Never Ending Job Insecurity

Michael Hobbes takes an in-depth look at the economic troubles his generation faces.

All of these trends—the cost of education, the rise of contracting, the barriers to skilled occupations—add up to an economy that has deliberately shifted the risk of economic recession and industry disruption away from companies and onto individuals. For our parents, a job was a guarantee of a secure adulthood. For us, it is a gamble. And if we suffer a setback along the way, there’s so little to keep us from sliding into disaster.

In one of the most infuriating conversations I had for this article, my father breezily informed me that he bought his first house at 29. It was 1973, he had just moved to Seattle and his job as a university professor paid him (adjusted for inflation) around $76,000 a year. The house cost $124,000 — again, in today’s dollars. I am six years older now than my dad was then. I earn less than he did and the median home price in Seattle is around $730,000. My father’s first house cost him 20 months of his salary. My first house will cost more than 10 years of mine.

We live in a very wealthy nation in which it is still possible to find shocking poverty. The middle class is being eroded away in favor of the rich. A decent retirement is becoming elusive. Oligarchy cements it's control over public goods like the internet itself and even the idea of government is under attack. Despite some hopeful signs, Lucian Truscott is having nightmares.

Could one political party actually have a plan to harm the citizens?

Absolutely, [said a friend]. ... He had been on the school board for many years, one of three Democrats on board controlled by a Republican majority. This was a wealthy suburban county with a healthy tax base and a school budget that was in excellent shape ... [so] that they could fund a study of the problems their schools faced .... Their data in past studies was good enough that they had tried funding some solutions, and they worked. If they spent this much, they could increase graduation rates by ten points. If they spent that much, they could increase reading scores at fourth and eighth grade levels.

Then the Republicans reached their limit. They knew that spending another few hundred per student per year would yield specific improvements in graduation rates, the numbers of students who would qualify for college, and so forth. But businesses needed a certain number of high school drop-outs to fill minimum wage jobs. They needed a population with a certain percentage that hadn’t gone to a four year college and would take low-wage jobs. They needed, in short, an underclass, and spending more on education wouldn’t yield one that was large enough.

My friend told me that privately Republicans would admit what they were doing. But they never talked about it publicly.

Republicans aren’t a political party anymore. They’re the American Taliban. They’ve set out to lay waste to America as we’ve known it.

It’s not a nightmare, it’s a goddamned political program .... If they were willing to support Roy Moore’s failed campaign for United States Senate, they’ll do anything. They’re in it for the long haul and they won’t stop.

Update (December 23):  Now that the tax cuts are in place, should the Republicans be wary of what they wished for? Conor Lynch:

Capitalism is, after all, an inherently unstable system that breeds inequality and class conflict. When the “free market” is left unfettered, these tendencies — what Marxists call the “contradictions of capitalism” — go unchecked and worsen over time. There is a real irony in the Republican effort to reverse Obama’s economic agenda in the name of reviving the capitalist spirit, since their right-wing agenda will likely do more to engender a crisis of capitalism than anything the “anti-capitalist” Obama ever did.

And Andrew O'Hehir insists that we reject the "dark gifts" from Dear Leader at our peril.

What [he] shows us ... is a society where Enlightenment values are withering away because economic reality no longer supports them — where the “passionate belief in progress” has soured into endless, spiritless consumption, where the middle class believes itself stuck or sinking, and where massive wealth inequality has produced a new oligarchic order that would put the feudal lords to shame.

Is that the whole truth of our society? Not at all. Does [Fuckface] understand the vision he is showing us, or possess a remedy for it? Of course not. But he is a clever goblin; there is always truth beneath his lies, if you can stand to dig for it. Can we save democracy if we are unwilling to accept his gifts, and try to learn from them? Not a chance.

Update (December 31):  Nomi Prins sees trouble ahead.

[T]he Treasury Department, Federal Reserve and other smaller regulatory authorities in Washington will push for greater deregulation of the financial systems and banking industry on any level possible. If there is another financial crisis in 2018 or later, it will be worse than the last one because the system remains fundamentally unreformed, banks remain too big to fail and the Fed and other central banks continue to control the flow of funds to these banks (and through to the markets) by maintaining a cheap cost of funds.

Politically, no one in any position of power will do anything to fix any of this.

Update (January 2, 2018):  Valerie Vande Panne confronts the arguments used to defend capitalism.

