A front-page poll in the New York Times confronts an issue no one likes to talk about: the pain of losing a job. Fifty percent of the unemployed have borrowed money from friends or relatives. Around the same number have experienced depression or anxiety. Four in ten are struggling enough that they have noticed behavioral changes in their children.
Normally, a recession as bad as this one wouldn't be coupled with a jobless recovery. The last time the unemployment rate hit ten percent, during the early Reagan years of 1981-82, the country returned to normal by having workers go back to familiar jobs. That isn't going to happen this time. The recovery involves a crisis of identity for millions of people.
Here are the critical factors:
-- Manufacturing jobs have collapsed, leaving Michigan, for example, with the highest unemployment in the nation, at 15%. Some of these jobs can be retooled; others will return with the recovery of the big three automakers. But even before the bubble burst, manufacturing was fleeing to China.
-- As companies rehire, they are more likely to rehire in China and South Asia than at home.
-- Older workers who have never lost their jobs before are among the last to get a new job and the first to be jobless for more than a year.
-- Minority unemployment is around twice the national average, and the young are being hardest hit. Their chance at a good first job -- or even a college education -- has been severely curtailed.
-- All the bad conditions mentioned above will last at least another two years, if we believe the optimists, or up to a decade if we believe the pessimists.
In short, no ordinary bubble collapsed. America was already going through a crisis of identity, spending wildly, incurring foreign debt, living off second mortgages and paper profits as house prices soared, trusting that the rich had a social conscience, passively ignoring corruption in politics, and being diverted by pointless social issues as reactionary politicians and religionists fanned the flames.
I can only see this as a spiritual crisis that was long in the making.
Crises bring uncertainty. They weaken social bonds and increase class antagonism. Fear lurks just beneath the surface. The most basic questions -- Who am I? Where is my life headed? -- beg for answers.
The future will form itself around how this uncertainty is resolved. The reactionary pull is still strong. There is a huge faction that is blinded to anything but free markets, military superiority, church values, and consumerism. The right wants a return to an America that hasn't really prospered according to their creed for twenty years, unless you call two frustrating wars and massive debt to China a way to prosper. The left is more appealing, because it includes the vast majority of progressives. Also, the left is wedded to utopian visions, and utopia is more digestible than neoconservative fantasies.
But neither side will bring us into a new spiritual reality. That can happen only one person at a time, with hopeful but uncertain steps. A recent survey of economic response to bad times revealed that no one really knows what causes an economy to grow. Over seventy factors were studied, including lower taxes, job programs, and bailout subsidies. Sometimes they work, sometimes they don't. There's an invisible factor that makes one society rise and another fall.
Ultimately, it takes a vision that conquers uncertainty and keeps fear at bay. At this moment, every American is seeking such a vision. It's a challenging time for the pocketbook but even more challenging for the soul. Needless to say, my hope is that America revives on a spiritual basis. A return to the status quo won't work, and it's not going to happen anyway. "May you live in interesting times" is said to be a Chinese curse. I doubt it. Change only occurs in interesting times. Far worse is another supposed Chinese curse: May you live the life you are already living.
Published in the San Francisco Chronicle
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-- As companies rehire, they are more likely to rehire in China and South Asia than at home."
And this must be made ILLEGAL, or as uncomforta
My hope is that America revives on a rational basis, since that's the only thing that will solve America's problems.
We've elected these people again and again; we've allowed them to game and rig the system; we've fallen for the lies over and over. How can we not be responsibl
It's time for us to return to a sense of what we have in common rather than what separates us. It's time for us to re-establi
The question is can we do that? Or is it too late?
There is an old Chinese saying, 'Misfortun
There is a silver lining in every dark cloud.
Brilliant observatio
The conservati
This government needs to be cleansed of the corruption the corporatio
Perhaps the only real change one can bring about, is a change inside ones own mind.
Conservati
Historians use the word "conservat
Joseph de Maistre (1753-1821
He argued that some people have less reason than others, and thus some people will make better government
Wiki Conservati
Interestin
"trusting that the rich had a social conscience
It seems that people in general must suffer more before they will be able to release these beliefs and this society is able to move forward.
I know you can and will offer your vision of humanity to a nation that is being forced to re-examine our role in live. You will now be more easily understood and accepted as more of us seek guidance from someone that is not from traditiona
You bring a more worldly view of where we all fit in the scheme of things that, I feel, a lot of Americans may have yearned for. I wish you peace and that you allow yourself to continue to be the humble teacher. Please remember that a lot of good Americans are not of wealth, but deserve peace of mind. You place in our history will be remembered for your efforts.
I feel for people who are up against the wall without an understand
Great post,
little brother
Funny thing is that when I read this post by Deepak it was my understand that NEITHER the right nor the left have the "answer". So give up blaming everything on the Rs. The govt is wholly D and any failures are on them.