Unemployed And Seeking Shelter From The Storm

AOL Daily Finance:

Kyle and Desiree Bates face a financial double whammy. Kyle, 39, is on long-term disability to recover from brain surgery that resulted from hydrocephalus, or water on the brain. Desiree is struggling to find a job, and the income from her small cake-baking business is not nearly enough the couple and their three children.

Read the whole story: AOL Daily Finance

Comments

[rl1984]

01:09 PM on 07/10/2011

Technological Unemployment. We have now begun to realize that with mechanization and cheap foreign labor, the average first world industrial nation's citizen cannot possibly survive the current economic paradigm. We all must realize that there will be three classes still once the collapse happens, but the old upper, middle, & working classes will be no more. The three classes of the first world will be the Wealthy, the Working, & the (Permanent) Unemployed classes. We will have an entire range of people, starting now, who will not be able to get a job, period.

For some minority groups in this country and others, that has been their reality for YEARS. We are only now paying attention to it because it is now starting to happen to whites, as well.

[Gimme2steps]

08:38 AM on 07/12/2011

If STEM jobs paid good salaries and were not being flooded by cheap labor from abroad then the US citizens would flood to science fields.

But the bleak reality is Technology Unemployment in Health Sciences is Astronomical. The real STEM crisis is

89,000- PhDs are now in temporary employment postdoctoral positions with no health benefits, etc, according to the National Postdoctoral Association (many of theses are H1Bs receiving PhDs in foreign countries, but need jobs here). This is just a guestimate, probably a low estimate, because our universities want to keep importing cheap labor.

27,000- PhDs- the number of Science and Engineering postdocs (Physics and Engineering) with temporary visas at US universities, as given by the National Science Foundation, tripling from 1985 to 2005.

Despite the STEM jobs realities President Obama pursues more H1bs more J1s the while harping about the failure to produce US scientists.

Q. What is the difference between the job's policies of the last two presidents, President GW Bush and President Obama?

A. In reality, nothing....

[1oldhippie]

08:27 PM on 07/09/2011

so what do you do if you're, old and in construction?
A ninety-niner, been in construction four decades and the same house for twenty five years, may lose it because congress won't do their job. Too young for SocSec and 'too old' to hire.
Many of us just fall thru the cracks...

[Gimme2steps]

10:38 AM on 07/10/2011

Why would you hire an older construction worker?

They derive higher pay, more prone to injury, on and on. The US is the land of the disposable worker. Replace with younger, more subservient, lower cost not the least bit worn out yet, as if we only work until we are 40.

For that matter why would you hire an older school teacher when you could replace them with an H1b freshly trained and not beaten down by years in our inner city schools, like Baltimore city schools and PG county schools.

Perhaps soon the US will import more and more workers such that only ages 25 to 35 are workers.

This was not a sustainable employment scenario that can lead to a stable economy, no way no how.

The US has had a steady supply of young low cost construction workers (often illegals) for years, this has completely and utterly destroyed the jobs for certainly most older construction workers. In Europe you often see older construction workers, but not in the US.

[TruelyFedUp]

07:37 PM on 07/09/2011

Professor John McMurtry John Locke & Adam Smith "Private Property" &"Race of Laborers" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=b4JsCEYpIUA

[Gimme2steps]

03:19 PM on 07/09/2011

So why would does our leadership have no interest in the plight of the unemployed? Because of selfish reasons.
Take for example the H1B situation, university and administrators want to exploit cheap labor wages to bring in more US taxpayers' dollars into the university coffers.

How does this occur? The universities extend the numbers of temporary assistant professors without health benefits, and as well reduce the universities' future retirement money commitments by removing the older American scientists, replacing them by hiring foreign workers H1bs and J1s. (wow.. more Health benefits removed by grants purporting to be for health).

At the same time the university administrators line their own pockets with money from bonus pay, and travel to exotic countries using taxpayers money to visits their new indentured foreign H1bs and J1s. If there are any problems, a grant falls through, the University-employee contract is not renewed and out the employee goes.

The management of greed greed and greed..

[Jayjaybe]

08:33 PM on 07/09/2011

Bunk. The H-1B legislation prohibits wage disparities. Where that's being exploited is not much different from any other illegal practices. What's crooked is crooked. But public universities aren't the only sources for training of foreign talent, which is often equal or better than domestic talent in the high-demand fields. Most of the higher ranking universities are private institutions, funded by those same corporations that want a return on their investments. When we underfund public university systems, as in California, we get what we pay less for, we get less.

