Why is your resume so big?”

Me: “It’s three pages, because I’ve worked for six employers in a variety of roles over the past twenty years. You can’t condense that into a single page.”

AIC: “So what do you want to do?”

Me: “I’m not really sure. I’m here to get information on retraining programs that are available. Once I see a list I’ll be able to tell what opportunities interest me.”

AIC: “So you don’t know what program you want?”, this with a tone of indignation. “You’ll need to talk to a counselor at that table about taking our vocational inventory tests.”

Me: “Can’t you just give me a list of programs offered? A website address?”

AIC: “Not until you know what retraining you want. “

Stupefied, I realized our conversation was over and shuffled off to sign up for vocational inventory testing. Four hours worth of vocational inventory testing.

One week later, I show up for the tests. The first one is designed to highlight my skills and give a general indication of interests. According to this assessment, I have an above average aptitude for:

- General Learning Ability

- Verbal Aptitude

- Numerical Aptitude

- Spatial Aptitude

- Form Perception

- Clerical Perception

Next, the test cross-references with my interest areas. I won’t publish all areas, but my aptitude and interests crossed with business management, contracts and claims, business administration, finance and communications. In short, the test validated that I’ve been doing what I SHOULD be doing for the past twenty years.

Next, it was off to take the three-hour detailed assessment, which is used for two things:

1) Determining eligibility for available educational programs. If you score poorly in mathematics, you won’t get into a CPA course; likewise, if you can’t read well, you won’t get into a nursing program.

2) Providing prospective employers with a rating of your skills, which vary from Bronze to Silver to Gold, depending upon test scores.

Two hours later I had completed the three sessions, with perfect scores in “Reading for Information” and “Applied Mathematics” and a near-perfect score in “Locating Information”. If there was Platinum or Diamond rating above Gold, I’d have hit this level. Eager to discuss retraining options with my counselor, I took a seat in his cube. He looked like a deer in the headlights.

Deer In Headlights Counselor (DIHC): “Wow, we don’t see too many scores like this.”

Me: “Thanks. I guess that makes me eligible for any of the retraining programs.”

DIHC: “Yes, you certainly qualify for any retraining we offer. Our programs are targeted to put you back into the workforce at a salary ranging from $12.58 per hour to $19.08 per hour, with a median of $15.83 per hour.

Me: Doing some quick math in my head, I go back to the last time I made $19.08 per hour. It was 1990, and I try hard to not shit my pants. Or vomit. I counter with, “That’s quite a bit less than I’ve been making and won’t come close to paying my mortgage or bills. Since I have a B.A. degree and the state will pay for up to two years of retraining, can I pursue an MBA?”

DIHC: “Um, no.”

Me: “How about a PMP certification? I’ve got the experience, I just need to take the review and the test, which would only take one week.”

DIHC: “Um, no.”

Me: Realizing the interview was over, I said: “Well, thank you for your time. I’ll review the list and will be back in touch if I find an appropriate training program.”

DIHC: “One more thing – to qualify for retraining, you’ve got to demonstrate that you can support yourself for the duration of the training program.”

Me: Realizing that I cannot pay the mortgage and bills for two years with unemployment and savings, I shake his hand, say “Thanks” and walk out.

So there it is. Here’s the administration’s great plan to save the economy by pumping money into retraining the workforce. If I’m willing to:

1) Declare bankruptcy or torpedo my credit

2) Revert to a standard of living not seen since my college days

3) Start a new occupation from the ground up

Then the state will help me get a job at roughly 2x minimum wage.

I was fucking gobsmacked. Looking at it from a slightly different perspective, the middle class has been abandoned. These programs may assist those of lower income (and I’m all for this), but they do nothing to assist the middle class in maintaining a household or driving the economy. Why exclude master’s programs from this retraining? I think I’d be able to contribute quite a bit more to society with an MBA than with a CDL and job driving over-the-road trucks.

Historically, it’s the middle class who buys cars on credit, pays mortgages and funds small business. Our social security system is based on a sufficient number of middle-class employees to fund those receiving benefits. What happens when the middle class is eliminated? Who buys the houses and durable goods? Who funds the social programs?

I hope I’m not alone in my anger, because it doesn’t look like we have a whole lot of time left.

What Happened to the Media?

Michael Jackson died on the 25^th of June, and fourteen days later he’s still the lead story on CNN. That's two solid weeks of media coverage for a non-event. Being dead isn’t news; rising from the dead is headline-making stuff. Near as I can tell, that has yet to happen to Michael Jackson.

I was never a big fan, but props to him for breaking the color barrier on MTV. For better or worse, he did pave the way for a lot of artists and did help to create the pop culture music scene we have today. The world will never really know if he was truly a pedophile or simply a naïve man guilty of epically bad judgment. When the bullshit media coverage ends, he’ll be remembered mostly for selling records (or CDs or downloads). To quote Tom Petty, “We could move catalog if he’d only die quicker”.

My rant isn’t really about Michael Jackson; instead, it’s about the “softballing” of news coverage on television, in print and on the radio. Why is it necessary to watch BBC to get halfway decent coverage of events in America? When did the domestic media companies decide that Americans preferred “infotainment” instead of news? Have we become so catatonic that we can no longer distinguish between the two?

