http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/175543/tomgram:_barbara_ehrenreich,_looting_the_lives_of_the_poor/

Now we face the same problems as back in 1979, only worse.  Howard Ruff has updated How to Prosper.  But we got through the last thirty years in mostly decent shape.  There was no hyperinflationary collapse.

Why is this time different?

More specifically, the bad things that we feared at the end of the 1970s never materialized.  Why should I worry this time?

Two thoughts:

• In 1979, we were still a productive country.  The Chinese were not in the business of manufacturing anything and everything for export.  There were still many businesses that were run in the interest of providing whatever goods or services they purported to provide, rather than making this quarter’s numbers.
• In 1980, Ronald Reagan was elected President.  Much has been written about how he turned the country around and made us prosperous again.  But he didn’t balance the budget, and indeed, first brought us into the era of huge deficits.  Reagan was every bit as inflationary as his predecessors, if not more.  But there’s one difference:
  • Under previous Presidents, inflationary spending went everywhere in the economy, and consumer prices went up along with everything else.  When the price of bread and gasoline go up, people get angry.
  • Under Reagan and subsequent Presidents, inflationary spending got directed into the investment markets.  Consumer prices still went up, but nowhere near as quickly as before.  But the stock market and the real estate market shot up.  When the prices of houses and stocks go up, people are happy, as they think they’re getting richer.

In 1979, we had margin for error.  That margin has been relentlessly squeezed out over the last 30 years.

Yes, it’s different this time.

This is why we are in the pickle that we are in.

How many times has this happened to you? You see a job ad; the job sounds perfect for you.

You fire off your resume; you get a call to come down and discuss the job.

And then you find out that what is in the ad does not reflect what the actual job duties are.

A very good example: the last interview I had.

The job that the company was filling: an admin assistant/customer service rep.

When I was at the interview, I asked what my job duties would be. “You will be doing the same thing as the other 2 people I have working in the office.”

This was a small company — maybe 8 or 10 guys in the warehouse, producing the product (wallpaper) and 2 individuals in the office. He had no other office staff; the owner did not have an assistant or admin.

What this was was an order taker/order processer job; that’s my guess. The “Admin assistant” part came in probably because there is paper work to be filed, the occasional email/letter to send a client, etc. That is not the same thing as being an admin assistant.

Meanwhile, this guy has been running the company for over 30 years. You think he would get it by now. NO?

A company that is 12 people tops, including the owner - and this would be the third admin. Nope.

He just wasted my time.

Here’s another example: During an interview, the hiring manager asked me “Was your admin assistant job sales or admin oriented?” I told her sales oriented.  “This job is heavily administrative…”

I have done BOTH. And besides, if it was heavily administrative, why was that fact not reflected in the job advertisement?

Any job ad you look at is automatically prefaced CONTAINS LIES AND OTHER MISLEADING INFORMATION.

What you are taking now when you reply to an ad is a chance.

When you get to the interview let your first question be “What are the duties of this job?” And then listen carefully. Also ask what you’d be doing on a daily basis and for the interviewer to give you an example of what a typical day on the job is.

In a real retirement plan, the money collected from you and/or your employer is invested over time.  In a defined-benefit plan, there is a commitment to pay you in the future at a specified rate.  In a defined-contribution retirement plan, the money is held in your name and invested.  But in either case, the money is invested in a productive enterprise, so that it will grow, and the amount paid in at the beginning is driven by the amount to be collected at the end.

Under Social Security, the money that you and your employer pay is lent to the rest of the government and spent.  The money that you ultimately receive in benefits is paid by current workers.  The vaunted ‘trust fund’ is an accounting fiction.  And the politicians who vote for new goodies can just as easily vote to take them away.

I didn’t know about defined-benefit and defined-contribution plans in 1979, when I was finishing high school.  But the rest of it, I knew back then.

And it wasn’t a deep dark secret: I read about it in books from the library and bookstores.

The government wants us to believe that Social Security is a pension plan.  They even send out statements every year with the benefits that we might receive, if the politicians don’t change their minds.  But it isn’t so.

