Laid-off Corporate Workers Confront New Reality

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

[thoughtomator]

Eventually some limosuine liberal will find a way to tax my paltry paycheck even more in order to subsidize these peoples' delusions.

[acs]

~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.~

This is true. Women like those do not deserve to be anyone's wife, however it seems to be the norm these days for women to have these ridiculous materialistic expectations.

[TomSmedley]

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.

Actually, our system is designed to produce docile factory hands and cannon fodder who do (and think) as told. And it fulfills that task very well. 80% of what 8th grade students study is review of what they learned in 4th grade. "Look say" reading techniques decrease literacy.

Progress is created by the nerds and misfits the system is designed to weed out -- like that college dropout, Bill Gates!

OTOH, home schoolers are already giving their bouncy offspring an accelerated and broader education.

[Junior]

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.

Actually, it's three extra years ...

[anniegetyourgun]

And 'calender' is spelled 'calendar'....

Don't you love being picked on?

[Prodigal Son]

No, it's four. If we assume the school calender year is 9 months long this is 3 months wasted. Over 12 years this adds up to 36 months which would translate to 4 education calenders of 9 months duration each. This is assuming nothing has changed in the initial equation.

Obviously, if you don't waste the 3 months in the first place you wind up with a school calender year of 12 months and 12 years like that would give you 144 months of total instruction rather than the current 108 but you could just as well limit normal school education to 9 years at that point instead of 12.

[Prodigal Son]

It's my fingers' fault, I swear! They were busy rolling spitballs the day we learned to spell calendar. ;-)

[Stillwillin]

Yes, there are many who lived beyond their means, and who should have planned for a “rainy day” that is beginning its third year.

This sounds more like the 100 year flood than the a rainy day. I have a friend who is relo-ing to Austin this summer and is coming in with alot of equity cashed out of a DC home sale. He says that the asking price per sq ft has been falling 10% a month since he started looking in March. His retorical question," When does on buy into a downward spiral?"

[Prodigal Son]

I've read your proposals but it will take me a little while to get through all the comments.

One question here though, if you put all the restrictions on the companies in the US, what is to stop them from simply leaving the US?

It seems to me they would have a great deal of incentive to do exactly that because they would not be able to compete with European countries who outsource their own labour requirements to cheap countries. I imagine if we did something like this European companies would be rubbing their hands with glee. They would be able to manufacture their products far cheaper than it was possible for their American competition to do.

The next logical step after that is to restrict trade with Europe because they continue the practice. Where does that end?

[Junior]

Mea culpa.

[Prodigal Son]

No, mine. I knew someone would catch that. I put a qualifier in parenthesis after the original post but I wasn't clear enough. It depends upon the perspective whether it's 3 or 4. I should've explained a bit more. No biggie though.

[Radioactive]

We are all being deceived.

As long as the Federal Reserve is in controll of our money, you are in debt.

You can boast about how you do not use credit cards, but as long as the foreign bankers have their claws in our money supply, you are paying interest to them.

For a debt free money system, get rid if the Federal Reserve and tar and feather Alan Greenscam.

[Feldkurat_Katz]

The moral is to dicuss finances upfront and avoid gold-diggers like plague. Unfortunately, many men think with a body part other than the brain...

[SauronOfMordor]

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,

A wife who only sticks around for the cash flow, is an overly-expensive whore. A couple of my friends have discovered this

[Feldkurat_Katz]

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,

A wife who only sticks around for the cash flow, is an overly-expensive whore. A couple of my friends have discovered this

Not to mention that a plain vanilla whore can't sue for alimony...

[ican'tbelieveit]

Or could be their brain is located in that limited space body part... JUST KIDDING all you wonderful men out there.

[A. Pole]

Since January, the Assistance Center of Collin County in Plano has helped 2,292 residents by paying for prescriptions, utilities, mortgages and rent. About one-quarter of such charitable agencies' clients are previously unserved middle-class residents who request assistance of $4,000 to $8,000 a month, agency officials say. Agency directors call folks new to being needy "the situational poor." They've depleted their savings and retirement accounts and struggle to cling to a lifestyle they no longer can afford.
[...]
"I've had people who paid rent that was almost $1,200. I had a gentleman that wanted us to help pay $4,000 in bills. Our measly $300 assistance wouldn't get him anywhere."

It would be much more fun to see the CEOs, owners, affluent free market fundies etc who exported/outsourced American jobs abroad, to live on food stamps and $300/month assistance. And who knows, when all their assets are in India and Red China it might happen some day.

[A. Pole]

The law of supply and demand cannot be conned. Americans will again learn to live within their means.

Or rather to live withing the means equalised with other countries (not Western European ones, since those did not embrace the free market fundamentalism yet).

[1rudeboy]

Despite your class-warfare rhetoric, some do . . . and then go forth and create more jobs.

[hedgetrimmer]

In California, in my county, there is a shortage of mechanics and welders. Their salaries would be in that price range. Our schools do not teach skills that can be applied to trades, so these types of jobs are really going unfulfilled. Hopefully no one will start an H1B visa program to bring in welders, hopefully Americans will begin to train for these jobs and fill the positions.