The State of Our Union - Leon Legere
We’re fucked, all of us. Maybe no one told you. Maybe no one listened. But the fact of the matter is it’s all over. The American Dream is now a nightmare. It’s finally time we wake up.
The numbers are in. The year 2010 ended with a bang, an unemployment rate of 9.4 percent for the month of December. That’s a 0.4 percentage point lower than the previous month. Happy New Year! But don’t celebrate just yet. Whatever numbers the U.S. Department of Labor is feeding you are bullshit, a fabrication to keep the working class from rioting in the streets.
Under the U.S. Department of Labor, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the country’s "employment situation" on a monthly basis. Included in the report are two sets of data, the establishment payroll survey data known as the Current Employment Statistics Survey, and household survey data taken from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. The Current Employment Statistics Survey data comes from about 140,000 different businesses and government agencies keeping track of the few lucky enough to be employed, where they work, their little pay, and the limited amount of hours put into their short work weeks. It’s the household data, the Current Population Survey, where we get our magic unemployment number of 9.4 percent
A 9.4 percent unemployment rate doesn’t even come close to the truth. To better understand the real unemployment situation our nation is facing just look to the person to your right. Now look to the person to your left. Chances are you’re all unemployed. So how exactly does the Current Population Survey attain this 9.4 percent? The good people at the Bureau of Labor Statistics claim on their website in bold red letters, "ECONOMISTS ARE AVAILABLE TO ASSIST YOU WITH DATA FROM THE CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY (8:00 A.M. – 4:30 P.M. EASTERN TIME), EXCLUDING HOLIDAYS." When I called during the proper hours listed at the number given, (202) 691-6378, I got an answering machine. Maybe they were out to lunch. Or maybe someone was laid off. I have also yet to get any response to the email I sent. It could be possible someone doesn’t want the validity of the Current Population Survey to be questioned. That would explain why it’s easier to use the internet, with a simple click of the mouse, to find your favorite fetish porn as opposed to some hard facts and numbers about the state of our economy. There was a certain amount of excited perversity and disappointment I felt on my search for answers. The same kind of feeling I imagine a pervert gets while tracking down the perfect video. Not enough shemales. But what I was looking for, how kinky could that be? Pretty damn kinky, and I’ve got the web history on my browser to prove it.
The US Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey consists of data gathered from about 60,000 rotating households. To be eligible to participate in the survey individuals must be 15 years or older and not in the Armed Forces. Also people in institutions such as nursing homes and prisons, all two million plus incarcerated, are not eligible. It makes sense really. If you are fighting in one of our wars, hooked to a feeding tube, or we lock you in a cage why would we care what you have to say? As far as the labor statistics gathered, only data from those ages 16 and up are published as younger people have restrictions in their ability to work from child labor laws and schooling.
Before the survey is administered an introductory letter is sent out to prospected households describing the Census Bureau’s intent with the survey and announcing a forthcoming visit with a field representative. If your current employment situation has left you homeless without a household to be reached, sorry you’re not able to participate. Once a field representative arrives to a location with which an introductory letter was to be sent and finds the property not foreclosed upon, destroyed, vacant, or developed into an Applebee’s the field representative knocks on the door. Ideally for the field rep what they call a "reference person", someone who meets the requirements to participate in the survey, answers the door and speaks on behalf of the whole household. On a bad day the person answering the door refuses to divulge personal information to a stranger. His employment status is not counted. If the field rep shows up and all the people deemed worthy a "reference person" are out looking for work, not counted. Your neighbor down the street, the one who lost hope, gave up and hung himself, not counted. And who’s going to pay for the cost of that funeral? You? You don’t have a job.
