[SeaGypsy]

Hi all,
being Australian and from the far north, with very low unemployment, I am not in a terrible predicament despite having to find a new job next time I go back.

However where I live in the Philippines most of my friends are American expats or contract workers here half the year or so.

I just spent several hours trying to find one close friend a job.

Two years ago he had been half on half off building contractor in Boston, making $30+ an hour. His wife (Filipina) had been cleaning high end houses on $20 to $25 an hour. They had saved a nest egg and decided to buy a block on the beach here to build a resort.

The couple spent almost everything and 8 months getting started; the wife went back to Boston to make some $ in January 09. For 6 months she looked for work cleaning with no success; destitute, she swapped with her husband who went to work renovating a friend's house for 3 months. When he returned they invested most of what he had saved into finishing rooms at the resort, before she went back in search of work again.

The wife is now on 9 cents more than minimum wage and just able to live. The marriage has been destroyed utterly. The resort is half built and nowhere near breaking even with 3 staff plus the manager to feed. Desperately hoping Christmas would be a boost in tourist numbers, my friend borrowed several thousand dollars from the 'Mumboys' the local Indian mafia. He did not break even 1 day over the holiday. He has no job to go to and no ticket anywhere or even money to pay his visa. He cannot borrow on or sell the property as his wife is the key signator on the deed.

My friend says he can borrow enough to fly to a job anywhere in the world he is allowed to work.
Not being net savvy he has asked me to dig around for him.
The news is far from good.
There are currently more building jobs advertised in my home city of Darwin than in the entire USA.
Looking through the jobsites, wages in the USA have really fallen a lot for skilled trades.
$10 an hour jobs for people who 2 years back were getting at least $20 are going as quick as they are put up. My friend being thousands of miles away can't compete. It looks like he will be stuck here trying to live off a half built resort without a visa.

There must be soooo many people facing real hardship now; beyond their worst expectations a couple of years back. I have told my friend's story here, not in hope of an answer, but because it makes me wonder how people's lives are being affected right now.

Living in a tourist area in the Philippines, everyone I know says business is down from 75% to 90% in 2 years. But the papers keep spinning yarns about the economy being in recovery, just like MSM does.
Really things seem to be unravelling pretty fast.

[PrestonSturges]

Wow that's a classic mistake - open a business in an field where they have no experience, big capital investment, no plan for incremental growth, no fallback plan for the facility if things falls through, no exit strategy. Often that involves a restaurant or B&B where someone doesn't think about the implications of ditching what might be a 50 hour a week cubical job with good pay for a 80 hour work week with no pay.

[Fiddlerdave]

But as we speak, millions of laid off people who cannot find any regular jobs are sinking ALL their resources in trying to be in business. So many people I know of are selling off a spare car and newer cars and buying junkers, trying to sell properties or belongings, living on their 401ks, penalties and all, and the last of their credit cards, just to get by while sinking, sinking, sinking.

I firmly believe this "desperation spending" for the very forlorn hope of a business is a good part of what is keeping the economy afloat at all. As these people exhaust their last resources and fall off unemployment, the next economy drop will be precipitated. As this story points out, with the HUGE wage drops that are occurring, these factors combined will be disastrous.

These people are also finding out the myth of being able to live on the welfare system, along with the myth of "free healthcare" at Emergency Rooms. Food stamps are the only real safety net, once your unemployment is gone.

A friend is breaking my heart, using his savings and retirement in doing all the right things to start a business as a consultant in a field he knows well, but there will be no work (he thinks this depression is just a "slump"), and he will be penniless by the time he figures that out. I have been self-employed since age 9, and fortunately learned many lessons when there were jobs I could quickly take for a while while I regrouped from a mistaken effort that cleaned me out.

Starting a business now is working with no net at all.

[SeaGypsy]

i have held back for 3 years from my previous semi self employment. My wife is always on me to start a business but can't argue we are not better off with me working overseas 3 to 6 months a year. I completely changed industries, from arts to medical in 2007/08 because I anticipated some of the issues coming. This has kept me employed when I needed to be since.

I don't think business is hopeless altogether at the moment; but it has changed drasticly and if you haven't, best stay out. But then what? If no job, no realistic business prospects, no savings, no right to welfare, an expectation of an income. Then what? When everything is liquidated. Then what?

This is one of the main reasons I have chosen to live in a third world country most of the last few years. Seems to me the modern third world is about to become average everywhere. I am not just living in the third world, I am glimpsing where the future is going.

