The present unemployment rate and Ronald Reagan.

[kentuck]

Some of the youngsters here may not remember 1983? This was after Ronald Reagan had busted the PATCO union. The unemployment rate was even higher than it is now. Some folks that lost their jobs wondered if they would ever get another. Reagan even added the military into the employment numbers so that the unemployment figure would be lower.

But, it was scary for many because workers were looked at differently than at any time during most of our lifetimes. Business was supreme. All taxcuts should go to business because they create the jobs. Workers were on a par with a piece of machinery at the factory. Reagan de-humanized labor. And it was very scary at that time.

The present unemployment rate of 9.4% is bad but it has been bad before. Those that remember the Gipper fondly seem to forget this part of his legacy. Our country never actually recovered from the mindset of the Reagan Administration toward labor. The Clinton Administration was better for job creation and investment but many saw it as a continuing justification of the Reagan supply-side theories. Then along came George W Bush, like Reaganomics on steroids, and here we are today.

[NightWatcher]

1. was underemployment as bad under Ray-gun?

I'm starting a job next week making 8$ an hour. My former billable daily rate was 500$ a day, but I wont make that in more than a week now.

The middle class is dead. Those of us who are lucky are now in the Working Class. I'm just glad that they havent fired up the debtor's prisons again, because those would fill up faster than the corporate owned prisons that pay judges for inmate "referrals"

[kentuck]

4. I think "under-employment" probably started under Reagan...

Simply because people were fearful that they would never get another job, they were willing to accept much less.

[Demeter]

2. Reganomics Lives on Today

and that's why it's as bad as it is, and has been for 30 years.

[HopeHoops]

3. AND Reagan padded the numbers by including the military for the first time.

Think about it - the military is 100% employed. He added a huge group with 100% unemployment to a group with disgustingly high unemployment to bring the overall number down.

My favorite disgusting trick of the Reagan administration was education funding. They kept it flat for three years and then in the fourth year (election year of course) proposed an increase that was "more than any previous administration". In raw dollars, this was true. In reality, it was just below the amount needed to keep up with inflation over those four years. So essentially, they didn't lie, but they had a net reduction. Sick shit, that.

[kentuck]

6. And the way he attacked the huge deficits he created...

with his initial huge taxcuts. He created the Social Security Reform Commission which raised FICA taxes on working people, under the guise of saving the Social Security system. Also, for the first time in history, he decided to tax the unemployment checks of those out of work. That was pretty sick, too.

[MindPilot]

15. And his tax "cuts" were not cuts at all for most people

They lowered the overall rate, but offset that by introducing floors on deductions like medical expenses and removing the deductions for consumer credit interest. Most working and middle class people actually saw their taxes increase.

[zipplewrath]

5. Reagan as a myth

Those of us who lived through it, don't recognize the myth that is spoken of today. I remember the dead marines in Lebanon, who weren't allowed to have bullets in their guns. I remember the "golden asterisk". I remember all the taxes that were renamed "user fees". I remember that he resurrected the B-1B and a battleship for goodness sakes. I remember when he tried to negotiate away our entire nuclear arsenal, without talking to anyone. I remember how he broke the unions, all the while appealing the unionized "Reagan Democrats" who cared more about their guns and gays than their jobs. I remember serious foot dragging on Aids funding, and how he had to be coaxed out of the White House by his son for "Hands Across America" because some how philanthropy seemed so "leftist". And I remember the out of control deficits and Irangate. I also remember you could read any number of "conservative" magazines and newspapers that complained bitterly about him.

This guy we read about today, I never saw.

[conscious evolution]

7. Lying with statistics

They still do it.
Compare the Labor Dept's job loss numbers with private payroll companies like ADP.Big difference between what the private corporations are saying and the goverment numbers.

[havocmom]

8. Workers looked at as machinery. Yep. And they want to trash broken machinery

Health care situation we have now is also a result of the mindset that took hold in the Reagan years.

If you aren't rich enough to consume copiously, you are just energy to be exploited. If you become too old or infirm to be exploited for labor energy, you have no value to capitalism and must be thrown out.

They devalue the worth of our labor until most of ue believe we really are worthless.

People will attempt to emulate the copious consumers in a desperate attempt to convince others, and, more importantly, themselves that they DO have value. We know, at some deep level, that we personally have value, but the culture tells us otherwise so we look for ways to reconcile the cultural & socio-economic rules with intrinsic nature of our worthiness.

I am old enough to recall how callousness to the aged and infirm was used to point out that communism is a vile and soulless system. Well, so is capitalism as practiced since the Reagan era.

One might conclude that it is not the political/economic system that is to blame so much as the very nature of those at the head of the systems. When greed rules, it doesn't much matter what system it employs in that governance.

The very language used by bush/cheney/gop/corporatist is indicative of their view of workers and the poor, even the middle class. When they spoke/speak of America, Americans, 'the people', they obviously mean their class. Read their comments about 'Americans' and add "of the top economic tier' and see if their words don't align better with their actions. That unsaid phrase was always there.

They think of their class as human. The rest of us are seen as much less. Makes it so much more palatable to abuse us all. Not any different from how they train the military to view their enemies before they send them off to fight their wars.

[kentuck]

9. Well said, havocmom..

Reagan succeeded in "de-humanizing" working people and those that labor just to survive from day to day. We have not recovered from that mindset.

[havocmom]

12. Not only do the corporate powers exploit & abandon, they don't want us old guys around at all

We are a dangerous contaminate to 'their' labor pool. WE remember that the way it is now is not how it has always been. WE have perspective and can pass the benefit of that and the knowledge we have gained in our decades at the School of Hard Knocks to younger people, so they don't have to learn everything the hard way.

These bastards are the force that has, for hundreds of generations, continually 'burned the libraries': remained in power by denying access for the masses to the repositories of accumulated knowledge.

Kentuck, we are the repositories of the knowledge of how they have destroyed the economic basis of our nation's strength. We are dangerous influences because we have first hand knowledge that things do not have to be this way for 'America' to thrive. We recall, directly from experience, that we ALL do better when we ALL do better. We are a huge threat to the patrons of Reagan. They are waiting for us to die off. They are feeding crap to our progeny and calling it honey.

We must remain strong voices for keeping a little flame alive. The struggle must go on, at least to ebb and flow, or humanity will devolve to the 'humans' (them) and the natural resources (us).

Workers need to know they have power. We have to stop being brainwashed to think group effort is bad. We have to get past being led to turn on each other (wedge issues), as that is the very weapon the vampires at the top use to keep us from taking their power over our lives away from them.

WE are human and WE have value.

[kentuck]

13. Very perceptive.

Almost prophetic.

[juno jones]

17. This would make a good OP in it's own right.

My husband and I joke about 'BIC' employees. Use 'em up, throw 'em out.

[baldguy]

10. The reported unemployment rate is meaningless.

The correct figure is 15.4%

http://www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t12.htm

[slackmaster]

11. I was out of work for most of 1983. In December I went to work for a financial institution...

...that was run by close allies of Reagan. Members of his "kitchen cabinet".

The pay was low but the work was good, at least until the century-old instituation collapsed in 1990.

[lonestarnot]

14. Tentacles of institutionalized slave labor under Ray Gun, the union busting bitch!

[havocmom]

16. kick

[roamer65]

18. I definitely remember the 1980-1982 recession.

My dad lost his job due to the dual fuckheads, Reagan and Volcker. Those were some very lean years, but we did have the feeling once interest rates came down things would be better. There is very little hope now.

[roamer65]

19. Here's a great site to show how "cooked" the numbers are...

http://www.shadowstats.com