i do not understand any of it . how the country is supposed to be doing well, when, like you said, there are so many folks out of work.

...and a lot of our friends and family are taking unemployment benefits but for how long?!

I'd also like someone to explain it.

Maybe the rich are so rich that the rest of us are no longer relevant.

We are doing mighty fine I do suppose as Johnny Cash used to say in that song when compared to the rest of the world. Even though some compare our unemployment figures to those of the Great Depression, no one can say we are living in those conditions. Even during the Great Depression our sufferings as a nation were minimal compared to other nations.

It took 10-15 years to recover from the crash of 1929 and I don't expect any magic in our own time. We are globally tied in modern times and our recovery is closely tied to that of other countries which have also showed little sign of rebounding.

Fifty to seventyfive percent of the world has never used a telephone, about 80% of the world lives on less than $10/day and "As of 2008 (2004 statistics), the World Bank has estimated that there were an estimated 982 million poor people in developing countries who live on $1.25 a day or less (World Bank, Understanding Poverty, Chen 2004)." view link

So things could be worse. You could be living in one of those countries where someone is generous enough to donate aids medication or other medication, but it says "take with food" but you don't have any.

If it were all about numbers this would be easy to explain, but it not. It's the economy, stupid.

Yes, James Carville was correct in 1992 when as the manager of the Clinton campaign he was alleged to put this comment up in the campaign war room as the single principle to electing Bill Clinton, and it did.

Now the problem, the economy is complex, very complex. Worse, for most people it is not relevant, the economy that is, it is having an income, cash, assets. benefit(s) and access to all of them is most the relevant. And yes, jobs, having a job is important, just not necessarily your job.

So what is happening? Duh, I don't know.

What we do know is that this is the Great Recession not the Great Depression. Why?, one may ask is that so. In part it is the reality of the situation, and yes, numbers. The Gross Domestic Product, the value of all goods and services produced is down but not out and not out like it was in the Great Depression.

In the Depression the GDP evaporated, and just about everything in around it, mostly jobs. In the Great Recession, the GDP is down and so are the number and value of jobs, but nowhere near that of the worse of the Depression and technically there has been a small advance since the beginning of the year. Why and what has happened?, would be a good question with a not so good set of answers.

One answer is we are printing money, lots of it. Second, we are still buying stuff, a lot of it with the money we are printing. Third, things are adjusting quicker and with a better response than what happened almost eighty years ago. Four, things were already changing before this recession ever started, so in part the correction was already in place.

Ok, so as not to be too stupid, what is happening and what will happening, well, refer to the above, duh, I don't know.

What we do know is that this economy is significantly different that the economy of the Great Depression. First, we don't make stuff like we use to, others do that, and do it will. Second, the idea of the single person income household is just a Rockwell painting of a time that use to be, maybe.
Third, people can get money in more ways than just working for it, breathing can provide an income.

The answer as to the first comment is yes, we don't make stuff but we buy it, and we buy a lot of it from a place like China and a lot of countries that use to sell at best bananas and other leafy stuff.

Today, the seller and buy are locked into a monetary embrace that is hard to break, China has to give us money so we can buy the stuff from them. Who would have thought that made by Mao would be in aisle of every America store, and of course, how would have Mao taking it, if he had knowing that the Great Leap Forward was to be in every American home, it certainly boggles the mind of those that fought to maintain the Bamboo Curtain.

Second is the idea that you have come a long way, baby, from the stove to the job and the stove. Again who knew that the result of gender economic opportunity meant that there would be more women in the workforce, earning less, doing more. What a country.

Third, been there, done that. Once the idea of a crash and burn has been witness more than once the shock value diminishes for better or worse. In this decade starting with the bust of the millennium
scare, the internet bubble most people have seen the movie and it gets tiresome. So, one of the features of a economic crash is that it becomes self-generating after a while, people become depressed and stay depressed in part because they have never experienced it before. With 24 hour media and YouTube the impact is not just not the same as reading 4inch headlines in the daily paper(remember those?) and the scanning of stock quotes more than 24 hours old, all so yesterday. So, in some sense people are jade and desensitized by disaster, that is broadcast at the top of every hour.

But last it is always about the money...and yes, there is plenty of it. It is not however in cash, it is in 1's and 0's somewhere in cyberspace. And with the government some of it is placed in the hands of citizens every month. Since the Great Depression, social engineering and vote buying has provide a floor to most of what people experience as the Great Destitution. Not to say it isn't bad, it is, it just is that it isn't that bad, for most. A lesson learned from eighty years ago.

The next question is what are we going to learn for this...Great whatever...duh, I don't know.

WOW exe.....Your first line made me panic until I see you were quoting James Carville.

cary.....I see what you see too. We used to have the big Mirro company in town and it was the backbone of Manitowoc. Now we have the big empty buildings (3 of them) haunting us and Manitowoc will be stuck with the hefty demolition bill. How did Mirro get away with that????
Manitowoc Cranes where my 2 sons worked until they got layed off.....is still laying off 100's of workers at a time......and many of them...went to Manitowoc Cranes when they got cut from Mirro.
Where next with these people?
Many companies are now resorting to hiring part time workers so they don't have to pay insurance bennies and vacation......so some people take these jobs because....well they want to eat and pay rent.....this is where national healthcare comes in......whether you are for it or not!!!
Yep, the rich have theirs and they don't care to see how you are managing without!!!! They don't understand that these people are NOT lazy....they DO NOT lay on the couch all day!!!! They struggle with the basics........ and the rich can't fathom that kind of life because they're vacationing in Europe and living the good life!!!!