The sad truth is that news doesn’t bring in ratings. Soundbites, preferably those that are light, fluffy and easily digestible increase viewership. “Today at six, the epic struggle of a man allergic to cats to keep his family pet store open…”.

On the other extreme, we have the alarmist media. If we were to believe half the shit they report on, we’d all be breathing through respirators, drinking self-purified water in our underground bunkers. “Don’t miss our special expose report on toxic terrors – can fabric softeners cause sudden heart failure?”

There are plenty of things to be paranoid about these days, none of which are being reported on in depth. I’ll skip flogging the dead horse of the economy in this posting, but why isn’t the media focused on the economic crisis at home? Every single month produces higher unemployment and less opportunity for the unemployed. Shouldn’t somebody be providing detailed reporting on this? Shouldn’t someone be demanding answers from the administration (other than accepting the current stimulus bill needs more time to work)? Where is the Woodward and Bernstein for this generation? Hell, where is our Walter Cronkite? Where is our Hunter S. Thompson?

I really don’t care about Michael Jackson, Steve McNair, a town being renamed to Kiaville or the potential of Chrome’s success as an operating system. I care about the American troops who continue to die needlessly in Iraq and Afghanistan. I care about the death of the middle class and the impending implosion of American society. I care about the families left destitute, because our government can’t find a way to stem the tide of job losses and doesn’t know what to do with the growing population of homeless.

I care about finding the truth and reporting on it. Hopefully, I’m not the only one.

Thank You, Captain Obvious

In a conversation with George Stephanopoulos (video here: http://blogs.abcnews.com/george/2009/07/biden-we-misread-the-economy-.html), Joe Biden was quoted as saying, “The truth is, we and everyone else misread the economy. “ Biden goes on to clarify, “The truth is, there was a misreading of just how bad an economy we inherited. It’s now our responsibility. So the second question becomes, did the economic package we put in place, including the Recovery Act, is it the right package given the circumstance we’re in? And we believe it is the right package given the circumstance we’re in.”

Just in case you’ve recently awoken from a twenty-year coma, the above statement is proof positive that politicians neither understand nor represent the interests of middle class America. As one of the 9.5% unemployed, the stimulus package has done precious little for me. It has increased my unemployment payment by $25 per week and has extended the duration of time that I’m eligible for unemployment benefits. Which has absolutely no bearing on my current financial situation.

It’s like this: unemployment does not pay nearly enough to fund my monthly bills. Each month I must tap into savings, of which I have a finite amount. At some point in the very near future comes the decision – do I cash out a 401k and take the penalties or do I put the house on the market (knowing full well that it will appraise at about 75% of our purchase price)? Twenty-five dollars per week, or an extension of unemployment benefits, has no bearing on this situation whatsoever.

Instead of a second pork-laden stimulus bill we can’t afford and don’t need, here’s what I’d like to see:

1) Tax incentives or low cost government loans for start up small businesses (or small business expansion). As workers get re-hired, spending on non-essentials will also increase, further boosting the economic recovery.

2) Tax penalties for companies that downsize while continuing to pay huge executive bonuses. How many jobs could be saved if CEOs were willing to waive bonuses for themselves and senior staff, at least until business improves? And why, exactly, are we paying bonuses to senior management when business is down? It’s like incentivizing surgeons whose patients have a high mortality rate – it just doesn’t make sense.

3) Government “guidance” for financial institutions and mortgage companies. As an unemployed homeowner, your sole option today is to request a loan modification from your lender, which can potentially save you a fraction of your monthly payment. Banks are more willing to discuss options once you miss a few mortgage payments, but who wants to destroy their credit rating to open a dialogue? Instead, mortgages for primary residences, assuming the borrower has good credit, should be reduced to a nominal amount until the borrower is re-employed. Monies not paid would be added to the backside of the loan (which would ultimately net more for the bank once the additional interest is tacked on).

Sorry, Joe, I’m not drinking the Kool-Aid. The current stimulus bill has had no positive impact on our economy, as people won’t spend money when they fear unemployment (or are unemployed themselves). Unless the administration does something to address the growing unemployment numbers, any package will be too little, too late.

Ding Dong, ATF Calling...

So yesterday’s Houston Chronicle ran a story on an ATF action in Houston, targeting “straw purchases” of guns that wind up south of the border. Surely you remember the drama surrounding attorney general Eric Holder’s concern for our neighbors south of the border; based on his comments, you’d have thought that every American living south of the Mason Dixon line was selling weapons to Mexican drug cartels. Anyway, I digress…

First, a “straw purchase” occurs when someone purchases a firearm for another who is ineligible to buy the weapon himself. Convicted felons, for example, are excluded from purchasing weapons, as are residents of a different state or country. Laws and sentencing guidelines for straw purchases are well defined; unfortunately, enforcement requires catching someone in the act of falsifying identity or turning a recently purchased gun over to an ineligible party.