Capitalism is, at its core, an entrenched system of addiction, whose very root is the greed of over-consumption, whether it's food, sex, money, mouse clicks, or property.

Here are five myths people continue to promote that we’ll all be better off without:
1. Jobs will save us
2. Brand loyalty over small businesses
3. Trickledown economics works
4. Pull yourself up by your bootstraps
5. Everyone is free in a capitalist society

Capitalism ... [robs] freedom from millions of Americans who could, in another time and under a humane system of economic governance, might prosper in communities they are able to contribute to and benefit from.

Update (February 10, 2018):  With some oscillations in the stock market, maybe the economy isn't as great as some tout it to be.

Update (February 20, 2018):  Paul Buchheit responds to those who deny the fact that millions of Americans are among the world's poorest.

Poverty is not just the few dollars a day coming into the household, cash or non-cash. There is poverty in the diminishing quality of life for the bottom half of America. Poverty is the stress of overwhelming debt; the inability to pay for medical treatment during years of declining health; the lack of community support as part of a true safety net; the near-absence of retirement savings for over half the population; the steady decline of jobs that pay enough to support a family; the well-documented impact of America's inequality on its citizens' physical and mental well-being. Part of the definition of poverty is "the state of being inferior in quality." The extreme level of inequality in the U.S. is battering the poor with a sense of inferiority. It's ripping apart once-interdependent communities, and it's triggering a surge in drug and alcohol and suicide "deaths of despair."

Update (March 21, 2018):  Rent Cafe used Census data to discover that the percentage of renters grew faster than home owners in 97 of the 100 largest U.S. cities from 2006 to 2016. And in 22 of those cities, renters became the majority of the population.

Update (March 23, 2018):  Mary Elizabeth Williams has a personal story about the burden of student loan debt.

[A]s my firstborn daughter now approaches her high school graduation, I know that 18 years of saving have not yielded much in the way of college tuition. I also know that the current American student tuition and loan system is a more shocking shell game than I'd even dreamed.

Update (March 28, 2018):  Here's an old idea starting to get some traction:

Have the federal government guarantee employment, with benefits and a living wage, to every American willing and able to work.

Update (May 5, 2018):  David Lynch finds indications that "soaring stocks, cheap loans and low inflation" is in the process of changing.

[T]he rise in consumer prices and interest rates — and the stagnating stock market — are seen by many as warning signs that this period of easy growth could be ending.

Also, automation has the potential to cut jobs in unionized occupations which makes unions even weaker to help workers make a transition.

Update (May 28, 2018):  The Health of American report from the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association finds that diagnoses for major depression are increasing.

The data, based on insurance claims filed by 41 million privately insured Blue Cross Blue Shield members, shows a 63 percent rise in diagnosis rates in adolescents (ages 12 to 17) from 2013 to 2016. According to the report, millennials ages 18 to 34 have experienced a 47 percent increase in major depression diagnoses.

Update (June 14, 2018):  Bruce Levine argues that many people are "broken".

My experience is that young people, in general, are becoming increasingly pained and weakened by multiple oppressive forces, and older people who give a damn about them can help. The 1% will always attempt to seize powerful technologies and institutions to pacify all of us—especially young people. To manage these technologies and institutions, the 1% needs technocrats, administrators, and guards; thus, what would help is what Howard Zinn called a “revolt of the guards.” However, if technicians, teachers, mental health professionals, and other guards never even admit to ourselves our societal role—as guards who maintain the status quo—then we guards will never consider a revolt. Many older people are guards, and they can choose to revolt and help young people gain the strength necessary to resist injustices.

Update (June 15, 2018):  Richard Wolff makes the case for worker cooperatives.

Under the cooperative model, workers have decision-making power that corresponds to the risks and productivity of their employment. Each worker gets an equal vote on decisions, which are made on a majority basis.

Update (June 22, 2018):  Casey Bond looks at several reasons why home ownership isn't worth it anymore.

Update (June 24, 2018):  Inflation was at a six-year high last month and way down at the bottom of the story, Bloomberg admits:

For production and nonsupervisory workers, real average hourly earnings fell 0.1 percent from a year earlier.

I think The Young Turks overhypes this news a bit, but they do point out that this impacts about 80 percent of workers and cite experts who claim any kind of decrease in wages is unusual at a time of low unemployment.