Out of a job ? again ? or suddenly scared of losing that job you complained so much about just recently ? You are not alone. Some thoughts of an unemployed. Share your comments and suggestions here too.
Some thinking people actually have become more than full up with all the Obama fawning and the constant admiring of his continual PR and his continual campaigning is getting old too. This Prez said, same as prior one, go buy more to help the economy recover. Huh ? How ?
Some people on unemployment are now saying it is good to 'go on the dole' as the Brits say, and assume that if a job is not easily found quickly, then just take the government's money [ that is= all the taxpayers' money, including your prior employed payments ] and pretend it is all 'for free now'...not to worry...just take a year's vacation on the back of the rest of the hard-laboring-citizens? "Stay on unemployment as long as you can", many like to advise.
But is that called helpful - moral - fair - and honest advice? Some of us differ. That benefit is only a temporary tide-over so we can continue searching, persisting, learning and trying some more. Not a good answer, even if the govt is now giving it up for longer or with more benefits. It's still 'the dole', not to be ashamed of, but not an uplifting way to live.
The easy way out is not the best way, nor is the selfish taking "time off with pay" a socially conscionable act. If you need time off because of some serious emotional or health reason, that is different, but just because work is more difficult to find or with less pay than you had before... that walk-away is not a healthy choice for you, or the rest of us either. In fact, the too-long-time-off creates other attitude problems for returning to employment.
Better yet is learning how to trade and barter and help each other,any other, collectively, cooperatively, and willingly.
Spend less and realize that the good-economic-with-debt- times were a faked up advertised illusion, that you too believed as if no consequences would ever occur when over-consumption was indulged.
Realize the ways USAns have been sold on luxury, regularly eating 'out', buying fancy new items [phones, electronics, clothes, toys] , and always "more" with it's attendant Entitlement Attitude was fun but that was also a fake lure. All that is excessive has it's cyclic turn and then ...plop ! right back into the good earth dirt mud.
And what is wrong with being frugal, sharing sparingly but lovingly with others ?
It's not hard to do unless you have become indulgent, expectant, and spoiled-childlike.
So how can each person share whatever skills they have accumulated in-Trade with someone else's talents and resources ? Barter more. What's so hard about coming back around to where the global citizens had less, saved more, did without all those up-scale extras ?
And....without complaints and self-pity. Without taking advantage of anyone else or even the system?
Can't we do as others do : Share apt. spaces, and learn how to "get along" with others that seemed so difficult before . Not everyone needs a whole apt. for themselves alone, or even just 'for 2'. Like so many other peoples of this world, spaces can be used in shifts, or shared in different ways as work spaces, not just stored as 'sitting rooms'.
And what tragedies occur if time is used more practically with a lot less TV, movie, DVD, and passive other-story-watching ?
Being INVOLVED in real life with real people is a real learning experience...yes, again.
Learning to tolerate, accept and cooperate is a whole level we have easily avoided by the being able to live separately while previously affording 'my very own' for a while now.
Can we now take the challenges we have avoided, like having to live alongside each other, again, instead of separating [like spoiled milk], or instead of looking down at having-to-share, yes, again.
Who ever said this USAmerican life is suppose to always be more filled with more stuff, including electronics, toys, adult toys, and full wallets ? Who ever promised us that we would always get MORE ...while also working longer hours for less and like it too ?
We've heard that actual wages have not risen in real inflated dollars since 1997, but we have demanded to stay in that dream in which we could buy more and more because we "deserve" to keep always buying. Besides buying being a 'national duty' by this and prior Prez's decrees too.
Is it Depression, recession, hard times or just 'harder than we ever thought it Should Be'? The word description is not what is important. It is how we go into the challenges and find creative ways of learning to live...again...differently than we have grown accustomed to...but still not so bad as is feared and complained.
We still have what friends we realize, yes, we can trust and like. We may even have family to which we must re-connect back.. yes, again. We may find that regular home-cooking, doing our own cleaning and laundry, driving less and taking public transportation at times, reading for personal growth and learning, and talking to strangers [who love to share their secrets and advice too] is not as bad as we thought. The simple life. The fuller life.
