For many economic recovery means lower espectations

[Better Believe It]

Recovery means lower expectations
Professionals taking huge pay cuts if they have work at all
By Allen G. Breed and Rich Matthews
Associated Press Writers
June 6, 2010

PROSPER, Texas - Advised by a Walgreens superior that a promotion was "very highly likely" if he transferred to the drugstore chain's Dallas division, Chris Cummings uprooted his family and bought a spacious house in this hopefully named suburb.

"The sky's the limit," he was told.

But instead of a promotion, the company for which Cummings had been an assistant manager three and a half years cut his hours so drastically that he had to take a second job. In March, he was laid off, and his part-time second job became full-time.

And so that is how a 40-year-old father of four with a master's in business administration from the University of Notre Dame finds himself bagging groceries at Sprouts, a local health-food store.

The federal government says the "Great Recession" is over — has been for months now — and that we're well into the recovery. But don't tell that to Cummings, who has seen his income cut by three-quarters and can't afford health insurance for his family.

Or Af Shirinzadeh, who went from a $100-an-hour chiropractic job to part-time work as a docent in an Atlanta museum that features plasticized human cadavers.

Or welder Mark Sepeda, who had to move his family of six from a spacious home in Nevada's lush Carson Valley to a two-bedroom apartment when the Las Vegas building boom came to a screeching halt.

Or Paul Lechner, who, with a mixture of gratitude and dejection, accepted a job stocking shelves at a Super Target after two years and hundreds of applications failed to land him a position in advertising, the field for which he trained.

Read the full article at:

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/37539487/ns/business-personal_finance

[Nay]

1. And what happens when those stopgap jobs at Target, Sprouts, etc.,

when 90 percent of the professionals lose their jobs and can't spend at the retailers? We're well on our way to that point. No one seems to understand that when the middle class loses its jobs, all those retail and service jobs go away, too.

[RandomThoughts]

2. You are thinking of what is best for society.

The zero sum gain world might think the less society has, the more they have. If they think in terms of money being most important, many times taking away money from middle class keeps that group from using it in things like donations.

And if they have the money, then they think they can dictate many issues they believe can be decided by money.


Your comment is from your mind set, and that is not the mind set of all people.


Another reason despair and apathy are pushed by some groups so much, things like trying to show there is no justice, and trying to make people think they can not make a difference, is how some try to get people to, lower expectations, as a previous thread mentioned.

I do not lower my expectations, because I know why that is done, and it is not always necessary, it is done sometimes for reasons of power or control. It also can add fear, and a for some, a fearful worker is not as likely to fight for something or someone that needs something.

[marybourg]

7. I'm old enough to have known some people who graduated from

college and professional school in 1928 and '29. They did not get jobs in their profession or craft until they were in their 40's or 50's. By the time the employment picture opened up a bit, they had started families and made some progress in the lower wage jobs they had managed to get. To begin on the first rung of the jobs they had trained for would have meant cuts in salary that they couldn't afford until their kids were on their own or maybe their spouses (wives in those days) were in the labor force too. needles to say they never caught up and many promising lives were unfulfilled.

[Juche]

3. Plus all the public sector jobs

If someone is making 80k a year in the private sector, then starts making 15k, they are going to pay far far less in taxes. You go from paying 25k a year in taxes to close to 3k a year in taxes in that situation. So states and the federal government start laying people off. Hundreds of thousands of teachers are expected to be laid off in the next school year due to all the shortcomings of tax revenue. Plus construction areas like road repair will be hurt.

[w4rma]

4. 'Free' trade is the problem. (nt)

[SocialistLez]

8. Yep yep. The elephant in the room. NT

[muntrv]

5. Outsourcing US jobs overseas doesn't help matters.

[eridani]

6. "Many" = 98% of the population n/t