With 47 million Americans already living in poverty, the newly unemployed will only serve to increase those numbers. While Obama is certainly sympathetic to this group, the homeless need much more than sympathy. The stimulus package offers very little to those who started and remain in extreme poverty. Middle class tax cuts and public works projects will do little to help the long-term unemployed and those who may never find their way in the job market. The 13% increase in food stamp payouts will not keep families away from food pantries which have reported demand growing by as much as 100%. This week's announcement from Kimberly Clark and Procter & Gamble that diaper prices will rise by 7% certainly doesn't help.
The axiom states that 'as the rich get richer, the poor get poorer.' But what happens when the rich get poorer? Those who were not working before the collapse have fallen deeper into poverty. Even opportunities in the underground economy are falling -- too many people are cutting their own lawns today. Compounding the problem, while the poor have always given a higher percentage of their income to charity, no income means no giving. According to the Association of Fundraising Professionals, 53% of charities received decreased donations in the fourth quarter of 2008 (the time of year when many charities receive as much as 60% of their annual income).
Is this a time, though, where we can apply a basic math rule -- two negatives equal a positive? Could a large group of unemployed actually be good for the charities? Without sounding callous, we now have millions of people with more time on their hands. And this is not just any time -- it is the time of able bodied, often highly-skilled workers. It is also the free time of those with college and graduate educations, managers, executives, administrators and finance experts.
This idle talent pool needs to be put to work to bolster the talent base of charities whose backs are sagging under the weight of a 'perfect storm' (i.e. more demand for services, fewer options to help clients and less money to pay for staff and resources). I am not talking about one day events where a group paints a school house. While those events are noble and helpful, they don't provide the kind of real help non-profits need. They need volunteers who bring their business and craftsmanship skills and talents to the table. Charities need volunteers who will regularly commit to one, two or even five days a week in the office, classroom or clinic. There is a desperate need for the skills they can bring to bear -- marketing, accounting, organizing and human resources management, to name a few.
So while Washington D.C. continues to grapple with stimulus plans, foreclosure rates and bank insolvencies, those collecting unemployment can become an army of volunteers in their hometowns. And while being unemployed is certainly a cause for depression, helping others is often a great cure.
You can find the episode here:
http://www.miptalk.com/?p=1
Been toying around with the idea of Capitalism 2.0 -- using human capital to lift the world, not to mention the US, out of the new found poverty. Anyone have any ideas? Can government create jobs alone? It needs to set the foundation for Americans to themselves CREATE JOBS. And not just jobs for themselves.
I wish someone would research who is really on top of economic strategy in this country? Who has the new ideas to lift this country and world out of poverty and create a post-modern humanitarian, educated world? OK, I'm just spouting on.
All you got to do is show up and be loud and look at all you can get!
I really appreciate your post In my experience, when unemployed, dividing my time between job search and volunteering has paid huge dividends.
3 days a week of volunteering my skills, and developing new ones, has boosted my self-esteem and given definition to my life. Job hunting on the other 2 days can be lonely so to be working with others for some of my time makes a big difference, also to know that I am making a valuable contribution. It has really been a win-win for me.
Thank you for offering this option. My own vision is that we are in the process of awakening to a new world economy and once we get through these difficult days, life will be much better for many of us.
Anne
if they don't ,wonder who will eat who , first?
If it is any kind of government support, Wertman is advocating socialism without the real benefits that a democratic socialist state has such as universal health care, child care and state support that one can live on paid for by higher taxation from working citizens.
If they are living on investments until their next job, they aren't part of the impoverished class or the homeless.
If he is speaking to the unemployed or recently laid-off, It is a condition of unemployment benefits that you be ready, willing and able to work as well as make an active job search five days a week. Volunteering during that time and reporting it would cut your benefits. Volunteering and lying seems to be counterproductive.
And the more volunteer labor that is out there means less reason to create jobs, doesn't it? Wouldn't most non-profits and government systems love to be able to run with one or two paid positions and an army of volunteer labor?
This reminds me of the first Bush and his "1000 points of light" BS. He, too, envisioned a nation of people volunteering and taking care of each other so he could give all his big business buddies tax cuts.
Another subtext is that we all live in two income families and one person can work and the other can volunteer.
Not buying it.
It is not hard to get to non-partisan data. You have to use primary sources, though.People say things like Clinton never reduced the deficit, there never was a budget surplus. Well you can go to the US Treasury site, to the Financial Management Services page and there is the report that tells you all about that, and all about what we owe for Social Security and Medicaid/Medicare, etc.
The budgets are all online now and you can search the text. In fact, the first thing that struck me was that the far right seemed to be deliberately confusing people that there are three separate budgets - the 2009 budget, the stimulus package and the 2010 budget proposal. It is true that the 2009 budget is riddled with both Repub AND Dem earmarks, but the other two budgets are not.
Sometimes they are right, and we are wrong. President Obama is role-modeling the behavior that works. He shows that can listen and respond to people who are being outrageous in a way that is respectful of them and of yourself. It is incredibly powerful.
I think you need to volunteer -- to donate your time and free courses to the unemployed.
The point of the economy is to futher human wellbeing (and implicitly our planetary life support system.) A system of voluntary non-monetized exchanges has the power to create "wealth" and to mitigate suffering, just as the monetized economy does, thought not to the same extent. We should be leveraging this capacity in parallel with any work to reboot the economy. I'm not talking about the current model of volunteering that has engineers and nurses stuffing envelopes. We need to create a system of exchange that places real worth on our volunteer time. New information tools allow us to catalogue skills offered and sought. We need to treat our volunteer time as if it were worth as much as our paid time. Because it can be.
That said, why are we bailing out big monsters like the auto and banking industries? if what we need is jobs, think of what 700 billion could do in the hands of small entrepreneurs.
I am sure you would not do that. But people are freaked out and that is how they are thinking.
Of course you would not do that. But people are freaked out and that is how they are thinking.