[Gimme2steps]

06:28 PM on 07/12/2011

The U.S. Department of Labor's Wage and Hour Division has obtained an agreement for Maryland's Prince George's County Public Schools system to pay $4,222,146 in back wages due 1,044 workers to resolve violations of the H-1B temporary foreign worker program. Investigators from the department found that PGCPS illegally reduced the wages of the H-1B workers by requiring them to pay fees that the school system was required to pay.

If PG had not required the fees, but simply reduced the wages everything would have been legit.

[Gimme2steps]

03:14 PM on 07/09/2011

The Jobs Destroying US Government Policies Continue, Repeal S 2045 now

There in reality no H1B cap for universities, NIH, Fannie Mae, etc Why? BECAUSE in 2000 Phil Gram, (McCain's economic guru) successfully inserted a no cap exemption from for the universities and Fannie Mae-like government Taxpayer Money wasting programs to "ensure that the U.S. economic expansion will not be impeded by a lack of skilled workers," this is the American Competitiveness in the 21st Century Act S 2045 (co-sponsored by Arlene Specter)

This "21st Competitiveness act" S 2045 states:

The numerical limitations (H1B limitations, 165,000) contained in paragraph (1)(A) shall not apply to any (A) an institution of higher education (as defined in section 101(a) [NIH, universities], or a related or affiliated nonprofit entity; (Freddie Mac, Fannie MAE, Acorn).

Lehman, AIG, Fannie Mae were mega H1B users, as well as our morally bankrupt NIH/universities that resulted in job destruction leading to the current losses of 650,000 jobs per month for months. (…AIG was one of the first users of H1bs.).

[CenaW]

01:04 PM on 07/09/2011

According to the Republicans, it is their own fault.
She obviously needs to put the children to work, don't worry,
The Republicans want to eliminate those bothersome child labor laws.

[eyelashviper]

11:44 AM on 07/09/2011

Of course, the programs being set up to help homeowners in crisis are government sponsored.
I guess it would be unthinkable for banks to offer lower interest rates, re-mortgaging prospects to people without reams of red tape and impossible standards.....

[StopMakingSense2]

03:39 PM on 07/08/2011

We need some Boenervilles and McConnellvilles so we can build some testaments to republican economic policy but I bet they would only spring for soilent green factories.

[HHUA]

01:50 PM on 07/08/2011

These "free loaders" should definitely bear a larger share of the debt burden, don't you think? And enough with the "disability" -- "entitlement"! So you had brain surgery... get off the couch and get a job!

Why should the RICH have to suffer with one less yacht or ballroom dance floor in their mansions?!!!

[William Brock]

02:30 PM on 07/08/2011

Really, Do you want to put Guchi out of business? Tiffanys? The Ritz Carlton?

[Arts4u]

03:19 PM on 07/08/2011

Gucci. Pretty sure that you have never been a patron at any of these establishments.

[arkymorgan]

07:05 PM on 07/09/2011

As someone once said in another context

''...Comedy is hard.''

[Kenz300]

01:47 PM on 07/08/2011

We have too many people chasing too few jobs ! ! !

It is time to reduce both legal and illegal immigration. American can no longer let in every unemployed person in the world that wants to come here. We need to find jobs for the people that are already here. With an unemployment rate of over 9% and an under employment rate of over 20% it is time to stop the H1B visa program.

[William Brock]

02:31 PM on 07/08/2011

Good, you go work in the Fields...!

[Arts4u]

03:18 PM on 07/08/2011

I don't think we are speaking of working in the fields here. Look around you William. Only 64% of Americans of working age are working... there is a severe jobs shortage in this country and there has been since 2001. Wages have remained entirely stagnant for the same period. Who is benefiting from this? Hint...it is not the American worker.

[Disketta]

01:27 PM on 07/09/2011

Actually, Americans are working in the fields. Mexicans are starting to stay home because there is less work and better opportunities there. Habla espanol? Maybe we can all get jobs.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2011/07/06/world/americas/immigration.html

[Joel Kent Melville]

06:26 PM on 07/08/2011

I have said this for months now. thank you for getting it also. theres too many people and not enough jobs! but is there a solution to this problem?

[CenaW]

01:09 PM on 07/09/2011

Get the money out of the pockets of that top 1% and into the hands of the real job creators.
Individuals with new ideas
and consumers to buy them

Our economy is very monopolized by the huge corporations, they hate competition and innovation, they only want to hang onto their market share or increase it by buying out the competition, or as is sometimes done, running them out of businesses with what was once illegal businesse practices.