Laid-off Corporate Workers Confront New Reality

Dallas Morning News ^ | 05/20/2003 | APRIL M. WASHINGTON

[Capt. Tom]

"It's OK to have a nice home and nice things, but when they're gone, that doesn't mean you lose your soul."

Men won't kill themselves over losing loved ones or tragedys like having their small children killed by automobiles.

But one thing a man can't adapt to very well is a financial reversal since that is the measurement of most men's manhood. A financial reversal without a prospect of a full recovery causes a lot of suicides among men. -Tom

[Gunslingr3]

The law of supply and demand cannot be conned. Americans will again learn to live within their means. The last generation to take that fact to heart is dying off, so it's almost not suprising it has to be taught again.

[Feldkurat_Katz]

But one thing a man can't adapt to very well is a financial reversal since that is the measurement of most men's manhood

There is also the isuue of meeting your wife's expectations. These guys often face a lose-lose situations: if they tighten their belts, their wives will dump them, if they continue to spend, the bank will foreclose.

[RooRoobird14]

It still astonishes me how many people don't save for a rainy day, and live paycheck to paycheck in spite of high incomes. They live in 4000 square foot homes, drive leased luxury cars, sport their Polo shirts and Rolex watches---and are always on the brink of financial disaster even before they lose their jobs.

In Texas, this is known as "Big Hat, No Cattle".

[waterstraat]

The article does not say which specific jobs are available and out there for these unemployed people. Many unemployed do not expect six figure jobs anymore, but where, specifically, are the jobs for $35,000 - $60,000? What address, and which companies have these available jobs and how do they apply for them? Post the addresses for all to see.

[man of Yosemite]

In California it's an expensive car parked on rental property. The lifestyle of living to appear wealthy and successful with little to back up that position is precarious. It's fine as long as the economy is growing, but when the crap hits the fan then you discover what you're really made of. I think it's better for a person to pass through tests like this early in life. Those of us who came to know the value of a buck aren't unprepared for a time like this.

[Prodigal Son]

. I was talking to someone who said, 'You're lucky you're getting your master's degree this summer,' but I don't know how lucky I am. The times changed so quickly, and it didn't allow a lot of planning to come along with that."

As technological change accelerates ever more, we are likely to find that our education system will need to be totally restructured. There will no longer be time for people to go through 12 years of normal school and then 4 years of specialization in university. By the time they get through with their degree, the knowledge they have aquired will be obsolete. Without a steady stream of graduates with relevent knowledge, technological change will slow down.

People can learn a lot faster than our current system allows. Our education system is inefficient and slow. How long is summer holiday? 3 months? Over the course of 12 yrs of education that adds up 4 extra years (going by the current education calender). In theory, you should be able to pack a four year degree in there.

One idea that keeps tickling me is the notion that one day industry itself will serve in the role currently played by our university system. If we streamlined primary and secondary education for 12 years a person could enter the work force at 18 with the same credentials as someone who now goes on to get a four year college degree. Once in industry, their education would continue but in a more hands-on fashion. Their professors would be those minds working in product research, aquiring their knowledge/science as it is developed rather than being on the back end of the curriculum/regimentation loop. That loop takes time to establish- textbooks must be printed, professors must decide how they want to teach it, activist groups on campus interfere- it's cumbersome and stupid. Professors get tenured and entrenched, political pressure is applied to turn the university into a force that tries to mold minds to the advantage of a political party later- the system is geared ever more towards creating compliant voters than it is at providing people with the skills they need to go out and survive.

This is bad for industry. Increasingly, a university degree isn't a good measure for industry to judge with anyway. A degree from some schools nowadays isn't worth anymore than toilet paper- it's a political statement more than anything else. I envision a future where a real education (ie physical sciences and knowledge that actually applies to our lives) will be handled by corporations and the university system will be more of a political training camp- creating entire classes of politicians of varying ideologies who will seek to control that portion of society that actually accomplishes anything.

[AppyPappy]

Yup. It's beyond me how people live. Ask any car salesman. The people with bad credit, no down payment and little to spend are the ones who can't live without the Accord with leather seats

[thoughtomator]

Let me know when third parties start giving out free money for $4k/mo real estate payments, I want in.

[Prodigal Son]

The lifestyle of living to appear wealthy and successful with little to back up that position is precarious.

Aye, but it's deeply ingrained into our culture. You would have to totally change the way people are brought up and how advertising affects their wants.

Something to think about too- this type of lifestyle is intrinsic to the way our society works at the moment. People live on credit. They live beyond their means. Our government doesn't offer the same extensive safety nets that the Marxist leaning European governments do. This means people are even more motivated to work- they've got to pay for those credit card bills. They've got the bills because they bought the stuff. They bought the stuff because they're currently getting paid to make the stuff. It's a loop- not quite a perpetual motion engine but almost. It's what drives our economy. The downside comes when there is an economic slowdown.

[man of Yosemite]

In my youth, I always heard about the great depression. People always talked about putting money aside for a rainy day. Somehow, people lost sight of this wisdom, particularly with help from the banks who want people to be in debt, and now are learning some hard lessons well known to the generation that lived through the thirties. There was an economic downturn a little over a decade ago that hurt a lot of people out west. Many of those people are still living the same way even after having gone through bankruptcies. Those who learn from their mistakes will weather this, and those who don't are going to be starting over again.

