Tag Archives: higher costs of living

I'm Out of The Box…Now What?

Posted on by

I found the following quotes and have been thoughtfully considering the meaning and application:

On Distributism (vs. Capitalism, vs. Socialism)“According to distributism, the ownership of the means of production should be spread as widely as possible among the general populace, rather than being centralized under the control of the state (state socialism) or a few large businesses or wealthy private individuals (plutarchic capitalism).”

G.K. Chesterton said “Too much capitalism does not mean too many capitalists, but too few capitalists.” Continue reading →

The Layoffs we dont see…

Posted on by

Article in the NYTimes today about unannounced layoffs and the WARN act… Companies are laying white-collar workers off in smaller numbers so they can do say without giving them notice. We as workers have no rights left in this country anymore. I think all this is appalling. Companies are using this as an excuse to cut workers, reduce pay, benefits, retirement, etc. and they wont ever bring it back once the recession is over. And yes, I am SICK of helping companies that arent hiring Americans anymore.

The unemployment figure in this country is a JOKE. You mean to tell me that we were losing over 600,000 jobs per week in Feb, but somehow we only lost 690,000 for the whole month? Where did we create those other jobs? yeah right, those other people are probably no longer collecting unemployment. And what about the part time workers and the ultimate small businesses…the self-employed. they are never counted if they are out of work. Our unemployment rate has got to be at about 20% at least.

These companies are snakes…how do they think they are going to survive if Americans can no longer buy their stuff? you think those “middle class” workers in China and India will buy the cars, computers, ipods, etc? Hate to break it to you, but the media is stretching it a bit…the middle class in those countries is still insanely small (1 or 2%) and most arent able to buy the stuff.

Thats one of the reasons automakers pay their workers more (even the foreign ones that come here do this) so that their workers can actually buy the things they make. If this fails to be the case in this country, ie. we all work at Wal-Mart for $8 an hour, this country as we know it is finished and we are headed for third world status.

I’m ready for a worker revolution. How can we do it?

College Debt: Consuming Young Americans

Posted on by

I want to talk about some of the enormous issues we, the young Americans, are facing today (and have actually been facing for awhile now) and, in later posts, write about some things that we can do to change things.

College and Student Loans

Alot of us have gone to college or are currently attending college and the belief was (and still is) that we would pay exorbitant sums of money for our degrees and get good-paying jobs with growth potential once we graduated. But, according to Marcy Gordon and The Seattle Times, the reality is that those good entry-level jobs are drying up.

Other people I know are also struggling to find the jobs that pay off those loans or are taking out more loans to go on to graduate school. My question is…What effect is all this debt going to have on our generation? Liz Pulliam Weston of MSN Money says that, on average, students have well over $20,000 in debt from loans at the age of 23 or 24 and most people I know have far more debt than that.  If your total debt is, say $40,000….thats a down payment on a house, a new car, savings for a young child’s college education, etc.

This debt truly limits our buying power when we can’t find the jobs we thought we would be that would enable us to pay down these loans. No one seems to be talking about this though. When the baby boomers are retired and the country is looking to us to invest, buy homes, take vacations, spur spending, we will still be paying hundreds of dollars in student loans a month.

The Economy

The economy at present is in bad shape and some predictions have it being very slow for 5-10 years. Many writers and reporters are talking about lost jobs in the American economy but almost no one talks about what it means for us, the young Americans. Let’s face it people: if a company is cutting back, going under or merging, what are the first jobs to go in most cases? The entry-level jobs and the early career jobs. These are OUR career paths and they are disappearing and no one is really talking about it. The Seattle TImes did put a couple of good articles in there about the absolutely paralyzing amount of college debt young people have and the drying up of good job prospects.

Ms. Pulliam’s articles from MSN Money on the subject, however, only acknowledge the debt and then go on to give ways to get out of it and stay out of it. Good advice, but if your loan payment is $300 per month (or more), your rent and utilites are, say, $800 a month, car insurance at $80 a month, health care monthly costs around $100 per month, groceries at $200 a month, most of us have credit cards too… how exactly are we supposed to put away for retirement, begin to diversify our portfolios, save for a down payment on a house and also have a “rainy day” type of savings making an average graduate salary of $30,000 per year????!!!! I want to know if other recent graduates are experiencing these kinds of realities!

I also want to discuss what we can do to change it. Obviously, voting is a huge aspect of this and I know we most likely wont see the changes for ourselves. I’m still ready to try to change things for us. I want America, the land of opportunity. I want the chance to apply my hard work and knowledge from my education to this country and make it better and I have some ideas which I will share in another post. What do you think?