You might be thinking, "Well maybe this would be a great time for me to go back to school. Finish my degree. That’ll give me the upper hand in the marketplace." Please don’t. The U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid Strategic Plan Fiscal Years 2011-15 reads like an end of days checklist with a loan portfolio of already $622 billion for the end of fiscal year 2009. That number today is much higher and climbing. The rising cost of education. Check. The increasing lack of ability for students and their families to pay for higher education. Check. The expected increase in enrollment of non-traditional students, such as students 25 years and older coming back to school because they can’t find work. Check. The growing number of enrollments in for-profit institutions, those charging much more than traditional community colleges and using unethical tactics to snare students into terrible student loans and federal student aid money from taxpayers. Check. With this huge entire student debt for inflated degrees that are worthless while trying to find a job, because the job no longer exists, all we have left to do is wait for this education bubble to pop and the next financial crisis to begin.
When this education bubble does pop it will just be another case of the rich getting richer and the poor shrugging their shoulders. At least with the collapse of the housing market there was always the option to declare bankruptcy and walk away from your house. When this new financial crisis hits you won’t be walking anywhere. You’ll be running from debt collectors with your expensive degree tucked under your arm and ever increasing bounty on your head. The shareholders of the for-profit universities are seeing record profits quarter after quarter as long as that federal student aid money keeps pouring in while the bears of Wall Street can’t wait for it to dry up. As with the tech bubble, every IPO made a hedge fund manager a mountain of cash, then another mountain while they shorted the company. No one cared. With the collapse of the housing market wall street prevailed, while the rest of us were eating up Goldman Sachs’ "shitty deal". No one seemed to notice. When General Motors had to take a government bailout and decided to go public again WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING!!!!!! Nobody even blinked. And yet the Bush tax cuts for the rich were extended for another two years when the wealthiest politicians, publically establishing their non-working class status, flat out refused to work. How is this possible?
The separation of wealth in this country is much more noticeably appalling in the Internal Revenue Service’s article Personal Wealth, 2004 by Brian G. Raub, the latest published article of its kind. According to the article our country’s top wealth holders made up only 1.2 percent of the total adult population yet held 20.3 percent of the total U.S. net worth in 2004. As shocking as the data may seem the numbers cannot be very accurate as they are based on estate tax returns filed after some rich old miser takes a dirt nap. Having the privileges of wealth, you’d be able to hire one hell of a tax man. And you’d most likely have your affairs in order before you climb into that grave. Statistically you’d live longer and be able to catch a terminal illness before it’s too late to move assets into your children’s name, make a charitable contribution as a last ditch effort to get into heaven, or name your dog as a beneficiary. Us poor folk have terrible health insurance if any and our children are stuck with our hospital bills as we go kicking and screaming into that good night.
All articles and statistics aside it’s not hard to see the middle class disappearing before our eyes and the gap from rich to poor widening at an alarming rate. Take for example a working class man with $100 in his pocket. The cheapest meal he can find would be a quarter pound cheeseburger on some fast food value meal for $1. That’s one percent of his purchasing power. Now picture one of our country’s upper class citizens with a debit card attached to a checking account worth $1,000,000 deciding he wants to eat a quarter pound of gold. With gold roughly trading at $1300 a troy ounce, a quarter pound of the good stuff would run about $3900. Eating a quarter pound of gold would translate to only .39 percent of the upper class citizen’s buying power. An even easier way to describe my point, Oprah can afford to give away brand new cars to her audience, but can her audience afford to gas them up?
As of this writing the latest stats from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on personal savings as a percentage of disposable personal income shows as of November 2010 people are only saving 5.3 percent of their money. A low personal savings number makes sense. Some people just can’t get ahead. If you don’t make enough money and something comes up, the car needs new brakes, you get sick without health insurance, or you can’t stand seeing your child without a present to open on Christmas, chances are
the money gets spent. The sickening thing is the number is too damn low. What about the people who do make money, a lot of money? Where does it all go? It sure as hell isn’t being spent here. Or is it? If it is they sure are spending while the spending is good. Thanks to the housing collapse property is at a discount. Stocks are at a discount. Making money is cheaper than ever thanks to their extended Bush tax cuts. And if they fuck up, nobody seems to care or notice.
The banks are too big to fail. The auto companies are too big to fail. If the wealthiest 1.2 percent of Americans are at the head of these companies, or own them as majority shareholders, are they too big to fail? By my account they already have.