Hey, why the sour look ? The free paycheck from the govt is not free for all. But while finding clever ways of making just-enough to keep us housed and fed until another job or opportunity emerges, we can still stay free, independent, inter-dependent and be adults.
The welfare roles are not the best opportunity for growth or gain, tho many do lazily prefer them.
Try another way, for a change. Grow. Be willing to do something 'different' than just get. For a change.
(C) maryjanie 2009
Showing posts with label recession. Show all posts
Showing posts with label recession. Show all posts
Tuesday, April 14, 2009
Saturday, February 21, 2009
News is turning 'funny' and religious instead of being factual now....
the $170 MILLION INAUGURATION:
"OBAMA'S inauguration has been financed partially [but how much actually ?] by BAILED-OUT WALL STREET executives: [you did not know this either ? right !]
so while OUR country is in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, but this isn't stopping them rich donors and the OUR government [read: our paid to govt taxes] from spending $170 million, or more, on the inauguration of the new Prez Obama . The actual swearing-in ceremony will cost $1.24 million, according to Carole Florman, spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies."
Who is paying for what here ? Who agreed to those image-boosting fancy-militaristic ceremonial shows to be paid for by US, the ones who can barely afford that old TV?
and ARE OUR OLD NEWSPAPERS ARE SHIFTING ALLIANCES OR JUST BEING TORN UP TOO ?
It has been reported that "USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, The San Jose Mercury News and The Kansas City Star have something in common, aside from some of the biggest names in an endangered industry. By the start of February, not one of them will have the same top editor it had when 2008 began. Most of them will have different publishers, too."
Does this mean we have a new slant and new commercial owners to tell us what is happening and how to think about our new "news"? Where do the truth & facts lie?
then, "the Vatican will soon have its own channel on YouTube, where the Catholic faithful or the curious will be able to see Pope Benedict or Church events."
Is that cool or more publicity for strict religious teachings to those who do not want to belong or be preached to or convinced of that Catholic or Christian point of view?
(C) maryjanie 2009
"OBAMA'S inauguration has been financed partially [but how much actually ?] by BAILED-OUT WALL STREET executives: [you did not know this either ? right !]
so while OUR country is in the middle of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, but this isn't stopping them rich donors and the OUR government [read: our paid to govt taxes] from spending $170 million, or more, on the inauguration of the new Prez Obama . The actual swearing-in ceremony will cost $1.24 million, according to Carole Florman, spokeswoman for the Joint Congressional Committee on Inaugural Ceremonies."
Who is paying for what here ? Who agreed to those image-boosting fancy-militaristic ceremonial shows to be paid for by US, the ones who can barely afford that old TV?
and ARE OUR OLD NEWSPAPERS ARE SHIFTING ALLIANCES OR JUST BEING TORN UP TOO ?
It has been reported that "USA Today, The Wall Street Journal, The Los Angeles Times, The Washington Post, The Chicago Tribune, The San Francisco Chronicle, The Baltimore Sun, The San Jose Mercury News and The Kansas City Star have something in common, aside from some of the biggest names in an endangered industry. By the start of February, not one of them will have the same top editor it had when 2008 began. Most of them will have different publishers, too."
Does this mean we have a new slant and new commercial owners to tell us what is happening and how to think about our new "news"? Where do the truth & facts lie?
then, "the Vatican will soon have its own channel on YouTube, where the Catholic faithful or the curious will be able to see Pope Benedict or Church events."
Is that cool or more publicity for strict religious teachings to those who do not want to belong or be preached to or convinced of that Catholic or Christian point of view?
(C) maryjanie 2009
BBC explains part of what confuses us all, money down the drains
this is a partial reposting from
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7874667.stm
"Walden Bello is a university professor, senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, and president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition.
Week after week, we see the global economy contracting at a pace worse than that predicted by the gloomiest analysts.
We are now, it is clear, in no ordinary recession but are headed for a global depression that could last for many years.