Fast forward to the Houston Chronicle story. One hundred veteran ATF agents are sent to Houston to follow up on the purchase of certain types of weapons, such as “high-end” handguns (their words, not mine) and assault rifles. Since the federal government is precluded from compiling databases on gun owners (which is a good thing), agents were sent to gun shops to review purchase records for red-flag triggers like multiple purchases in a single day, or (presumably) purchases of a certain brand or type of weapon. These agents then went door to door, trying to gather information on transactions in question.

And here’s where my trouble begins. I’m a pretty big proponent of our second amendment and have been a recreational shooter for years. I’m all for enforcing the current laws to prevent straw purchases, but let’s take this a step further: if it starts with ATF agents knocking on doors to investigate suspicious purchases, what comes next? Say, for example, you’ve downloaded a fine selection of midget-scat-tranny-porn, and the government decides that decent citizens can no longer get their freak on in the privacy of their own home. Do you get the knock on the door? What if you’ve recently purchased a large amount of alcohol? Since drinking is bad for you, can you expect a knock on the door to check your liquor cabinet when we’re under socialized medicine?

Are these scenarios far-fetched? Perhaps, but wasn’t the new administration supposed to restore some of the privacy we’ve lost in the war on terror? The Houston action doesn’t seem to be a step in the right direction.

And here’s today’s parting thought, boys and girls: if it’s illegal for the government to compile databases on gun owners, what do you think the ATF did with the lists compiled for Houston? Lists that included plenty of legitimate, legal purchases. Are they shredded and burned at the bottom of a landfill, or are they now part of our permanent citizen records? Sleep tight pondering that one…

So The June Numbers are In

The June numbers for private sector unemployment were released today, and they exceeded the forecast of 400k by nearly 20%. Four hundred seventy three thousand more Americans lost their jobs in June, and this does not include layoffs within the government sector. Unemployment rose from a national average of 9.4% in May to a new high of 9.6%; you would need to go back to 1983 to find unemployment at a comparable level.

Many states, Florida included, have higher unemployment rates. In May, the published unemployment rate for Florida was 10.2%. I’d be very surprised if this number didn’t jump to 10.5% in June.

How accurate is the reported number, anyway? Unemployment only counts those eligible for payment, and excludes workers who don’t qualify. Likewise, when benefits expire, recipients are no longer tracked. Given this, what is the actual unemployment in this country? Is it fifteen percent? Twenty percent? The fact is, no one really knows what that number is.

There is another group of refugees out there as well: the underemployed. How many former middle managers are flipping burgers to put food on their family’s table? Worse yet, how many people can’t even find jobs flipping burgers or pumping gas? Are we witnessing the death of the middle class as we know it? The truth is, no one knows.

No predictions show a turnaround in employment until early 2010 or so. We’re not out of the woods yet, and haven’t seen the impact of bankruptcies at GM and Chrysler. How many local, regional and national businesses will be sacrificed at the altar of their Chapter 11 filings? No one knows.

The moral to this story, boys and girls, is protect whatever job you currently have at all costs. Work overtime. Get your company more business through whatever means possible. Start networking, and make contacts outside your industry. No one is safe in this economy, and no jobs or industries are recession proof.

Welcome

Welcome to Desolation Row, a window seat at world’s end. To maximize your reading experience, there are a few things to know about your humble servant, the author.

First, my name isn’t John Patmos, but you’ve probably already figured that one out. The first reader to recognize the significance of my nom-de-plume could win great prizes. Or at least recognition in an upcoming post.

I’m not really a baby boomer, but not quite a Gen-X’er either. My generation was raised on cynicism and apathy, and I’ve been possessed (for too long, some would say) with healthy doses of both.

I started this blog as a place to report on things that just didn’t seem quite right. Like that hang-up phone call in the middle of the night, with no caller ID. Or that sound on the roof (it’s pine cones falling, really). You want to believe that everything is OK, but deep down inside you know it’s not.

For the first time since 1984, I find myself unemployed in a market that offers virtually no chance of employment. Sooner or later, savings will run out, unemployment will end, the house will get sold or foreclosed upon and I will move on, perhaps kicking and screaming, to the next phase of my life. And so it goes.

I’m in better circumstances that some, as I have family to turn to. Failing that, I have a well-developed network of friends across the country, most of whom would give me a couch to crash upon for a day or a week or a month. Still, I can’t help but think of the poor bastards that lack even a threadbare safety net. The individuals and families that are living in the ever-growing tent cities and homeless shelters that exist in big cities coast to coast. The flotsam and jetsam from the sinking of the SS World Economy.

I’ll try not to dwell on my employment situation, since no one wants to read about someone’s struggle to find work. Chances are if you’ve stumbled on this blog accidentally, you may be in the same condition – too much time on your hands and access to high speed internet.

Desolation Row will be a place to post articles that just don’t seem right. Stories where, if we’re not being lied to, we’re not being told the absolute truth either. I’ll try to add some helpful hints as we continue the journey, because the world isn’t a safe place and it’s my job to make it just a little bit better.

So again, welcome to my corner of the internet. You may want to fasten your seatbelt and keep your hands inside the ride at all times, because there’s no telling when the journey may get a bit rough