The numbers are in. The year 2010 ended with a bang, an unemployment rate of 9.4 percent for the month of December. That’s a 0.4 percentage point lower than the previous month. Happy New Year! But don’t celebrate just yet. Whatever numbers the U.S. Department of Labor is feeding you are bullshit, a fabrication to keep the working class from rioting in the streets.
Under the U.S. Department of Labor, the Bureau of Labor Statistics releases the country’s "employment situation" on a monthly basis. Included in the report are two sets of data, the establishment payroll survey data known as the Current Employment Statistics Survey, and household survey data taken from the U.S. Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey. The Current Employment Statistics Survey data comes from about 140,000 different businesses and government agencies keeping track of the few lucky enough to be employed, where they work, their little pay, and the limited amount of hours put into their short work weeks. It’s the household data, the Current Population Survey, where we get our magic unemployment number of 9.4 percent
A 9.4 percent unemployment rate doesn’t even come close to the truth. To better understand the real unemployment situation our nation is facing just look to the person to your right. Now look to the person to your left. Chances are you’re all unemployed. So how exactly does the Current Population Survey attain this 9.4 percent? The good people at the Bureau of Labor Statistics claim on their website in bold red letters, "ECONOMISTS ARE AVAILABLE TO ASSIST YOU WITH DATA FROM THE CURRENT POPULATION SURVEY MONDAY THROUGH FRIDAY (8:00 A.M. – 4:30 P.M. EASTERN TIME), EXCLUDING HOLIDAYS." When I called during the proper hours listed at the number given, (202) 691-6378, I got an answering machine. Maybe they were out to lunch. Or maybe someone was laid off. I have also yet to get any response to the email I sent. It could be possible someone doesn’t want the validity of the Current Population Survey to be questioned. That would explain why it’s easier to use the internet, with a simple click of the mouse, to find your favorite fetish porn as opposed to some hard facts and numbers about the state of our economy. There was a certain amount of excited perversity and disappointment I felt on my search for answers. The same kind of feeling I imagine a pervert gets while tracking down the perfect video. Not enough shemales. But what I was looking for, how kinky could that be? Pretty damn kinky, and I’ve got the web history on my browser to prove it.
The US Census Bureau’s Current Population Survey consists of data gathered from about 60,000 rotating households. To be eligible to participate in the survey individuals must be 15 years or older and not in the Armed Forces. Also people in institutions such as nursing homes and prisons, all two million plus incarcerated, are not eligible. It makes sense really. If you are fighting in one of our wars, hooked to a feeding tube, or we lock you in a cage why would we care what you have to say? As far as the labor statistics gathered, only data from those ages 16 and up are published as younger people have restrictions in their ability to work from child labor laws and schooling.
Before the survey is administered an introductory letter is sent out to prospected households describing the Census Bureau’s intent with the survey and announcing a forthcoming visit with a field representative. If your current employment situation has left you homeless without a household to be reached, sorry you’re not able to participate. Once a field representative arrives to a location with which an introductory letter was to be sent and finds the property not foreclosed upon, destroyed, vacant, or developed into an Applebee’s the field representative knocks on the door. Ideally for the field rep what they call a "reference person", someone who meets the requirements to participate in the survey, answers the door and speaks on behalf of the whole household. On a bad day the person answering the door refuses to divulge personal information to a stranger. His employment status is not counted. If the field rep shows up and all the people deemed worthy a "reference person" are out looking for work, not counted. Your neighbor down the street, the one who lost hope, gave up and hung himself, not counted. And who’s going to pay for the cost of that funeral? You? You don’t have a job.
You might be thinking, "Well maybe this would be a great time for me to go back to school. Finish my degree. That’ll give me the upper hand in the marketplace." Please don’t. The U.S. Department of Education’s Federal Student Aid Strategic Plan Fiscal Years 2011-15 reads like an end of days checklist with a loan portfolio of already $622 billion for the end of fiscal year 2009. That number today is much higher and climbing. The rising cost of education. Check. The increasing lack of ability for students and their families to pay for higher education. Check. The expected increase in enrollment of non-traditional students, such as students 25 years and older coming back to school because they can’t find work. Check. The growing number of enrollments in for-profit institutions, those charging much more than traditional community colleges and using unethical tactics to snare students into terrible student loans and federal student aid money from taxpayers. Check. With this huge entire student debt for inflated degrees that are worthless while trying to find a job, because the job no longer exists, all we have left to do is wait for this education bubble to pop and the next financial crisis to begin.