The origins of the present crisis lie in the strategies adopted by economic and political elites to resolve the crises of stagflation - the coexistence of low growth with high inflation - which followed rapid growth in the post-World War II era, both in the G8 economies and in the underdeveloped economies.
Stagflation, however, was but a symptom of a deeper problem: the reconstruction of Germany and Japan and the rapid growth of industrialising economies like Brazil, Taiwan, and South Korea added tremendous new productive capacity and increased global competition, while income inequality within countries and between countries limited the growth of purchasing power and demand, thus eroding profitability.
Dilemma
This produced the dilemma of overproduction.
One "escape route" from the conundrum of overproduction, and for maintaining and raising profitability, was "financialisation".
Unsold Japanese cars in a UK showroom
Overproduction: many cars made, but no-one to sell them to
With investment in industry and agriculture yielding low profits as a result of over-capacity, large amounts of surplus funds have been circulating in or invested and reinvested in the financial sector - that is, the financial sector began turning on itself.
The result has been a divergence between a hyperactive financial economy and a stagnant real economy.
This was not accidental - the financial economy exploded precisely to make up for the stagnation owing to overproduction of the real economy.
Profits, not value
One indicator of the super-profitability of the financial sector is the fact that 40% of the total profits of US financial and nonfinancial corporations is accounted for by the financial sector although it is responsible for only 5% of US gross domestic product (and even that is likely to be an overestimate).
The problem with investing in financial sector operations is that it is tantamount to squeezing value out of already created value. It may create profit, yes, but it does not create new value - only industry, agriculture, trade, and services create new value.
Because profit is not based on value that is created, investment operations become very volatile and prices of stocks, bonds, and other forms of investment can depart very radically from their real value.
Profits then depend on taking advantage of upward price departures from the value of commodities, then selling before reality enforces a "correction", that is, a crash back to real values. The radical rise of prices of an asset far beyond real values is what is called the formation of a bubble.
Virus
We are far from over the worst of this crisis.
In the US real-estate sector, millions more mortgages are likely to go into default over the next few years.
Securities with a value of as much as $2 trillion dollars (£1.4 trillion) have already been injected, like a virus, into the global financial system.
Massive injections of taxpayers' cash have failed to kickstart lending again. Not surprisingly, with global capitalism's circulatory system seizing up, it was only a matter of time before the real economy would contract, as it has with frightening speed in the last few weeks.
Globalisation has ensured that economies that went up together in the boom would also go down together, with unparalleled speed, in the bust, the end of which is nowhere to be discerned. [snip]
Discussions at the World Social Forum in Belem focused on many aspects of the financial crisis that are not being publicly discussed at official or business level.
For instance, while strong calls for re-regulation are made, none of these proposals address the fact that the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Gats) - a treaty created under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) - actually seeks to deregulate trade in services, including financial services.
These liberalising international treaty rules deprive governments of the right to intervene.
The calls for re-regulation would require a dismantling of the whole architecture of treaties agreed over the past 10 years, mainly through the WTO
Governments' hands tied
Under Gats in the EU, governments cannot limit the size or the value of the financial services operations.
This prevents governments from intervening to ensure that a financial service company does not become "too big to fail" or have a destabilising effect on the country that hosts it.
Industrialised countries have gone further by committing themselves to more liberalisation and deregulation under a Gats annex that precludes regulation and opens the way for any new financial service, however speculative
agreements which have been working towards opening up the financial sector, and which were backed by the US and the EU.
Pigeons against backdrop of City of London
The City of London's success was based on deregulation
These were subject to concerted and secretive lobbying of negotiators by financial corporations, resulting in negotiators collaborating closely with the financial industry.
The liberalisation of financial services was included in trade treaties without any guarantee of whether the right regulation and supervision was in place.
In fact, the EU requested many countries to eliminate particular prudential rules, some of which had been put in place after the Asian crisis." [snip]
(C) maryjanie 2009
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/business/7874667.stm
"Walden Bello is a university professor, senior analyst at Focus on the Global South, and president of the Freedom from Debt Coalition.
Week after week, we see the global economy contracting at a pace worse than that predicted by the gloomiest analysts.
