[deMolay]

13M unemployed workers in America. Made to feel that they must retrain, that they have a full time job looking for work. I don't know if this article is funny or not, but what a comment on who we have become. http://www.latimes.com/news/opinion/commentary/la-oe-ehrenreich3-2009may03,0,4064609.story?ref=patrick.net

[3aidlillahi]

I don't know if this article is funny or not, but what a comment on who we have become.

It could be better than the alternative which she seems to be proposing: a transformation towards a much more socialist nation.

But yeah, it is quite odd of our nation.

[Caffeine]

There are 6.7 billion or so humans on the planet. Given the current state of automation, are there really 6.7 billion (minus however many are too young or too old to work) jobs available on the planet in the first place? How many of those jobs provide adequate food, water, sewer, shelter?

[jdmartin]

There are 6.7 billion or so humans on the planet. Given the current state of automation, are there really 6.7 billion (minus however many are too young or too old to work) jobs available on the planet in the first place? How many of those jobs provide adequate food, water, sewer, shelter?

Well you've hit on the dirty little secret - there simply aren't enough jobs for all the people. Some people have to be permanently unemployed or, alternatively, have to job share their employment.

[TWilliam]

She makes a good point about keeping people so damned busy that they have neither time nor energy to devote to activities that could possibly lead to any form of societal change (something we desperately need). Socrates said something similar about 'laborers' in general: "Their work keeps them too busy to be good companions or good citizens, so that men engaged in [labor] must ever appear to be bad friends and poor defenders of their country."

[Ayoob]

Everyone deserves food, health care, free education through the post-grad level, fast response law enforcement, shelter, clothing, and a guaranteed retirement at 60. There is no question about it!

It should all be provided by the government, even if that means taxing the greedy down to sackcloth and ashes.

Anyone so selfish that they provide for THEMSELVES (and who don't give everything they have to others) is just GREEDY and should have everything taken away.

That's the only fair thing.

[TWilliam]

Everyone deserves food, health care, free education through the post-grad level, fast response law enforcement, shelter, clothing, and a guaranteed retirement at 60. There is no question about it!

It should all be provided by the government, even if that means taxing the greedy down to sackcloth and ashes.

Anyone so selfish that they provide for THEMSELVES (and who don't give everything they have to others) is just GREEDY and should have everything taken away.

That's the only fair thing.

Thank you, Mr. Toohey. Your opinion has been duly noted...

[JoeW]

Everyone deserves food, health care, free education through the post-grad level, fast response law enforcement, shelter, clothing, and a guaranteed retirement at 60. There is no question about it!

That's the only fair thing.

Sounds good to me. Where do I sign up for that kind of government?

[dinopello]

There are 6.7 billion or so humans on the planet. Given the current state of automation, are there really 6.7 billion (minus however many are too young or too old to work) jobs available on the planet in the first place? How many of those jobs provide adequate food, water, sewer, shelter?

Well you've hit on the dirty little secret - there simply aren't enough jobs for all the people. Some people have to be permanently unemployed or, alternatively, have to job share their employment.

The other, related little secret is that most people don't really even have to work. We gain so much from our energy slaves that the majority of people that think they have important jobs (at least in countries that have exploited the energy slave) could be paid to lay in the grass smoking pot and staring at clouds all day and it wouldn't affect anyone. Although if they did that rather than driving to Walmarts buying cheap plastic crap, it might save some energy.

[Stonemason]

Technological unemployment highlights the fact that the monetary system isn't relevant to how we conduct our affairs on the planet. We are heading towards a future where human labour is not needed for material necessities and we need to get these people into making an abundant world through scientific and technological training rather than making war and scarcity. Time for a Resource Based Economy or something else.

[Sixstrings]

This is a serious issue, and I too found the article's tone a bit flippant:

Picture it: People across America rising at the usual time, suiting up in full corporate regalia and setting themselves down at their laptops to fiddle with resumes, peruse Monster.com and pester everyone on their address lists for leads.

Some people have no doubt found jobs in this manner, but there have been no scientific comparisons of the technique with, say, printing a resume on a sandwich board and parading around Times Square.

Now, that's just silly. I don't think this fellow has ever been out of work before. Anyone who has can attest that yeah brother, pounding the pavement relentlessly does make a difference.

To play devil's advocate, I think the author wrote this in frustration over the American worker's perennial willingness to just bend over and take it. We're told it's all our fault -- we Need To Retrain ourselves. Then another mass of jobs gets shipped over seas and it's our fault again, Time For Retraining.

This part is very true:

Even two or three years ago, when the economy was apparently healthy, average layoff victims "landed" in new jobs paying 17% less than the old ones -- if they landed at all. Today, with the country losing more than half a million jobs a month, both white-collar job searching and blue-collar retraining are becoming surreal exercises in futility. No matter how smart you are -- how flexible, personable and skilled -- you can't find a job that isn't there.

