What is going to happen when that 17.5% of the population stops receiving aid? Usually when you have a large segment of pissed and angry people with no recourse bad things happen.
From what I keep hearing is that they are not going to extend the unemployment any further, I think it runs out in the end of november 2010. I think they will extend the unemployment benefits once again, do you really think they are going to let millions lose unemployment benefits ahead of the biggest shopping season of the year. Come on, they cant let millions go without receiving some kind of benefit around the holiday season.
At one point in the video they ask the one woman who was living in another persons house for free what the lowest job she had applied for and she said some government clerk job. I guarantee a job like that probably pays close to 40k with full benefits, so i have zero sympathy for her. If she was really interested in finding a job she would apply everywhere take a lower paying job then work on upping it from there. That is the problem with these people, they arent going to take any job which matches their unemployment benefits until we get rid of them. I would have felt alot of sympathy for a person raising a family of 4 who decided not to stick it to the system and went out and took a job which was paying an equal salary to their unemployment, just so they could figure out a starting point. Thats the biggest problem, so many of these overpaid underperforming people think that certain work is beneath them, and that is probably why they got laid off in the first place. I know a guy who owns a chain of restaraunts and he leases the properties, and he still goes to all of his restaraunts on weekends and cleans up the outside areas of his properties, he is probably worth a few million, but he goes in gets down on his hands and knees and does the weeding, and picks up glass from bottles, and cleans up his bushes, plants his own flowers and things, he wants everything done right, and he is anal about keeping his places up, he has tried getting his servers to do it and the job never gets done properly so he still goes in every month or so and does it himself, that is the kind of person i would want working for me, and that is precisely the kind of person who held on to their job when things got tough. This is obviously an extreme example but i see so many of these people who got laid off who think doing certain things is beneath them, inevitably when you see a person like this nothing they ever do gets done properly, then they get canned and they wonder why.
I watched that program and have mixed feelings. On one hand I absolutely loathe the economic terrorist's and their government facilitators that brought this upon us. On the other, some of these people were obviously overpaid and have yet come to grips with that reality. I would guess that many were way too selective during the first few months of umemployment, and now have been out of work so long it's difficult to explain such an extended period of unemployment. However, there is no dismissing the reality of being in that 55-65 age bracket, unemployed, and having to start over. Those folks are pretty much screwed any way you slice it.
The 99ers are lucky! Many freelance contractors has been jobless since 2008 and gets no help at all. I am one of them.
Watch this about our corrupt banking system and the politicians that help it exploit ordinary people. http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=-515319560256183936&hl=en
I've watched this, IOUSA, read Web of Debt and The Creature from Jekyl Island. Money Masters probably paints the most accurate picture of politics and the banking system in the US but even that movie may fall short of how rampant it has gotten during the last decade. The Federal Reserve has one and only one objective: to maximize the profits of the banks. QE1, QE2, and TARP had almost nothing to do with saving the consumer and everything to do with saving the banks. BAC can't possibly take possession of millions of assets that are going to depreciate so the Fed is going to pump as money into the economy as it takes to make the price of homes rise again. A dear price is going to be paid for that price manipulation.
That guy tapped his 401k to buy a duct cleaning franchise. WTF? He could have used a crappy old minivan and about $500 worth of stuff from Home Depot to start that business. Instead, he bought into this: http://www.ductz.com/Web/Pages/FranchiseOpportunities/TheOpportunity.aspx You can't fix stupid. That goddamn truck they sold him probably cost him $30,000 of his nest egg. I would never hire that man for any job that required strategic thought or planning or common sense or initiative. He should have at least put an ad in the PennySaver or local newspaper to see what the market for duct cleaning services is before buying a high priced franchise.
Franchises are for those who want a business without having to figure it out on their own. Too many jobs are now use simple assembly-line process, reducing the need for thinking, skills or trading for the worker, and making "productivity" easily quantified and measured. These jobs are boring for most if their had not been properly dumbed down by their schooling or so called training! Franchises are the business counterpart of these jobs for a dumbed-down population! Here is a the story of the dumbing down of American kids, now they start school at 3-4 instead of 6-7! The government gets your kids younger ands younger! The Underground History of American Education http://www.johntaylorgatto.com/underground/toc1.htm