From Federal Trade Commission site concerning:
Keep the Made in USA Label as is- 1998 Comment 293 and not much as changed since then. President Bush covers all this with
wars. He followed in President Clinton's footsteps. Our unemployment rates are a facade.
Comments P894219 by Ray Tapajna
IF THIS IS A GOOD ECONOMY,
I WOULD HATE TO SEEN A BAD ONE
1. (Correction) ---Unemployment stats do not
cover those who gave up looking for work or who have lost subsequent jobs that do not carry any unemployment benefits. (Note:
this item has been updated 2006. See above comments and in October 2002, The Bureau of Labor Statistics acknowleged that 4
million people who are discouraged and stop trying to find a job are not part of the unemployed rate. The BLS does not
take their stats any longer based on unemployment offices since only about 38% of all workers now qualify for unemployment
benefits. This should fact alone shoul tell them that there are more than 4 million "missing in action" from any kind
of reporting.)
2. Actually 1/3rd of all workers are unemployed or underemployed.
3. Only 50% of all jobs are now full time jobs based on a 40 hour standard and carry unemployment
benefits. Workers who lose other jobs are "missing in action" in the stats.
4. Even 10 hour a week jobs are now reported as new jobs. With those having up to 4 jobs
at one time, the jobs are being reported as 4 jobs per worker and not as 4 separate jobs.
5. 70% of all workers are let go prior to age 65. Virtually none have a pension except
for social security. Most have only a few hundred dollars in the bank.
6. 33% of all those over 55 years old are unemployed and most will never find another job.
7. 30% of all workers lost their jobs in the 1980s.
8. 33% of all businesses have closed down since
1976.
9. 50% of all young blacks in the inner city are
unemployed.
10. 70% of all college grads are not working in
the field for which they were trained.
11. 20% of all college grads are unemployed
or in jobs not requiring any degrees.
12. The value of most existing jobs have been discounted
up to 50% (hours per week, benefits, hourly rates, etc.)
13. A worker who worked their way through college
in the 1950s made the equivalent of $15 to $20 an hour in the factories. If these jobs were available today there would
be lines of applicants trying to get them including college grads and not as a means but as end.
14. 80 to 90% of all new business startups fail
in the first few years.
15. The term downsized indicates a company is still
functioning but in many cases, the only thing remains of the so-called downsized company in this country is its brand name.
16. Full-time workers who still have jobs are complaining
about working 60 to 70 hours a week because employers refused to hire new workers.
17.Companies complain about not being able to find
skilled workers after they already have layed off seasoned workers with full skills for the sake of the slow times. Then they
no longer want to train new workers themselves as they did in the past. They want workers with mobile skills expecting them
to be available at will.
18. In the 1940s to the 1970s, it was the
shop foreman who tamed the streets by taking the young off the streets and teaching them a skill. In turn the young men were
paid enough to get married, buy a home and have children. We still use the product they once made but now the products
come from far away places. We have exported decent paying jobs.
19. Meanwhile there is a 300% increase in bank
and food store robberies with no real jobs available to a vast grouping of workers. (During the 1990s, over 20 Arab American
Grocers in Cleveland, were killed during robberies while President Clinton declared statistical prosperity)
20. Workers now pay more in payroll taxes that
they do in income taxes. A worker making only $10,000 a year pays out close to 20% of their income in taxes covering
payroll, medicare, local and state taxes. A person in their own business pays out even more due to a double payroll
tax.
21. Meanwhile the stock market flourishes when
workers get fired instead of hired. In the years before the 1980s, companies were judged on how many employees they could
hire and still make a profit. Now the stock market counts on people getting fired to show more productivity while workers
are stressed out doing the work of what three people did at one time.
22. Contract workers, part-time workers and temporary
workers have grown ten-fold in the past few years. These jobs usually have no benefits and those who hold these job involuntarily
because they can not find a real job are considrered employed.
23. 40% of our people have no health benefits.
We have health care workers working for just over minimum wage taking care of the sick while they hve no health benefits of
their own.