So I see where he's coming from here. It really is a pathetic spectacle, these rounds of "retraining," the American worker forever chasing in circles after smaller and smaller crumbs.

This last part is nonsense:

You may be poorer than you've ever been, but you are also freer -- to express anger and urgency, to dream and create, to get together with others and conspire to build a better world.

Being out of work with no hotly in-demand skills / sheepskin is NOT glamorous. It sucks, Bigtime. To try to put some kind of new-age positive spin on poverty-level unemployment is missing the point to say the least. Unemployment grinds a man's soul down to the nub. it is NOT a time of "feeling free" and building a better world and such. Those things can work out only if your spouse is bringing home the bacon, you got family money, or a trust fund.

In related news.. on MSNBC the anchor cheerily reported that unemployment claims are starting to decline -- as in, Good News Things are Getting Better! Well, it's only sort of good news to those who still have a job, but do the millions currently unemployed not matter?

[nobodypanic]

Everyone deserves food, health care, free education through the post-grad level, fast response law enforcement, shelter, clothing, and a guaranteed retirement at 60. There is no question about it!

It should all be provided by the government, even if that means taxing the greedy down to sackcloth and ashes.

Anyone so selfish that they provide for THEMSELVES (and who don't give everything they have to others) is just GREEDY and should have everything taken away.

That's the only fair thing.

i don't think you get it: there isn't enough to go around, so when you provide a bigger slice of the pie for yourself, you're necessarily going to be depriving someone else. now if you think i am going to lie down and die just so you can get yourself another plasma tv, well.... so we can either come to some equitable arrangement, or you can wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of my AK47. your choice.

^^^ imo, that's pretty much the dilemma we may face: more toys for some or social stability.

[vision-master]

Everyone deserves food, health care, free education through the post-grad level, fast response law enforcement, shelter, clothing, and a guaranteed retirement at 60. There is no question about it!

It should all be provided by the government, even if that means taxing the greedy down to sackcloth and ashes.

Anyone so selfish that they provide for THEMSELVES (and who don't give everything they have to others) is just GREEDY and should have everything taken away.

That's the only fair thing.

[Serial_Worrier]

We're not in Kansas anymore.

[sameu]

Everyone deserves food, health care, free education through the post-grad level, fast response law enforcement, shelter, clothing, and a guaranteed retirement at 60. There is no question about it!

That's the only fair thing.

Sounds good to me. Where do I sign up for that kind of government?

In Belgium

but be fast, it won't last forever

[The_Toecutter]

i don't think you get it: there isn't enough to go around, so when you provide a bigger slice of the pie for yourself, you're necessarily going to be depriving someone else. now if you think i am going to lie down and die just so you can get yourself another plasma tv, well.... so we can either come to some equitable arrangement, or you can wake up in the middle of the night to the sounds of my AK47. your choice.

Considering that the top wealthiest 1% of the world's population consume more than the bottom 90%(which still includes half the world's middle class), there is more than enough to go around for everyone... the problem is that it is poorly allocated. The ecological footprint of your typical Al Gore or Rex Tillerson would be about that of 30 upper middle class Americans(who drive $80,000 cars and live in 5 bedroom homes), and THAT is the real problem that so few seem willing to address when talking about "powerdown". Kill the consumption of the super rich, and there may be room for not just a sizable middle class along with all those less well off without exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity...

[shortonoil]

The top 1/10 of 1% of the population have incomes equal to the bottom 50%.

375 families, about 10,000 people, control 93% of the world’s wealth.

You figure it out!

[Ludi]

Kill the consumption of the super rich, and there may be room for not just a sizable middle class along with all those less well off without exceeding the Earth's carrying capacity...

I'm not so optimistic. http://www.footprintnetwork.org/en/inde ... footprint/

[deMolay]

I see this article challenged many of you like it did myself. So what is the real answer here? Do like Timothy Leary said, Tune in Drop Out, less the drugs of course. Bin there got the Tee Shirt. How can anyone with children and grandchildren bail from the system? If you have young children and you choose the Gypsy Road. The Gubmint will take your kids. The state owns your life and even your children. If you own land and decide to build a house that you can afford. The state will shut you down. Even tho no one can remember or find an instance of anyone stupid enough to build a home that fell down and killed them. You must comply and submit. If you don't pay your taxes on your own property. Which really means you are stupid enough to rent your own property back from the state to ensure employment for state employees, they will throw you out on the street. Big Gubmint and Freedom can never co-exist. A very incitefull article.

[Ludi]

How can anyone with children and grandchildren bail from the system?

Team up with other folks, preferably the childless (like me!).

http://www.ic.org/