The economy is tough everywhere for most people anyway. People are living their lives on a prayer and a shoestring budget a far cry from what they are used to. We've seen a stubborn unemployment rate hovering around nine percent for nearly two years now and the numbers that seem to be shrinking are still not getting to the real picture of hardship that most families are going through.
Unemployment itself is of course misinforming. The rate of unemployment is calculated with quite a few omissions. Firstly, the rate only reflects those who are actively looking for work, as in filling out resumes, writing cover letters and attending job fairs. Those people who have given up or have stopped actively pursuing work are not counted. So that means that anyone who is homeless, anyone who is living off of a loved one, relative, or acquaintance or anyone who is infirm or unable to work is not counted.
Also, the unemployment rate does not discriminate between someone working full time or part time. The people who have work that is under twenty hours count as fully employed. Those who work more than one job due to economic pressure do not count for more than one, but they reflect the fact that many people may be working and not earning a living wage.
One callous congressman, who shall not be named, once boasted that the United States had ninety one percent of people working failing to realize the insensitivity of such an asinine statement. The amount of living wages in the United States has been dropping faster than we can replace them. We have seen good paying work being replaced by either technology or outsourcing and that is simply a matter of economics. I am not one who believes we can or even should bring back manufacturing jobs if we cannot make products that are superior or more cost effective. Our future does not lie in the past "glory days" of manufacturing, but in the future of ideas and innovation.
Perhaps the most unintentional effect of the economic downturn has been the idea that no class, no socio-economic class is safe from the potential of economic harm. Many people in the "Middle Class" have had to come to grips on the lack of choices and options many of their fellow Americans have had to face for their entire lives. The problem in the United States is that many people have to experience the hardship themselves before they can have compassion for the less fortunate. However, the haves are beginning to cling to what they have even more so.
On the political side congressmen and women are taking aim at teachers, policemen, firemen and trying to label them as "elite." The struggling middle and lower middle class is a bit too eager to believe the hype surrounding state workers and they are forgetting that those who work for the state are fellow citizens as well.
The unemployment numbers are misleading in that they equate simple employment with success when the story is much more complicated than that. The real story that is not being told is the loss of livable wages and a society that is still riding on a consumption train off the cliff. Until we solve the underlying problems of over consumption and an economy based on throw away items and throw away people the numbers will continue to misinform us. We need to take a real look at where our economy is headed and we need to re evaluate the idea of "winners" and "losers" when it comes to economic opportunity.
Showing posts with label wisconsin. Show all posts
Showing posts with label wisconsin. Show all posts
Saturday, March 5, 2011
Wednesday, March 2, 2011
Microwaves hate Unions
The ultimate example of convenience and modern living, the microwave has had an undeniable impact on our kitchens and our society. They bring the idea of popped corn to the forefront of our minds while we scroll through our Netflix queues alone on a Friday night. Their radiation glow lightens the dark room after we've snuck into the kitchen for a midnight snack of processed cheese and fried tortillas. They are the friends of single adults and five year old snack seekers dispensing passable food in mere seconds. However, microwaves have a deep, dark secret. Microwaves hate unions.
The microwave oven as we know it arrived in American businesses and homes starting in 1967. The microwave was advertised as a convenience device that would cut the time that "moms" would spend slaving over a hot stove and spend more quality time with the family playing board games, watching television or waving to neighbors riding by on their bicycles. Of course the saved time did come, but the actual result was an eroding of the time with family. The microwave had undermined the tantalizing and seductive power of anticipation that boiling pots and chopping aromas elicit.
The instant gratification that microwaves brought to our most basic of needs started to permeate other areas of our lives as well. We began to withdraw from social outings and instead curl up with our cable television and TV dinners. We withdrew from churches, bowling leagues, charitable clubs as we simply wanted satisfaction without having to put in the actual time and dedication needed for those avenues of social connection to have any meaning. We in essence started seeing the phenomenon commonly known as "being together alone." We were setting ourselves on the path toward collective isolationism that is so rampant today.
Unions are a collection of workers who through collective bargaining, negotiation and hard work helped build our middle class that our society takes for granted. The working conditions of today such as five day work weeks, health care, workers compensation, unemployment, on the job injury compensation, safe working conditions and the like would all not be as robust and in some cases in existence at all if not for the work of unions.
Unions of course have had their historic enemies that include public apathy and policy decisions. The public response to unions over the past few years have been colored by a well organized media campaign to color unions as somehow separate from the rest of us. The unions have become the scapegoat for big business problems and poor business practices. Auto companies have used union demands for health benefits and safe work conditions as the reason behind the decline in American auto brands success.
The most devastating policy change to unions is most likely the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. This act in the wake of World War II labor disputes and strikes limited the ability of unions to take certain negotiation tactics such as strikes, and sympathetic strikes and enables states to make aggressive "right to work" laws which limited or eliminated the ability to form unions or outlawed union labor. Many states have used those right to work type of laws to restrict membership since the fifties until today.