[MrCompletely]

"One idea that keeps tickling me is the notion that one day industry itself will serve in the role currently played by our university system. If we streamlined primary and secondary education for 12 years a person could enter the work force at 18 with the same credentials as someone who now goes on to get a four year college degree. Once in industry, their education would continue but in a more hands-on fashion. Their professors would be those minds working in product research, acquiring their knowledge/science as it is developed rather than being on the back end of the curriculum/regimentation loop. That loop takes time to establish- textbooks must be printed, professors must decide how they want to teach it, activist groups on campus interfere- it's cumbersome and stupid. Professors get tenured and entrenched, political pressure is applied to turn the university into a force that tries to mold minds to the advantage of a political party later- the system is geared ever more towards creating compliant voters than it is at providing people with the skills they need to go out and survive."

The head of the gifted-talented department at our local elementary school told us that the average child entering elementary school today will have 6.2 careers and 11.5 jobs over his/her lifetime. 6.2 complete overhauls of career! The message was that specialization is very much in order, but so is the well-rounded education. The child educated today must learn to be adaptable to rapid change, and must be prepared to change careers completely and often.

Yes, the current system of education is slow and flawed. But corporations are only geared to teach what they do and need – they cannot be expected to teach to other careers. They can only be expected to teach to what is effective for its bottom line. Even if the corporate education is top notch and efficient, the corporation will respond to economic pressures to layoff during lean times, and to outsource employment overseas to improve the bottom line. The employee who lacks the tools to adapt to a total change of career is SOL. A short-term corporate severance package will not adequately bridge the gap.

[man of Yosemite]

The professors at universities are already turning out liberals as fast as they can. They want a country full of democratic socialists.
I stayed in college in a liberal arts major for 5 years after my military service. By the time I got a good paying job, the housing market had shot ahead of me, and those who had gone to work without college had homes that were now out of my price range. I appreciate my education for the way it helped form and mature my thinking process, but it has done little for me economically. Many of lifes lessons are learned outside of the halls of our institutions in the day by day struggle to put a roof over your head and food on the table.

[Mo1]

It still astonishes me how many people don't save for a rainy day, and live paycheck to paycheck in spite of high incomes. They live in 4000 square foot homes, drive leased luxury cars, sport their Polo shirts and Rolex watches---and are always on the brink of financial disaster even before they lose their jobs.

I agree ... Amazing

My mother always told me .. never forget where you come from

[Prodigal Son]

But corporations are only geared to teach what they do and need – they cannot be expected to teach to other careers.

Oh aye. I don't discount that side of things. This is obvious. But corporations are the number one consumer of college educated people. That's essentially what most degrees are for in the first place- so the degree holder can go out and use it to find work in the corporate world. You can't disconnect that from the equation.

Universities exist because industry exists. But the reverse isn't necessarily true. There was a time when it was, but no longer. Most technological and scientific advance in the world today is made in privately owned laboratories and research departments not in the venerated universities.

What I was addressing is the future not the present. Things are speeding up. More and more. This has been noted all across the technological spectrum, not just in the computing world. This is operating at an exponential rate. In twenty years we will be much more than twenty years advanced.

To further an anology to the computing industry- the bottle neck Moore's Law faces is the physical limit on minituarization. They must solve this problem or they will run into a wall soon. The same goes for this problem with education turnover. As things speed up more and more the time you spend specializing your education in a univeristy will be wasted. Not because it is bad knowledge but because you aren't actively applying it to something and by the time you get your degree there will be nothing to actively apply it to. If you were in a productive environment for those years you could profit while you learned and so could industry.

Obviously, there's still going to be downsizing and corporate bankruptcies. You can't remove that from the loop either way, but the time you spend in university is non-productive. Eventually, that will have to be fixed.

Note, too- I'm not saying you would go to work and then sit in a class while a corporate teacher taught you- that would be the same thing in the end but run a bit more efficiently. No, what I'm saying is you do away with the 3 month holiday for school children, clean up violence and other distractions out of schools. Education Grades 1-12 would become HARDCORE. You're there to learn how to survive not to play graba$$ or learn how to save the rainforests. By the time you got your high school diploma there would be no need to go on to college because you would've already packed that amount of learning into the same time period. A person could then move on to the work place where all their further education would be hands on- this is how humans learn best anyway. "Monkey see, monkey do" isn't just a funny saying it's the truth.

Vast amounts of money that could otherwise go into the ecoonomy are thrown into the big institutions of higher learning but the returns we receive are diminishing. The universities today are actively engaged in the political goal of destroying a person's ability to think critically. Sure, the liberals benefit at the ballot box, but industry suffers when they get people who don't understand reality well enough to manipulate it, to build it. Industry will eventually have to solve this bottle neck and this is one way I see for them to do so.

[independentmind]

Universities exist because industry exists. But the reverse isn't necessarily true.

I think you have it backwards. Universities existed before large scale industry did. Your suggestion that corporations take over higher education would be completely disastrous.

[familyofman]

"Americans will again learn to live within their means. The last generation to take that fact to heart is dying off..."

Does that mean all the stories my Father always told us (too many times to count) about the Great Depression will now become reality for the coming generation. Man, that is a truly depressing thought - that my father was right, after all.
Only the Gate's and others that already have theirs will know the true joys of "good" living, and still within their means. For the rest of us, we will need to learn to live with ever tightening belts as we slip into a lifestyle like the serfs was had.

[laotzu]

But corporations are the number one consumer of college educated people.

When you speak of 'corporations' & 'the corporate world', I am not sure I understand exactly of whom you speak. Could you flesh that out a bit please.

[upchuck]

The me-me-me generation lead to the now-now-now generation which lead to the spend-spend-spend generation. And now they're receiving their just deserts. People who live/spend like there's no tomorrow will eventually get caught.

IMHO, everyone, at least twice a year, should have a "I just lost my job" drill. Think about the implications, etc. You'll be better off.