We are now, it is clear, in no ordinary recession but are headed for a global depression that could last for many years.
The origins of the present crisis lie in the strategies adopted by economic and political elites to resolve the crises of stagflation - the coexistence of low growth with high inflation - which followed rapid growth in the post-World War II era, both in the G8 economies and in the underdeveloped economies.
Stagflation, however, was but a symptom of a deeper problem: the reconstruction of Germany and Japan and the rapid growth of industrialising economies like Brazil, Taiwan, and South Korea added tremendous new productive capacity and increased global competition, while income inequality within countries and between countries limited the growth of purchasing power and demand, thus eroding profitability.
Dilemma
This produced the dilemma of overproduction.
One "escape route" from the conundrum of overproduction, and for maintaining and raising profitability, was "financialisation".
Unsold Japanese cars in a UK showroom
Overproduction: many cars made, but no-one to sell them to
With investment in industry and agriculture yielding low profits as a result of over-capacity, large amounts of surplus funds have been circulating in or invested and reinvested in the financial sector - that is, the financial sector began turning on itself.
The result has been a divergence between a hyperactive financial economy and a stagnant real economy.
This was not accidental - the financial economy exploded precisely to make up for the stagnation owing to overproduction of the real economy.
Profits, not value
One indicator of the super-profitability of the financial sector is the fact that 40% of the total profits of US financial and nonfinancial corporations is accounted for by the financial sector although it is responsible for only 5% of US gross domestic product (and even that is likely to be an overestimate).
The problem with investing in financial sector operations is that it is tantamount to squeezing value out of already created value. It may create profit, yes, but it does not create new value - only industry, agriculture, trade, and services create new value.
Because profit is not based on value that is created, investment operations become very volatile and prices of stocks, bonds, and other forms of investment can depart very radically from their real value.
Profits then depend on taking advantage of upward price departures from the value of commodities, then selling before reality enforces a "correction", that is, a crash back to real values. The radical rise of prices of an asset far beyond real values is what is called the formation of a bubble.
Virus
We are far from over the worst of this crisis.
In the US real-estate sector, millions more mortgages are likely to go into default over the next few years.
Securities with a value of as much as $2 trillion dollars (£1.4 trillion) have already been injected, like a virus, into the global financial system.
Massive injections of taxpayers' cash have failed to kickstart lending again. Not surprisingly, with global capitalism's circulatory system seizing up, it was only a matter of time before the real economy would contract, as it has with frightening speed in the last few weeks.
Globalisation has ensured that economies that went up together in the boom would also go down together, with unparalleled speed, in the bust, the end of which is nowhere to be discerned. [snip]
Discussions at the World Social Forum in Belem focused on many aspects of the financial crisis that are not being publicly discussed at official or business level.
For instance, while strong calls for re-regulation are made, none of these proposals address the fact that the General Agreement on Trade in Services (Gats) - a treaty created under the auspices of the World Trade Organization (WTO) - actually seeks to deregulate trade in services, including financial services.
These liberalising international treaty rules deprive governments of the right to intervene.
The calls for re-regulation would require a dismantling of the whole architecture of treaties agreed over the past 10 years, mainly through the WTO
Governments' hands tied
Under Gats in the EU, governments cannot limit the size or the value of the financial services operations.
This prevents governments from intervening to ensure that a financial service company does not become "too big to fail" or have a destabilising effect on the country that hosts it.
Industrialised countries have gone further by committing themselves to more liberalisation and deregulation under a Gats annex that precludes regulation and opens the way for any new financial service, however speculative
agreements which have been working towards opening up the financial sector, and which were backed by the US and the EU.
Pigeons against backdrop of City of London
The City of London's success was based on deregulation
These were subject to concerted and secretive lobbying of negotiators by financial corporations, resulting in negotiators collaborating closely with the financial industry.
The liberalisation of financial services was included in trade treaties without any guarantee of whether the right regulation and supervision was in place.
In fact, the EU requested many countries to eliminate particular prudential rules, some of which had been put in place after the Asian crisis." [snip]
(C) maryjanie 2009
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