The biggest problem towards unions is of course the public view of unions. Union membership has declined in the private sector at a swift pace since the early days of the seventies. Public sector unions have been growing as a result of budgetary cuts that came about as a result of a failed fiscal policy on the federal and state levels. Budgets are being slashed in order to make up for many of the unsafe overreaches of fiscal policy that have been creeping into the system for the past thirty years and the budgetary shortfalls that came as direct results from the inability and unwillingness to make a more fair tax system that actually follows the graduated tax codes enacted over one hundred years ago.
When the top income earners can reduce their taxes from 35% to 15% through stock investments (capital gains taxes peak at 15%) and therefore save themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many financial experts point to the fact that the tax rates during President Nixon's tenure if they were retained would have eliminated the budgetary shortfalls we are seeing in the past few years.
Of course all these facts do not make a difference if no one is paying attention. The amount of time that we spend in front of an entertainment box is the highest it has ever been since we began recording the average amount of time we spend watching television. On average we spend four hours a day watching TV and almost 70% of us watch TV while eating dinner. TV is a one way medium and it does not allow the time spent in front of it for conversation, unless you are like my family who would talk in the middle of library/funeral. The loss of the meal as a focal point of a family has more repercussions than one would guess.
Microwaves allow people to start and finish meals alone by themselves and without the unnecessary conversation or socialization that comes with tables, dining rooms and a sense of belonging. We are pulled in so many directions by choice and circumstances that many of us are losing our foundations. We are forgetting or abandoning an aspect of socialization that permeates every major point in our lives as humans. Food and togetherness is the prescription for any social illness. When we get married, buried, arrive, depart, welcome in a new life, anniversarate and celebrate we always include food. Think of the last time you went to a party and there were no refreshments.
The microwave oven as we know it arrived in American businesses and homes starting in 1967. The microwave was advertised as a convenience device that would cut the time that "moms" would spend slaving over a hot stove and spend more quality time with the family playing board games, watching television or waving to neighbors riding by on their bicycles. Of course the saved time did come, but the actual result was an eroding of the time with family. The microwave had undermined the tantalizing and seductive power of anticipation that boiling pots and chopping aromas elicit.
The instant gratification that microwaves brought to our most basic of needs started to permeate other areas of our lives as well. We began to withdraw from social outings and instead curl up with our cable television and TV dinners. We withdrew from churches, bowling leagues, charitable clubs as we simply wanted satisfaction without having to put in the actual time and dedication needed for those avenues of social connection to have any meaning. We in essence started seeing the phenomenon commonly known as "being together alone." We were setting ourselves on the path toward collective isolationism that is so rampant today.
Unions are a collection of workers who through collective bargaining, negotiation and hard work helped build our middle class that our society takes for granted. The working conditions of today such as five day work weeks, health care, workers compensation, unemployment, on the job injury compensation, safe working conditions and the like would all not be as robust and in some cases in existence at all if not for the work of unions.
Unions of course have had their historic enemies that include public apathy and policy decisions. The public response to unions over the past few years have been colored by a well organized media campaign to color unions as somehow separate from the rest of us. The unions have become the scapegoat for big business problems and poor business practices. Auto companies have used union demands for health benefits and safe work conditions as the reason behind the decline in American auto brands success.
The most devastating policy change to unions is most likely the Taft-Hartley Act of 1947. This act in the wake of World War II labor disputes and strikes limited the ability of unions to take certain negotiation tactics such as strikes, and sympathetic strikes and enables states to make aggressive "right to work" laws which limited or eliminated the ability to form unions or outlawed union labor. Many states have used those right to work type of laws to restrict membership since the fifties until today.
The biggest problem towards unions is of course the public view of unions. Union membership has declined in the private sector at a swift pace since the early days of the seventies. Public sector unions have been growing as a result of budgetary cuts that came about as a result of a failed fiscal policy on the federal and state levels. Budgets are being slashed in order to make up for many of the unsafe overreaches of fiscal policy that have been creeping into the system for the past thirty years and the budgetary shortfalls that came as direct results from the inability and unwillingness to make a more fair tax system that actually follows the graduated tax codes enacted over one hundred years ago.
When the top income earners can reduce their taxes from 35% to 15% through stock investments (capital gains taxes peak at 15%) and therefore save themselves hundreds of thousands of dollars. Many financial experts point to the fact that the tax rates during President Nixon's tenure if they were retained would have eliminated the budgetary shortfalls we are seeing in the past few years.
Of course all these facts do not make a difference if no one is paying attention. The amount of time that we spend in front of an entertainment box is the highest it has ever been since we began recording the average amount of time we spend watching television. On average we spend four hours a day watching TV and almost 70% of us watch TV while eating dinner. TV is a one way medium and it does not allow the time spent in front of it for conversation, unless you are like my family who would talk in the middle of library/funeral. The loss of the meal as a focal point of a family has more repercussions than one would guess.
Microwaves allow people to start and finish meals alone by themselves and without the unnecessary conversation or socialization that comes with tables, dining rooms and a sense of belonging. We are pulled in so many directions by choice and circumstances that many of us are losing our foundations. We are forgetting or abandoning an aspect of socialization that permeates every major point in our lives as humans. Food and togetherness is the prescription for any social illness. When we get married, buried, arrive, depart, welcome in a new life, anniversarate and celebrate we always include food. Think of the last time you went to a party and there were no refreshments.
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