I just came from my friend's half built resort. We smoked a nice doobie and contemplated the future as stateless white folks as the sun went down. It was kind of nice.
Hopelessness engendering hope.

[PrestonSturges]

You got to know who you are selling it to.

Like I know people from New York that bought a gun shop in the Bible Belt. The shop has a terrible web site with lots of Christian stuff on it. I told them to join a church and do not change the web site under any circumstances.

The guy with the resort - is he trying to attract divers, group tours, what? He could offer package tours to US churches, give the ministers a cut. Let them come over for a little discrete sex tourism maybe.

[Plantagenet]

Looking through the jobsites, wages in the USA have really fallen a lot for skilled trades.
$10 an hour jobs for people who 2 years back were getting at least $20 are going as quick as they are put up.

Yup. There are millions of Mexicans and other illegals in the US happy to work for $10/hr. In fact, the unemployment rate for illegals in the US is reportedly lower than the unemployment rate for US citizens.

[SeaGypsy]

You got to know who you are selling it to.

Like I know people from New York that bought a gun shop in the Bible Belt. The shop has a terrible web site with lots of Christian stuff on it. I told them to join a church and do not change the web site under any circumstances.

The guy with the resort - is he trying to attract divers, group tours, what? He could offer package tours to US churches, give the ministers a cut. Let them come over for a little discrete sex tourism maybe.

Ha! Even sex tourism has died in the #ss.
You have a point about the churchification of people under pressure though; the local American sponsored Baptists just built a new church and the pastor drives both a new Pajero and a new Honda.
Of course American Baptisits are willing to put up $ to see more Catholics 'saved'.
The same pastor has a reputation for trying to date his young single attendees; whilst being married with 5 children. Every sunday he spends half of a 3 hour church meeting literally yelling at a bunch of rice farmers about how they are pretending to be too poor to give as they chould to the church; ie. him. It's really off. My wife is a Baptist.

The surf scene here is pretty good still, being the closest surf beach to Manila, we get visitors whenever the surf is up. But it's extremely inconsistent, typhoon swell need typhoons and trade wind swells are fickle. Plus these days instead of arriving on Friday night and staying the whole weekend, the surfers now drive back to Manila or go inland for a cheap option overnight, then return in the morning.
Dive tourism is not big in this area.

This time of year there have always been a lot of visitors form the USA. The local expat watering hole used to get all the local guys plus 1 or 2 visitors each. Not this year, only the regulars. Visitors are usually people working in China or Thailand, trans Pacific travel seems to be out of most people's budget.

So far the Philippines is relatively doing ok for reasons a long way from tourism. So far in the crash it seems the country's slowness to develop tourism has become a blessing in disguise. Thailand's Baht currency has fallen about 40%, while the Philippine Peso has stabilised with the general strength of Asia's growth currencies. I think this is because Thailand invested a hell of a lot of borrowed money in tourist ventures which are currently near empty. A friend returned yesterday from Thailand and told me prices on everything in tourist areas has gone down by half in 2 years. This equates with competing directly with Cambodia and Vietnam. $5 to $10 hotel rooms $1 beers, $2 meals..

Chinese firms have begun outsourcing to countries like the Philippines. Policies like the 'Freeport Zones' in this country and tax haven status have kept money coming in. Filipino skilled workers will go anywhere in the world for a $100 week job and the Government funds agencies to facilitate people leaving the country for these jobs. Many of these workers remit most of their wages back here.
None of which really supports tourism. It is easy to see that people are being much more carefull with money than they were a year or 2 ago.

This is where the Asian worker and thus Asian countries have a huge advantage in the median term over western workers and countries. Most people here have no personal debt. Their being used to working very long hours for very meagre pay makes them ideal for the work which is still going. I don't know a westerner who would get out of bed for $100 a week and I doubt anyone here does. Meanwhile, Mexicans flood the job market in the USA, Asians drift around the world seeking any kind of work and on it goes.

The story I began this thread with can be boiled down to this couple expecting their job security and wage levels to continue ad-infinitum. The micro and the macro America reflecting each other.

Seems to me the expectation of priveleged status, with no real grasp on the ramifications of globalism, is the undoing of middle America. The days of the plumber millionaire are long gone. The reset button has been hit and the process is thoroughly underway. Of course the USG and MSM need to keep feeding lies about recovery. But there will not, cannot be; because a recovery would mean becoming even less competitive on world markets. The process of $USD destruction will go on unabated until real American wages are about the same as Asia. Meanwhile wages are rising in Asia. Where they meet is still a ways off from here.