Now, I’m roughly halfway through my working life.  With the recent discussions over the Social Security tax, it’s really clear that it’s fake.  (The employee share of Social Security tax was cut by a third a couple of years ago, as a temporary measure.  The cut was continued after raucous debate, as it was the only tax cut that reached the majority of ordinary Americans.  A real pension plan, driven by the need to pay people in the future, would never do that.)

Yet people still believe that Social Security represents a commitment for their retirement.

Now that I’m halfway through my working life, I would have liked to believe that Social Security would be there for me.

But now I’m sure that I will ultimately retire in a coffin.

On one level, it seems eminently reasonable.  Civil marriage gives a couple a passel of legal rights with respect to each other: inheritance, joint tax returns, access to medical data, etc.  If two men or two women are in a committed relationship, and want to avail themselves of these rights, they should be able to.

But outside of the legal definition, and the couple themselves, is such a couple really married?

Marriage has existed for eons as a basis for family and children.  It’s true that not every married couple has children, but if you have a man and a woman who presumably like each other’s company sleeping together, you have to at least admit the possibility.

Today, heterosexual marriage is not the ‘basis’ that it used to be: some 40% of the births in the United States are to unmarried women.   Admitting marriage between two men or two women would further erode the status of marriage as a benchmark for families.

And this is what many people worry about: not so much the rights of gay couples, but the impact of redefining ‘marriage’ so that it is no longer exclusively heterosexual.

Unfortunately, railing against it won’t help.  The societal forces that led us to consider gay marriage won’t go away if we pretend they don’t exist.  The Rick Santorum solution–if we legislate the morality of the 1950s, we’ll all be happy and prosperous again–won’t work.

While I acknowledge that gay marriage is an idea whose time has come, I don’t have to like it.

He got on the line and told me the next step is an interview with the HR department, 7 time zones away.

I waited all day Thursday and half the day on Friday: no phone call here. And no email from HR, asking me when I am available and what time, for a phone interview.

Yesterday I sent that same gent an email, telling him I never heard from Hr and would he know when the interview by phone is scheduled for — these high end execs all have calendars, right? — it’s now after 2 pm and I never got a hollaback from the ceo.

I consider this a dropped ball. Common sense and courtesy has it, does it not, that you email first and ask when the candidate is avaiable for a phone interview?

I did some research and googled; this is a very “young” company with 2 offices: one here and one overseas — and their LinkedIn lists about 12 positions in the office stateside — but no names are attached to each position.

Wow. Are they looking to hire 12 people (including the job I applied for — that one has no name attached to it, either) or are these positions currently filled but the person’s name is just not filled in?

This company oddly reminds me of a start up I worked for briefly way back in 2000.  The company was fine — until it sort of exploded and the director of management hired many many new people (that’s a story in itself). That’s when everything imploded and went down.

There was nobody to supervise and monitor these new bodies (it was an unspoken “there’s your seat; welcome aboard. Get the hell to work”) and there was no routine for each person. IT’s hard to describe but this was sort of like a reverse lifeboat drill.

That company was sold to some other concern several months later and the parent company itself went out of business — securities fraud.

Anyway, I consider this a dropped ball.  If you can’t follow through on a phone interview, wow…. what can I tell ya?

 XYZ SCHOOL OF ALLIED HEALTH
IS VERY HAPPY TO ANNOUNCE THAT WE HAVE NEW PROGRAMS AVAIL
WE HAVE THE FOLLOWING
EKG
PHARMACY TECH
CNA
CPR
CHHA ( TENEMOS CLASSES EN ESPANOL)

WE HAVE MUCH MUCH MORE
WE HAVE AM/PM AND YES YES WEEKENDS CLASSES !!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
FOR MORE INFORMATION CALL XXXE AT XXXXXX
OR YOU CAN GO ONLINE AT XXXXX
CALL NOW SEAT ARE LIMITED

Pharmacy techs, CNAs and such used to be jobs where you trained on the job.

Perfect for allied health care students. When they graduated, there’d be more to take their place, which was fine; I liked to call these jobs “permanent temporary jobs.”

I wonder if the potential student knows that the job they’re paying to train for pays a whopping $12 an hour…or less???? Not livable wage and there is a very very high turnover in jobs like these.