When this education bubble does pop it will just be another case of the rich getting richer and the poor shrugging their shoulders. At least with the collapse of the housing market there was always the option to declare bankruptcy and walk away from your house. When this new financial crisis hits you won’t be walking anywhere. You’ll be running from debt collectors with your expensive degree tucked under your arm and ever increasing bounty on your head. The shareholders of the for-profit universities are seeing record profits quarter after quarter as long as that federal student aid money keeps pouring in while the bears of Wall Street can’t wait for it to dry up. As with the tech bubble, every IPO made a hedge fund manager a mountain of cash, then another mountain while they shorted the company. No one cared. With the collapse of the housing market wall street prevailed, while the rest of us were eating up Goldman Sachs’ "shitty deal". No one seemed to notice. When General Motors had to take a government bailout and decided to go public again WE WERE NOT ALLOWED TO PARTICIPATE IN THE INITIAL PUBLIC OFFERING!!!!!! Nobody even blinked. And yet the Bush tax cuts for the rich were extended for another two years when the wealthiest politicians, publically establishing their non-working class status, flat out refused to work. How is this possible?
The separation of wealth in this country is much more noticeably appalling in the Internal Revenue Service’s article Personal Wealth, 2004 by Brian G. Raub, the latest published article of its kind. According to the article our country’s top wealth holders made up only 1.2 percent of the total adult population yet held 20.3 percent of the total U.S. net worth in 2004. As shocking as the data may seem the numbers cannot be very accurate as they are based on estate tax returns filed after some rich old miser takes a dirt nap. Having the privileges of wealth, you’d be able to hire one hell of a tax man. And you’d most likely have your affairs in order before you climb into that grave. Statistically you’d live longer and be able to catch a terminal illness before it’s too late to move assets into your children’s name, make a charitable contribution as a last ditch effort to get into heaven, or name your dog as a beneficiary. Us poor folk have terrible health insurance if any and our children are stuck with our hospital bills as we go kicking and screaming into that good night.
All articles and statistics aside it’s not hard to see the middle class disappearing before our eyes and the gap from rich to poor widening at an alarming rate. Take for example a working class man with $100 in his pocket. The cheapest meal he can find would be a quarter pound cheeseburger on some fast food value meal for $1. That’s one percent of his purchasing power. Now picture one of our country’s upper class citizens with a debit card attached to a checking account worth $1,000,000 deciding he wants to eat a quarter pound of gold. With gold roughly trading at $1300 a troy ounce, a quarter pound of the good stuff would run about $3900. Eating a quarter pound of gold would translate to only .39 percent of the upper class citizen’s buying power. An even easier way to describe my point, Oprah can afford to give away brand new cars to her audience, but can her audience afford to gas them up?
As of this writing the latest stats from the Bureau of Economic Analysis on personal savings as a percentage of disposable personal income shows as of November 2010 people are only saving 5.3 percent of their money. A low personal savings number makes sense. Some people just can’t get ahead. If you don’t make enough money and something comes up, the car needs new brakes, you get sick without health insurance, or you can’t stand seeing your child without a present to open on Christmas, chances are
the money gets spent. The sickening thing is the number is too damn low. What about the people who do make money, a lot of money? Where does it all go? It sure as hell isn’t being spent here. Or is it? If it is they sure are spending while the spending is good. Thanks to the housing collapse property is at a discount. Stocks are at a discount. Making money is cheaper than ever thanks to their extended Bush tax cuts. And if they fuck up, nobody seems to care or notice.
The banks are too big to fail. The auto companies are too big to fail. If the wealthiest 1.2 percent of Americans are at the head of these companies, or own them as majority shareholders, are they too big to fail? By my account they already have.
