In recession’s wake, many young adults out of work and out of school

The Great Recession is still going strong, and college graduates are paying the price for a government corrupted by the money of the 1 percent and hell-bent on redistributing more and more income and wealth from the 99 to the 1 percent. According to a recent study by the Economic Policy Institute:

“The Great Recession and its aftermath have destroyed job opportunities for workers of all ages, but young workers have been hit particularly hard. Due to weak job opportunities, the labor force participation of people under age 25 has dropped substantially over the last five years—much more than would be expected given their long-run trend. However, these “missing” young workers are not “sheltering in school,” as is often claimed. This week’s Economic Snapshot shows college and university enrollment has continued to grow at roughly its long-run pace for both men and women. This suggests that essentially any student who has had the resources to shelter in school from the labor market effects of the Great Recession has been offset by someone who has been forced to drop out of school, or never enter, either because a lack of work meant they could not afford to attend or because their parents were unable to help them pay for school due to their own income or wealth losses stemming from the Great Recession.”

By some estimates, 50 percent of recent college graduates are unemployed or underemployed more than a year after they graduate.

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Dwight Eisenhower Said it Best

What President Eisenhower said is not being done today.

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Is the Modern University Education and Student Loans a Scam?

I disagree with the people who made this film in their assertion that the proliferation of student loans is the cause of college tuition hikes. The reason tuition is going up and up has nothing to do with student loans. When you ship tens of millions of jobs overseas, as the US government has help Wall Street and corporations to do, you ship your tax base that supports education and other government services overseas, although, as you know, you’re really redistributing the tax base and the income from those jobs into the pockets of the 1 percent. That’s why tuition goes up and up. I agree with some points in the film, but he’s way off base in asserting that it’s student loans pushing up the cost of college.

As jobs are shipped overseas, the difference between the old wages here and the new lower wages there are redistributed from the 99 to the 1 percent via higher corporate earnings, rising share prices and surging dividends. That’s how the rich have gotten richer over the last thirty years, by corrupting government and using legislation to this purpose.

BTW, the Obama man is pushing the Trans Pacific Partnership, the largest income redistribution scam in US history. He’s the person currently ordained by Wall Street to redistribute income from the 99 to the 1 percent.

And also BTW, Wall Street investment firms buy up student loans, clump them together, issue bonds against the loans, then sell those bonds to rich investors. Students make their payments, and mostly it’s wealthy investors that reap those payments. In other words, by 1983, student loans had become an income redistribution scam from the 99 to the 1 percent. That’s precisely why the government slashed student grants and increased student loans, so the rich can prosper even more. In addition, the same rich people redistributing income from students to wealthy bondholders are also the people that pressure corporations to ship jobs overseas.

That’s the complete income redistribution game. Notice how circular it is. Ship jobs overseas, force people to improve their job chances in a declining job market by increasing their education and locking them into student loans. It’s a scam. The rich always win because they control political puppets like Wall Street Senators Ron Wyden and Orrin Hatch. You always win any game if you control the vast majority of pieces.

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Better Educated People Most Likely Voted For Obama in 2012

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Where Have All the Good Jobs Gone?

John Schmitt and Janelle Jones of the Center for Economic and Policy Research reached a conclusion from their research. Their conclusions are incorrect, but the information is still impressive. A synopsis is below.

“The U.S. workforce is substantially older and better-educated than it was at the end of the 1970s. The typical worker in 2010 was seven years older than in 1979. In 2010, over one-third of US workers had a four-year college degree or more, up from just one-fifth in 1979. Given that older and better-educated workers generally receive higher pay and better benefits, we would have expected the share of “good jobs” in the economy to have increased in line with improvements in the quality of workforce. Instead, the share of “good jobs” in the U.S. economy has actually fallen. The estimates in this paper, which control for increases in age and education of the population, suggest that relative to 1979 the economy has lost about one-third (28 to 38 percent) of its capacity to generate good jobs. The data show only minor differences between 2007, before the Great Recession began, and 2010, the low point for the labor market. The deterioration in the economy’s ability to generate good jobs reflects long-run changes in the U.S. economy, not short-run factors related to the recession or recent economic policy.”

The reason why so many good jobs are gone is simple; they’ve been redistributed to the rich. Enact a free trade treaty, ship jobs overseas. The difference between the old higher wages in the US and the new lower wages is pocketed by the affluent via higher corporate profits, rising dividends and surging share prices. This income redistribution scam is achieved by manipulating the political markets, i.e. purchasing the rules of the game. That’s precisely how the 1 percent have stolen nearly 30 of the total national income compared to about 8 percent back in 1980.

When the jobs are shipped away and the income from them is redistributed to the 1 percent, opportunities are lost for the rest of us, and more so than just the loss of the jobs. When those jobs are exported via bribed-enforced legislation, we lose our tax base and government jobs go away, like police, firefighters and teachers. There are less opportunities for accountants, mechanics and attorneys in government.