Hospitals in my area and in my state are not hiring. They are closing or in limbo; quite a few of them are up for sale, or looking for buyers. One is in a “sanctuary town” — the town is filled with Mexicans. (and the state just gave another big monetary chunk to that hospital; they got 100 million a few years ago to keep the place open and alive)

So you throw money into the hat, as usual —- and no job guaranteed. There is “job placement service” — they promise you the world and in the end you’ve taken a handful of worthless courses and no job. AND no doubt a school loan to pay off.

And so it goes with the education cartel. You pays your money and you takes your chance, as somebody famous once said.

Growing up I lived what can be best explained as a Brady Bunch lifestyle. This show which was on during my early life (and in syndication as I got older)is the way I often describe my childhood. My mom gave up a career she loved to stay at home with me and my brother.  The reason was that back when she was becoming a mother the woman’s movement was just starting. Oh there have always been women who worked and had kids but these women were often attacked. My mother being more traditional than many women she worked with felt it was best she raise kids full time. Luckily she had this choice as my dad made good money. As a result I think I had many advantages my friends with working moms didn’t. She was able to teach us how to read and write before kindergarten and both me and my brother always did well in school. Later on she became the perfect mom and she was a Brownie Leader, homeroom mom, school helper, and pretty much anything that could be done in the classroom she did. She became friends with my first grade teacher Mrs Silverstein whom I absolutely adored and was devastated when she moved to California. In between school she would shuttle me to all my activities such as dance (I was chosen to hold the flag in several parades and the teacher wanted me to study at a famous school like Joffrey), CCD (religious education), gymnastics (where the teacher advised me to quit because I was way too tall to ever be a gymnast and at 5′7 I never would have been successful) and all the various acting and music classes I took.

I mention all of this to kind of explain where I am coming from. Most of my friends lived the same life and as children we were taught that as girls we were mothers first and foremost. The friends who had mothers who worked were often ostracized by women like my mother who would often say they weren’t “real” mothers. Later on though my mom did go back to work and eventually became manager of a print shop for a friend of hers. Side note but this friend of hers had two salesman who went on to successful careers in acting and comedy. The one salesman is a famous comedian that my dad grew up with and he knows his family as do I.

I suppose this background could explain many of my female classmates but then the 80’s happened. What I find interesting about the 80’s is that while Reagan was far more conservative than either Ford or Carter this is the era when the superwoman/career woman exploded. Maybe it was because at this point many families needed two salaries to survive or many other things, like the divorce rate increasing but more women went to work. This was shown quite heavily in the sitcoms of the time such as the Cosby Show, Family Ties, Growing Pains and Who’s The Boss. The few shows that portrayed a stay at home mom were often shows set in the past like Happy Days or the Wonder Years. This is also when my mom went back to work. I was in high school during the 80’s (graduated 1989)and we were pushed to go to college and get education. I don’t even know if women were pushed to consider being a housewife anymore in school. Unlike during my mom’s era girls were not required to take home ec anymore and we had many sports to play which I enjoyed being as athletic as I am.

So then me and my female classmates got an education, a career and then something strange happened. Many of my classmates, the ones who wanted careers like lawyers, doctors, and CEOs had their first babies and quit to stay at home with them. These were not unskilled women, in fact one childhood friend was at one point a news anchor at a La Crosse television station and eventually became the pr director for the state of Wisconsin. Another person I knew was a radio personality. In fact many of the women I worked with in radio ended up becoming stay at home moms. Why? I don’t understand it but in a way I do and I wonder if it goes back to the way we were socialized or maybe the way it’s always going to be. Maybe they got tired of competiting with the big boys knowing being female they will never be equal in the corporate world. Maybe the idea to be a mom is a stronger feeling than having a career.

Interestingly there is a certain demographic I have seen the opposite and this is my black classmates. Most of them did attend college like my white coworkers, and many have degrees. However not as many are stay at home moms and many are single moms. Contrary to popular belief while many are raising kids they had or adopted out of wedlock very few are on welfare. Most are career women who didn’t want to marry or never met mr right.

