No Wonder People Are In Debt

    Louis Uchitelle has a strong and heart-breaking story about the choices auto workers are having to make as tens of thousands of them leave the industry--the largest exodus of workers from one American industry in decades, according to the story.

    What caught my eye, within the wrenching stories, was this paragraph:

Across America, more than 30 million people have been forced out of jobs since the early 1980s, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reports, and regaining lost incomes has not been easy. Nearly 50 million new jobs have been created over that same period, according to the bureau, so there are always new opportunities but more often than not at lower pay. Among those who have lost work, only a third held new jobs two years later that paid as well as those that were lost, according to the bureau’s surveys of displaced workers. Another third of those displaced were in jobs that paid, on average, 15 to 20 percent less than their previous employment — while the final third had dropped out of the labor force entirely.

    If you wonder why the savings rate is so low--actually, negative--and why personal debt is at record highs, there you have it--if only a third of the people out of 30 million people who have been forced from their jobs since the 1980s can find work that pays as well as the jobs they left, it is no wonder that people are struggling under a mountain of debt. This is not some trend that requires "personal responsibility"--the debt comes from a dramatic shift in the world we live in.

Comments

[Sovereign John]

While many rant and rage against so called illegal immigrants entering the US from Mexico these same US Sovereigns then go down to the store and buy products made in Mexico and China.

Corporations can't outsource jobs overseas unless US workers are willing to buy the foreign made products.

[Jessica Emami]

Well, we musn't forget that all workers are consumers. And while I don't advocate workers of modest means go shopping at Wal-Mart, the true culprits in the immigration situation are not the consumers who buy the cheap, imported goods, but the transnational corporations and totally lopsided trade and economic policies of the past 20 years that make it impossible for these workers to make a living in their own countries. What's more, once the workers get here, the pay and conditions here are also horrendous, all approved with a "nudge-nudge, wink-wink" of our very own government.

In addition, many so-called "illegals" do not know enough to organize and form unions once they are here. I'm not even sure their unions are legal should they form one, although they SHOULD be. They put up with very poor treatment out of fear of being deported back to their own countries where they may not find any work at all.

[Emily]

As a military veteran of four years who left because of the poor living and working environment of the military, while I wasn't fired or laid-off, I can say that I experienced first-hand how a change in income can cause one to go into debt. I think that a lot of our economic problems do have a great connection with people mis-managing finances, but if you look at the previous conditions of our economy and the state we are in now, in order for people to keep up the lifestyles they lived in the 80s and early 90s, companies have cut corners, people are using credit cards, and it's been at least a decade in happening, with people's attitudes being "oh, it will improve. It has to. It can only go up." But, with that, all we're doing is digging ourselves deeper and our economy is bound to collapse. After poor decision-making comes anxiety, and from anxiety comes attempts at picking up the peices. If we don't make changes now, we're doomed to collapse, our whole society, like the Romans and the Mayans did.