[Southack]

"It is when you have no realistic job alternative that we have a problem, and that is where we are today."

Call me when you see your first breadline.

The Great Depression saw breadlines, and back then there really weren't any realistic job alternatives.

Today, with 5.7% unemployment, however, that's hardly the case. Your particular *field* may be hard hit, but overall the nation is doing fine. Any official unemplyment rate below 6% is full employment nationwide.

Europe has 10 to 11% unemployment and they're not hollering as loud as the few laid off techies around here.

[ARCADIA]

Call me when you see your first breadline.

The modern breadline takes the form of mortgage refinancing and equity based credit lines. It works well until the system becomes insolvent. If you are unemployed you pull an equity credit line and cruise along normally for a while. It helps if nominal interests are low and the value of your home doubles or triples. But, you are still carrying a very large debt load, and sooner or later it will come due.

[Sam the Sham]

Today, with 5.7% unemployment, however, that's hardly the case. Your particular *field* may be hard hit, but overall the nation is doing fine. Any official unemplyment rate below 6% is full employment nationwide.

As I stated elsewhere, when you factor in people with temp jobs because they can't find real jobs the real unemployment rate is about 12-13%.

Europe has 10 to 11% unemployment and they're not hollering as loud as the few laid off techies around here.

In Europe unemployment is something like half pay indefinitely. And when you count in socialized medicine and possibly subsidized housing and generous retirement benefits being unemployed in Europe for an extended period of time does not mean bankruptcy the way it does here. So in Europe people unemployed people don't have to take temp jobs. So the European and American rates are really about equal except for the fact that Americans have no social safety net like Europeans do.