This all ties into me. I never had the desire to be a stay at home mom, though in the last couple of years it’s something I have considered.  While I may have considered being a mom, most of the guys I meet still expect their wife to do most of the childcare and housework, even men who want their wives to work. I find this hypocritical of men but at the same time being that men who have careers tend to go farther than women I understand this. While I know I would prefer to be married and have a career my choices might be limited to never finding work again and never marrying or never working again and being married and perhaps being a mom. I am striking out with jobs but am having a little better luck with men. Then again I may get a dream job and decide not to have kids but to be honest never having or adopting kids kind of saddens me. My biggest fear is being a crazy cat lady who yells at the kids to stay off my lawn while I am eating tuna fish out of the can. Being unemployed and single just seems the saddest thing. I have met women in their 50’s who concentrated on a career only to have it go away and that scares me because at that point being alone might also be without my family or elderly parents. Then again my parents are still healthy and until a few years ago so were my grandparents.

To sum all of this up I really don’t know what is the best thing for women in our culture. I am glad we have choices not available many years ago but is it good to have all these choices? does it affect our futures? will those women who never have kids regret it years later? will those women who gave up careers resent their kids and husband? why don’t men have these same issues is it because men are in control more than women? there’s so many questions to be asked about all of this.

More than most of the shows I watched in that time this show related to my high school experience. That’s not to say it was my favorite show, I probably liked a few shows better, just that it dealt with an issue close to me: smart kids. See, in high school I was in honors courses myself and a few others I could have been in but chose not to. I had low self esteem back then and was convinced I was stupid and ugly though in reality this wasn’t the case. However it was discovered I had an extremely high IQ and needed to be with other smart kids. One of my classmates is now a plastic surgeon to the stars and another is a rocket scientist. However, for as many smart people in my classes and how many went on to be successful what I find interesting is how many didn’t. Many went on to menial jobs, others work in fields that don’t require degrees and quite a few women went on to become stay at home moms. I’ll discuss this topic in another thread.

Getting back though to the smart kid issue and what disturbs me is how as a society we do not value smart people, especially women. We make fun of smart women who aren’t attractive. Smart men are not picked on as much but in movies they are often the blunt of jokes. However when it comes to employers they often don’t want smart people. When I hear the word “overqualified” my first thought was “too smart”. There was a case where a cop wasn’t hired because he had a higher score than the police department wanted. I personally know far more unemployed lawyers, PH.Ds and people with Masters than I do high school dropouts. They use the excuse “they are too qualified” but it’s really they want people they can control. Smart people aren’t as easily controlled. This is also why they give psych tests to see those people they can control. Employers claim they can’t find skilled people but this is a ruse to bring in people from other countries.

I wonder if the these fictional students were real students would they be in the same situation as someone like me, competiting for the few skilled jobs with morons (who get the jobs)or the unskilled jobs, or would they be successful? I would place a bet that they would be like me or the majority of my smart classmates who are either working for themselves or unemployed/underemployed. Losing jobs to a stupid frat boy who happens to be the son of a rich guy. We had one of these for president and look how well things turned out (sarcasm)and currently have another one running for president and could win if the economy stays terrible.

It says a lot about our society when we have highly qualified people being rejected for people who barely graduated high school or college.

I think what bothers me about interviews is how often my skills take a backseat to my “fit” in a company. I don’t get this idea because my last job went strictly on skills not fit. In hindsight if any job wasn’t a fit it was that one because I was completely different from most of my coworkers. Most of those who were there when I started were older, white, male, and high school graduates at best. Later on a few were around my age, but still white, male and high school graduates except the higher lever trainers who all had masters.

But anyway, enough about my former job, but my point is the whole thing about fit is another way of saying “you are too old, too fat, etc” for our department. I get the idea of for example only wanting people with masters degrees in communications, I don’t get the idea of only wanting thing, young white males in a department (or whatever the desired demographic is). I am 41, decent looking, not fat, young looking and very up with latest trends. Going by my skills I should have been hired by one of these jobs, but always get rejected. It doesn’t matter whether I am too good or underskilled both choices result in my rejection. I can only assume my “fit”. Maybe it’s because I am more of an introvert? I try to hide this by appearing outgoing.

I just hope and pray  get this job because I am so tired of this. I am tired of hearing “your skills are impressive but we will hire someone else” and want to hear “you are the chosen one”. Oddly I think I have a better chance of winning the lottery than I do a decent job.