This has hit home here too. My husband has worked for his company for 23 years and Monday he and most of his co-workers ages 45 and up were layed off and the younger, newly hired ones were spared. Come to find out the ones that got layed off had the company's insurance plan where the ones that were not layed off had their spouse's insurance ir had the single plan. What it boils down to, they got rid of the older, dedicated, experienced people who make more money and use the company's insurance, to save money. There is no such thing as job security no matter how long you work for a company or how good you are at it.

I see our unemployment the result of two this; globalization and bad economy.

Globalization, results in American jobs going overseas and is known as off-shoring. Two years ago, I went on permanent disability due to MS. I was a director for a major communications company. In my last five or so years working as a director, I was witness to the company I worked for off-shoring tens of thousands of American jobs. Fortunately, none of the people that worked for me were off-shored, but the way it was done was cold and insensitive. When an employee's job was to be off-shored, that person's director had to tell them words to the effect; "Your job is being off-shored. A person from East India will be arriving soon. You will be training this person in how to do your job over the next three months. If you choose to train this person, you may use the next three months to find another job. If you choose not to train this person, you may leave now. Your choice." The quality of the people from off-shore was horrific. They spoke very poor English and it took three months to train them for a job that took an American just a few weeks to learn. The high level management of the company gave us an edict. To prove the benefit of off-shoring to the share-holders, we were to rate each off-shore employee that we came into contact with. They established an online rating form for managers to fill out. It was a simple form where we had to rate their performance from a 1 (extremely poor) to a 10 (extremely good). These ratings were tabulated, then presented to the share-holders. We were told that any manager who rated an off-shore employee less than an 8, would be fired. Now that was a fair system and a curious way to hood wink the share holders. I received a call a few weeks ago from an ex co-worker and the company was doing another massive job cut of several thousand employees. Notification papers have already been sent out to the affected employees and their last day of work will be December 18th. Just in time for the "happy" holidays.

Globalization is taking most of America's high paying jobs and placing them overseas where labor is a fraction of the cost. One of the characters who started the globalization's loss of jobs in America is Lee Iacocca . I find it curious that he wrote a book and speaks publicly about re-establishing the American worker when he was one in the forefront in the destruction of the American work force and unions.

Anyone remember Chrysler Outboard in Hartford, Wisconsin? I was a consultant in their last year of operation. When Iacocca was named CEO of Chrysler, the union at Chrysler Outboard went out on strike. I crossed the picket lines twice a day to get in and out of the plant for over two weeks. Suddenly as soon as Iacocca came to power, Chrysler gave in to all the union demands. A short time later, it was announced that Chrysler Outboard had been sold off to Bayliner. As soon as Bayliner took over, every union person was fired. They were told that it would be a non-union plant and that if they wanted their jobs back, they could re-apply and expect a fraction of their old wages and benefits. Coincidentally, I was consulting to American Motors when Chrysler bought them out (to get the Jeep division, one of Iacocca's must have's). I remember Iacocca making the decision to close the Kenosha production plant. Good old Lee told the American public that Kenosha had to be closed because Chrysler had too many production facilities. He was closing Kenosha down and saying this while he was building two new production facilities, one in Canada and the other in Mexico. Iacocca dealt another union a devastating blow at American Motors. While I was there, the in house security guards went out on strike. Iacocca's response? He fired all of them replacing them with outside security services. These are the things Iacocca won't tell you in his book! Yeah Iacocca, the great hero and supporter of the American worker!

With Globalization an ongoing fact and add this major recession, American workers will go through a long period of high unemployment. The high unemployment will be followed by a significant increase in poverty in the United States as our work force will have no choice but to accept low paying service oriented jobs (manufacturing in this country has gone overseas). Remember the days when there was but one bread winner in the family? The days when more women joined the work force and there were two bread winners holding two good jobs? The norm will soon be two bread winners working two jobs each in order to maintain a family.

Off that subject for a moment, but thanks Bobby..
Here's what I know ~

A friend of mines' daughter quit HS in her senior year so she could get a job to help support her mom and seven bros and sisters!
When the factories have lay offs here, there are no jobs at other factories so the workers are forced to look for white collar jobs as opposed to blue collar, and they are in competition with others who have been out of work in their area of business for months. The prosepective employers KNOW that these factory workers are used to $15-$20 and hour jobs and have been on them sometimes 20 yr or more, but they see them as
trainable, dependable workforce that have mortgages to pay and school age kids to feed so they hire them. Not everyone will get a job in this economy. It's becoming like a game of musical chairs. The UE bennies will run out. You start recieving a low amount and after 3 extensions, it is reduced everytime you re-apply. (You must also show proof that you are actively looking for work.) After that, it depends on your state and what the federal governemt allows each state to do. But you can't squeeze blood out of a turnip. If there are no jobs, there are just no jobs. They tell everyone not to be picky and that they have to look for employment outside their area of expertise - which really means their "comfort level". As in - an executive could very well be working at Hardees if they would hire him....but the employers know that with his background, the job is only very temporary..so they won't. Which is the same with any job that one is overqualified for. If employers believe that you are using the job as a stepping stone or to fill a desperate need, they may not hire you because they don't want to be training people all the time.

As seen from the inside, and out....

There is a book I am currently using that talks about what it takes to compete in our time both globally and at the individual level. This is the third year I have used it so a few things have become outdated economically but not much. It is called "A Whole New Mind" by Daniel H. Pink. The Marathon County Library has the book as well. And the website is view link for this and his other books and comments.