And illegal free trade treaties are just one way the one percent manipulate the legislative process to achieve income redistribution from the 99 percent. There’s a ton of other ways. Deregulation, for example, allows corporations to jack up the prices they charge at will. The difference between what prices would be under real competitive conditions and the manipulated prices go into the pockets of the rich via the same route as free income redistribution treaties.

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US Poverty Has Increase As Income Is Redistributed From Working to Rich People

Nafta on Steroids; The Trans Pacific Free Trade Income Redistribution Treaty

Where Have All The Good Jobs Gone? Center for Economic and Policy Research

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The Dow Jones Industrials and NASDEQ is Surging! Thanks to Run Amok Inflation Redistributing Your Income

The US government is hiding the true cost of inflation so that it can it hide an income redistribution scam for the rich. Corporations simply jack up the prices the 99 percent pay for food and energy and the government doesn’t count it when it measures inflation, but corporate profits rise because of those price increases, and the difference between what the 99 percent paid for the items at the old prices and the new higher prices goes into the pockets of the rich via higher profits, dividends and stock prices. That’s a nice scam. It makes the affluent richer and throws a growing number of the 99 percent into the poor house. That includes a lot of professionals, like teachers.

According to the US Bureau of Labor Statistics, inflation was 3.2 percent for “all items,” in 2011. However, they didn’t count food and energy among those “items.” Real inflation is running close to 10 percent, and it has for the last several years (click here for real inflation).

Do you feel more poor than five years ago? If you earned thirty dollars an hour in 2007 and you’re still paid 30 dollars an hour in 2012, your real spending power has dropped about 34 percent, if you measure your wages against the real rate of inflation. Assuming a real inflation rate of 10 percent per year since 2007, people earning $30 an hour now can purchase only $19.26 worth of goods. But wait! That’s before taxes! But you get the picture.

Do you want to know why the stock markets are surging at record levels? They’re surging via inflation. If you’re earning $30 an hour, the rich are now raping you of $10.74 per hour more than they did back in 2007, and receiving it in higher profits, dividends and share prices. And your government is helping corporate America hide this rape and pillage of the American people. Look at the figures below. For simplicity, I measured your real spending power at $30 an hour in 2007, and then subtracted 10 percent each year since that approximates the amount of real inflation per year. Remember that inflation is not some abstract term. It measures price increases. So if meatloaf goes up in price by a dollar a pound, then that extra dollar is stolen from your slimmer wallet and slipped into the bulging pockets of the affluent.

2007 $30
2008 $27
2009 $24.30
2010 $21.40
2011 $19.26

Click on the link below and check out the story of the overly educated working poor.

click here for working poor in America

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How the Corporate Media of the One Percent Acts to Create Conflict Among the 99 Percent

Yesterday, the Department of Education released the results of a survey that showed Hispanic and African-American students were more likely than white students to be expelled or suspended. Racism was cited by some in the media as the reason for this, mainly because most educators are white, but I have my doubts, and that’s because something is missing in this survey–Asian students. How come they’ve been left out?

It turns out that in study after study white students are expelled and suspended at higher rates than Asian students. If racism is the problem, then it stands to reason that white educators are far more racist against white students than Asian students and that’s a problem that has to be dealt with. Of course that’s silly, but why do we assume that racism is the reason Hispanic and African-American students are punished more than whites?

If we include Asian students, then we have to look at culture and socioeconomic reasons for the difference in rates of punishment. That’s something the corporate news media of the one percent doesn’t want us to do, because then we’d begin to look at the one percent as the problem, not the solution.

If we look at Asian-Americans from a cultural point-of-view, we find that more of them live in two parent households than do whites, Hispanics and African-Americans. Studies also show that Asians on average value education and are taught respect for authority figures than the other groups.

We also find that socioeconomic factors play a big role in punishment rates. Poverty is more abundant among African-American and Hispanic families than among Asian and white families. That means we’d have to examine things like income and wealth distribution as a reason for the difference between punishment rates among the groups. That means we’d have to look at economic policies that have pushed 50 percent of Americans into a life of living at or near the poverty line during the last thirty years. That means we’d have to examine the legislation that has redistributed income and wealth from working Americans to the rich during the last three decades. We’d have to admit that enacting policies that allowed the one percent to extort 25 percent of the total national income nowadays compared to 7 percent thirty years ago was not good policy. But we can’t do that. The one percent control the corporate propaganda machines, called newspapers and television.

In its propaganda survey, the Department of Education is saying we need to let people know that government workers, those lazy teachers sucking the system dry with those wonderful pensions and other benefits, like health insurance, are the problem, not the solution.

