FedUpUSA

Archive for the ‘Indiana’ Category

Did you ever think that things in America would get so bad that we would need to put armed guards into our unemployment offices?  Well, that is exactly what is happening in Indiana.  Armed security guards will now be posted at all 36 full-service unemployment offices in the state of Indiana.  So why is this happening now?  Well, Indiana Department of Workforce Development spokesman Marc Lotter says that the agency is bringing in the extra security in anticipation of an upcoming deadline when thousands upon thousands of Indiana residents could have their unemployment benefits cut off.  But it is not just the state of Indiana that could have a problem.  In fact, one recent study found that approximately 2 million Americans will lose their unemployment insurance benefits during this upcoming holiday season unless Congress authorizes another emergency extension of benefits by the end of November.  At this point, however, that is looking less and less likely.

So perhaps all the states will have to start putting armed security guards in their unemployment offices.  The truth is that frustration among unemployed Americans is growing by the day.

Could we soon see economic riots similar to what we have seen in Greece and France?

Let’s hope not.

The following is a video news report about the armed guards that are going into Indiana unemployment offices….

So could things really get out of hand when thousands of unemployed workers in Indiana find out that they aren’t going to get checks any longer?

Indiana Department of Workforce Development spokesman Marc Lotter makes it sound like that is very much on his mind….

“Given the upcoming expiration of the federal extensions and the increased stress on some of the unemployed, we thought added security would provide an extra level of protection for our employees and clients.”

So who is paying for all of this extra security?

The Feds of course.

The additional cost of the new security will be approximately $1 million, and it will be paid for with U.S. government funds designated for the administration of the unemployment system according to Lotter.

This is not a good trend.  As you go through your daily life, just start taking note of the places that now have armed security that did not have armed security five or ten years ago.

Unfortunately, as the U.S. economy goes downhill even further, the amount of security that people feel is “necessary” is likely to go up even more.

So is America going to become an armed camp where the people and institutions with money are protected by armed guards from the hordes of frustrated unemployed workers that can’t feed themselves or their families?

Americans are certainly not in a good mood about the economy.  According to a recent poll conducted by CNBC, 92 percent of Americans believe that the performance of the U.S. economy is either “fair” or “poor”.

The lack of jobs is the main thing that the American people are so mad about.  In fact, it is hard for even highly educated people to find work in 2010.  In America today, 317,000 waiters and waitresses have college degrees. 

People are really hurting and they are getting to the end of their ropes.  Over 41 million Americans are now on food stamps, and one out of every six Americans is enrolled in at least one federal anti-poverty program.  It is getting hard to believe that this is even America anymore.  For many more statistics that reveal the economic horror we are now facing as a nation, please see my previous article entitled ”30 Reasons Why People Should Be Getting Really Nervous About The State Of The U.S. Economy“.

But it is not just unemployment that is the problem.  In recent years, millions upon millions of Americans have been forced to take reduced hours or a cut in pay due to the economy.  Millions of others have had to take jobs that barely enable them to survive.  In fact, the number of Americans working part-time jobs “for economic reasons” is now the highest it has been in at least five decades.

So why aren’t there even close to enough jobs for everyone?  Well, there are a number of contributing factors, including the fact that we have been “offshoring” and “outsourcing” millions of our jobs and now it is really starting to catch up with us.  I have discussed this so many times now that I am starting to sound like a broken record.

But instead of fixing the fundamental problems with our economy, the Federal Reserve wants to print yet another gigantic pile of paper money and throw it at the problem.  It is called “quantitative easing“, and it may help smooth things over for a few months, but it is also going to make our long-term problems even worse.

Unfortunately, the Federal Reserve does not really seem concerned about protecting the value of the U.S. dollar at this point.  Not that they ever did, but it would be nice to see Fed officials paying at least some lip service to the dangers of inflation.

Instead, various Fed officials have been publicly making statements about the need for more quantitative easing for weeks.  Right now they seem desperate to put the American people back to work – even if it ends up crashing the value of the dollar.   

But now even the IMF seems supportive of a dollar devaluation.  On Thursday, the IMF actually said that the U.S. dollar is “overvalued” and that adjustments need to be made.

We’ll see what the Fed decides to do next week.  Most analysts believe that they will announce a quantitative easing program of some sort or another.

But what have we come to as a nation when those who control our economy believe that the best solution to our economic problems is to print another big pile of paper money and chuck it into the system?

We’ve got an absolutely gigantic economic mess on our hands, and none of our “leaders” seem to have any idea about how to fix it.

Meanwhile, millions of unemployed Americans are just going to become more and more frustrated – especially when it gets to the point when they aren’t receiving unemployment checks anymore.

The Economic Collapse

Those of you counting on getting your old assembly line job back in Detroit can forget it.

The recent eight year forecast published by the Bureau of Labor Statistics shows that 4.19 million jobs will be gained in the US in professional and business services, followed by 4 million health care and social assistance jobs, while 1.2 million will be lost in manufacturing. This is great news for website designers, Internet entrepreneurs,  registered nurses, and masseuses in California, but grim tidings for traditional metal bashers in the rust belt manufacturing states like Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio.

I’m so old now that I am no longer asked for a driver’s license to get into a night club. Instead, they ask for a carbon dating. The real challenge for we aged career advisors is that probably half of these new service jobs haven’t even been invented yet, and if they can be described, it is only in a cheesy science fiction paperback with a half dressed blond on the front cover. After all, who heard of a webmaster, a cell phone contract sales person, or a blogger 40 years ago? Where are all these jobs going to? You guessed it, China, and other lower waged, upstream manufacturing countries like Vietnam, where the Middle Kingdom is increasingly subcontracting its own offshoring.

These forecasts may be optimistic, because they assume that Americans can continue to claw their way up the value chain in the global economy, and not get stuck along the way, as the Japanese did in the nineties. The US desperately needs no less than 27 million new jobs to soak up natural population and immigration growth and get us back to a traditional 5% unemployment rate. The only way that is going to happen is for America to invent something new and big, and fast. Personal computers achieved this during the eighties, and the Internet did the trick in the nineties. The fact that we’ve done diddly squat since 2000 but create a giant paper chase explains why job growth since then has been zero, real wage growth has been negative, and American standards of living are falling.

Alternative energy and biotechnology are two possible drivers for a new economy. Unfortunately, the last administration did everything it could to stymie progress in both these fields, coddling big oil so China could steal a lead in several alternative technologies, and starving stem cell researchers of Federal cash, ceding the lead there to others. While the current crop of politicians extol the virtues of education, the reality is that we are dumbing down our public education system. How do we invent the next “new” thing, while shrinking the University of California’s budget by 20% two years in a row? If my local high school can’t afford new computers, how is it going to feed Silicon Valley with computer literate work force? The US has a “Michael Jackson” economy. It’s still living like a rock star, but hasn’t had a hit in 20 years.

China can have all the $20 a day jobs it wants. But if it accelerates its move up the value chain, as it clearly aspires to do, then America is in for even harder times. I’ll be hoping for the best, but preparing for the worst. How do you say “unemployment check” in Mandarin?