24. People are being taken off welfare at
a time when there are no real jobs available. Meanwhile work-fare people take jobs away from the higher paid workers in the
same field. At the other end, investors wait for the latest word from the Federal Reserve Trust of Banks based on the misery
of a working poor class.
25. There is no basis in history for any of this.
When the Feds say we are enjoying the best unemployment rate compared to the past, it is a functioning lie because the comparisons
are not valid.
26. We live in an age when the President can go
jogging blocks away from third world conditions in Washington DC and then come back and tell people how wonderful economy
is.
27. We have a service economy with most of our
factory production and small farming exported to other countries. A service economy is like a poker game with just so much
money on the table. Only one or two persons go home winners shuffling the same money around. The rest go home broke.
When an economy does not have added levels of value added from the initial raw product up to the finished product through
distribution levels up to retail, there is no way to support many communities and that is why so many towns are dying and
our inner cities resemble third world countries.
28. In bigger cities like Cleveland Ohio, the largest
employers are now governments- Federal , County, State and Local governments, followed by education and the medical fields.
In a sense, these are all parasite jobs dependent on a tax base first. The tax base depends on many value added levels
of manufacturing, farming and commerce. A service economy can not survive on its own if all depend on a tax base to operate.
29. A growing upper middle class is flourishing
at the expense of the lower classes. We are now living off the working poor in the USA and the destitute workers abroad. Impoverished
workers will not go quietyly into the night of serfdom.
30. As consumers, we vote for what kind of society
we want at the check out counter and not in the voting booth. Both political parties are deep into the global one world economy
where the American Worker is put on a world trading block as a commodity to compete with 20 cents an hour workers and even
slave labor.
31. GATT and NAFTA are total failures with our
trade deficit soaring out of control. GATT and NAFTA are not that new and been fostered for many years without the full confirmation
of Free Trade under GATT and NAFTA. ( Now we have almost a ten year history on both GATT and NAFTA too and they have
obviously failed completely to offer a better life for the majority of workers anywhere.) There is really no precedence
in history for this type of world trade. Roosevelt said that economic diseases are highly communicable. Uncontrolled trading
is like sex, When you sleep with someont, you sleep with everyone else your partner has slept with. In uncontrolled Free Trade
( which is really moving production from place to place based on finding the lowest labor markets and not it is not really
based on trading products per se.), you pass on all the economic , social, cultural and geopolitical diseases
of your trading partners. ( which now evidently includes wars and terrorism.)
32. In essence, we have taken tariffs off products
and put tariffs on workers instead with the American worker carrying the largest tariff in the world on their work.
33. Econoimis has its own ecology and when that
ecology is out of balance, the real product becomes cash flow and when only money goes transnational one does not need any
conspiracy theories to know our sovereignty will follow the money.
34. High techology is not the answer. The so called
internet super highway is only a suspension bridge in the sky to get us one place to another faster. We still need something
at both ends to support the bridge. Bits and bytes can come from anywhere in the world and in places like India, they can
do the work at a fraction of our costs. In France, they have had their version of the internet in almost every home since
1980 with little results. The government subsidized the startup and still does the same as the only way to support it
until now. Now the pornographic industry uses it as ideal vehicle to peddle its thrash. The government is hooked on
the revenue from this terrible pursuit . At the same time, thousands of French march in protest for better jobs.
It is now apparent that our economy was much better before the computer revolution too. Prior to the computer revolution,
there was a much better economic balance and the American Dream was alive.
35. Now, we have predatory Capitalist system where
anything goes. More people need emergency food. While glowing reports about the economy continues, 750,000 steel
workers , over 250,000 auto workers and over a million workers in the computer field have lost their jobs in recent years.
There is no micro computer manufacturer left in this country. Meanwhile, auto manufacturers build new auto plants in Mexico
with no need for employee parking lots. Workers can not afford to buy the products they make. Other companies move to far
away places to escape the overhead of the entitlements or ecology regulations. One of our biggest exports is pollution.
1998 Comment 293 - not much as changed in 2006.
Seems President Bush has followed in President Clinton's footsteps. Both used wars to cover our economic woes. Hurricane Katrina
in 2005 vividly showed how a Silent Depression is real in our land.