That’s stupid, of course, but people are still going to believe it, because Asians aren’t counted in the report of the study. Right now there are plenty of Hispanics, African-Americans and liberal whites up in arms over this report. Teachers versus them. Nice. Perfect. The divisive issue has taken root and divided the 99 percent once again. Don’t let it.

Boycott the corporate propaganda organs that reported this story. Boycott the Oregonian newspaper. Boycott them all. Put them out of business!

Related Articles

The Christian Science Monitor: Are Blacks and Hispanics Singled Out for Punishment in School?

New York Times: Racial Disparity in School Suspensions

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It’s time to take back public schools from the corporate world-Occupy Education!

Mic check! MIC CHECK! Let the Puppet show begin! LET THE PUPPET SHOW BEGIN!”
 
The demonstrators who held the floor at a December 14 meeting at Newtown High School in Corona, Queens, were part of Occupy DOE (Department of Education), a mix of veteran teachers, parents and Occupy Wall Street activists that is bringing the language and tactics of OWS to the grassroots fight against neoliberal education reform.

Click here for the rest of the story

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The Best Master’s (Graduate) Degrees With Which to Get a Job

By John Hively

Here are the ten best master’s degrees to have if you want to get a job, at least according to Forbes magazine. However, there are things Forbes never mentioned, most likely because they didn’t want to offend the sensibilities of their corporate advertisers or the magazine’s libertarian CEO, Steve Forbes.

Take computer science, for example. Forbes most likely doesn’t want you to know that a ton of those jobs have and are being outsourced to India and Pakistan. Computers connect the world and make it easier to outsource jobs to the lowest bidder worldwide. So the market in the USA for computer science majors is getting more and more competitive because of those free trade treaties that Forbes loves to endorse.

When a corporation ships jobs overseas, the difference between the old compensation here and the new compensation there increases profits, and ultimately goes into the bulging wallets of CEO’s and mostly rich shareholders via higher dividends and share prices. In other words, free trade is a redistribution of income scam and computer programmers are among the best educated American citizens that lose out because of those income redistribution treaties.

Anyway, here’s the list of jobs and a few of my comments.

1. (tie) Computer Science (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $109,000
Projected employment increase: 27%
Common jobs: Software developer, software architect, software engineer

1. (tie) Physician Assistant Studies (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $101,000
Projected employment increase: 39%
Common jobs: Physician assistant

3. (tie) Civil Engineering (Another job that can be and is outsourced)
Mid-career median pay: $96,400
Projected employment increase: 24%
Common jobs: Civil engineer, project manager

3. (tie) Economics (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $116,000
Projected employment increase: 19%
Common jobs: Economist, market research analyst, data analyst

3. (tie) Mathematics (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $87,100
Projected employment increase: 22%
Common jobs: Actuary, software developer, data analyst

6. Environmental Science (Caveat—See nursing below)
Mid-career median pay: $84,300
Projected employment increase: 28%
Common jobs: Environmental scientist, environmental health scientist, project manager

7. (tie) Nursing (Caveat–Nurses can’t be outsourced. However, for several years your government under the Bush administration negotiated through the World Trade Organization (WTO) to import almost every classification of employee, including doctors and nurses, at the same compensation as they earned in their home countries for a period of up to three years. That means a nurse earning $10 a day in the Philippines could’ve been imported into the USA to work as a nurse for $10 per day. The same was true of every job listed in this article along with hundreds of others. A computer programmer in Pakistan earning $5,000 a year could’ve been imported into the USA and then paid that same amount as he or she earned there. The government, in other words, was negotiating to reduce the compensation of doctors, nurses, computer programmers and thousands of others in the USA. More specifically, on behalf of the richest of Americans, your government was negotiating to redistribute your income, livelihoods and futures to the richest of Americans. This is something that never happened, mainly because South American nations broke off negotiations over agricultural subsidies. Just remember, however. Your government tried to make it so, and it will likely try again. Fight back. Join the Occupy movement)

Mid-career median pay: $85,500
Projected employment increase: 22%
Common jobs: Nursing manager, advanced registered nurse practitioner, pediatrics nurse practitioner

7. (tie) Physics (Caveat—See nursing above)
Mid-career median pay: $115,000
Projected employment increase: 16%
Common jobs: Senior systems engineer, physicist, software engineer

9. Occupational Therapy (Caveat—See nursing above)
Mid-career median pay: $78,000
Projected employment increase: 29%
Common jobs: Occupational therapist, hand therapist, rehabilitation services director

10. Political Science (I don’t know why Forbes selected this as 10th best. I know several paralegals and they’re all unemployed in their field)
Mid-career median pay: $87,100
Projected employment increase: 19%
Common jobs: Paralegal/legal assistant, government affairs director

Forbes alleges they got their pay and employment increase numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics. I can understand the growth of nurses and physician assistants because of the aging of the baby boomers, but given the continued weakness of the economy, it’s difficult to envision the growth of the other fields, especially when so many of them can be exported.

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