|
Post by blueneck on Mar 17, 2007 15:37:03 GMT -6
One of the pithy answers the right gives when jobs decline in an area is "move somewhere else".
Ignore for the moment community and family ties that make relocations dificult. Also ignore the fact that employers are becoming less and less willing to foot most of the relocation bill.
What happens when a major employer closes due to economic or trade reasons, or is simply offshored, it leaves a gaping hole in a community. Some recent examples are the towns Maytag recently abandoned, Galesburg and Herrin IL, and Newton IA. In these towns Maytag was the primary employer. many more were employed in the service supply and support industries for maytag. So lets say these now unemployed workers decide to relocate "somewhere else". There is now a big problem. Since the major employer is gone, there is now a glut of houses on the market, that will not sell, or at the very least sell at a drastically reduced value.
So the worker is now doubly screwed - no job, lost value in an unsaleable property. And a potential new employer unwilling to help with the sale or reimburse the loss in value.
|
|
|
Post by whoswho on May 31, 2007 10:57:21 GMT -6
When I was downsized, I found work quickly, within six weeks, in a major metropolitan area, but decided that I did not want to uproot myself at age 43. So I came home.... and finally got, after 3 years of consultant jobs or no jobs, a job that started out at more than a 50% pay cut (from $23/hr. to $11/hr.)
It takes a lot of stubbornness to resist the trend, but I consider it well worth it.
Which is easier to do, to obey the new edict, or to keep your roots in the ground? Any time there is a life disturbance (divorce, death in the family, job loss) there is an economic boon for someone else besides yourself. And many people are just heartless enough not to care about that.
My solution is to dig in.... batten down the hatches, and declare war on that idea. I have done things I would never have dreamed I would do. I cut my own hair. All my clothes are yardsale items. I accept "freebies" like used furniture no longer wanted, and give it a good polishing. Anything that I absolutely don't have to buy, I don't buy.
If anyone else has any imaginative ideas about what to do about "The New Economy", I would be interested in hearing them. It definitely wasn't fashioned with workers in mind. When your job, your livelihood, has been removed from you, it really leaves your dogpaddling.
|
|
|
Post by unlawflcombatnt on Jun 1, 2007 20:37:33 GMT -6
One of the pithy answers the right gives when jobs decline in an area is "move somewhere else". Ignore for the moment community and family ties that make relocations dificult. Also ignore the fact that employers are becoming less and less willing to foot most of the relocation bill. The reality is that employers are less willing to foot the bill for everything, including training, health care, and pensions. And when they can't find enough workers, instead of increasing compensation to obtain more workers, they go to Congress to lobby for amnesty for illegal immigrants, increased legal immigrant work visas, or more assistance for outsourcing--by advocating even "freer" trade and more new trade sellouts. You don't have to look any further than Hillary Clinton's sleazeball speech today in front of a bunch of over-compensated, under-worked Silicon Valley CEOs, where she barfed out "We need to increase H1B visas....[/i]. Yeah, to help her rich campaign contributors increase their already exorbitant profits even further, by importing cheaper foreign labor to replace American workers. The mobility myth is just one more of the plethora of lies being propagated by Corporate America and Corporate greed.
|
|