The
following has been edited for formatting purposes and to fix minor grammatical and spelling errors. I have removed the identity of the person who set me off. We have been friends for years and if anything are closer after this little exchange. I will call her "Sandra Smartperson".
Sandra Smartperson. She would never ever want to care about the unemployed?
Really? Michael, you are full of baloney.
Michael
Wahrman Dear Sandra, no, I dont think so. Do you just want to insult
me, or do you want to know why I think what I do?
Michael
Wahrman OK, lets party. 1st the unemployment metric that we are
constantly told about is, if you care to spend 5 minutes researching
it, guaranteed to not only under report the number of unemployed, but
to ignore those who are most in trouble. All it reports is those who
are known to have lost their jobs in the last 18 months, anyone who
is not employed again in those 18 months is dropped off the metric.
Furthermore even those who find a job in that 18 months, there is no
way of telling whether they got a job again at their previous salary.
Someone who was working at 80 K per year, could now be working for
30K and it would all be reported as great. The first thing anyone who
was serious about helping the unemployed would do is to work to
create a more honest index or series of indices so we could at least
discuss the problem. That is point one.
Michael
Wahrman Second, the H1B visa program is well known for being abused
by corporations in Silicon Valley (in particular, I presume other
industries use it as well in this way) to train people from India and
China so that those services can be outsourced to India and China.
Pick up pretty much any issue of Computerworld, or read about the
(in) famous ongoing Disney IT situation. Hillary not only supports
the H1B visa program, she wants to expand it.
Michael
Wahrman Third, HRC is on record for not supporting the minimum wage
initiative and she gets very little support from the Unions at all.
Why is this, Sandra? If Globalization is so good for the economy then
it would be just hunky fine to have laws that said that a corporation
that off shored labor would be held criminally responsible if that
labor was forced labor or abused. I mean the top executives would go
to jail. But even though we know that in fact many of these famous
off shore companies use indentured labor, nothing is done. Or when
high tech companies use raw materials that come from violence torn
regions of Africa and the revenues thus generated are used to support
the wars that murder tens of thousands of civilians, our government
just laughs and pats those corporations on the back for making more
profits through globalization. I mean, god forbid our corporations
would have to use Americans and pay them benefits! What about the
profits to the shareholders?
Michael
Wahrman Globalization as we have implemented it in this country is
guaranteed to enrich the corporation at the expense of the worker.
And it has. And yet no effort has been made by either government or industry (to the best of my knowledge) to either
measure the number of Americans put out of work by Globalization nor to make any provision for retraining them for another field. This is
not just manufacturing, although I do not understand why
manufacturing is held in such low esteem, but is many fields
including the glamourous and rewarding fields of visual effects. To
the best of my knowledge, HRC has not indicated anything in her
platform that would gather these numbers or provide real funding for
retraining these disenfranchised workers.
Michael
Wahrman Furthermore, if Globalization is so good for the economy,
then why should the corporations who have increased profits not be
responsible for paying for this retraining? Oh and by the way, it
wont be cheap. We are talking about at least 2 years probably 3 to
get a Masters degree in a new area, and then find a job, and these
are not teenagers but adults with families who need to be supported.
If HRC cared about these people, she would have something in her
platform somewhere to address it, but to the best of my knowledge she
does not. I admit, I have found it hard to figure out what it is HRC
does propose, but that may be my fault or how I use the Internet. I
might be wrong about this, I hope so.
Michael
Wahrman No one knows how many chronically unemployed and impoverished
Americans there are today. Although I think the number of 100 M that
I have heard is hopefully over the top. The point is, no one knows,
and I see nothing in the HRC platform that makes me think that she
has anything more in mind than more of the same. You know, 10 percent
more of this, 15 percent off of that. By the way, if Obama were
running today I might (probably) say the same thing about him.
Michael
Wahrman Furthermore, this has been going on for a long time now, this
studied neglect while the 1 percent (or 10 percent you tell me), does
so well. So do I think that HRC gives a rats ass about the
unemployed? No, not really. But all you have to do to prove me wrong
(and make me happy, I want to be proven wrong) is to point to a
program that she is advocating that is not just more of the same,
because more of the same is unlikely to make much of a difference.
Michael
Wahrman Now its true, could such a program get through Congress? I
guess it depends on what it its, but I am inclined to believe that it
would be over Congress's dead body. Nor do I think HRC is in any way
to blame for this situation (well maybe a little, but no big deal).
But on the other hand, she *is* running for president, pretty much
the only serious candidate (I love Bernie but I do not think he is
actually running for president exactly, I think he is trying to give
a voice to the impoverished and disenfranchised and I love him for
it, but its another topic), so it makes sense to me to look at her
proposed platform and see what she says. And that gets to the big
mystery ....
Michael
Wahrman The big mystery is how it is possible for this to be going on
so long without Washington realizing that there is a problem here. It
is not fair nor am I laying all this at Hillary's door, by which I
mean she has only had a small part to play in creating this problem.
But I am absolutely blaming our Government, that is the federal
government: Congress, the Presidency, the Supreme and other Courts,
etc. How it is that Washington was able to believe that this could
just go on without blowback (I love that word) is what amazes me.
Maybe I am wrong. Maybe people are doing just great. If that is so,
where does all the anger come from? Why are so many people saying,
hey, its all very well to give the better part of a trillion dollars
to help your friends on Wall Street (and give speeches to them but
not tell us what you said) but maybe you might have some of this vast
wealth left over for us. You remember us, right? Remember? You want
us to vote for you every four years or so, right? So when I say that
Hillary does not care less, that is only because that is what I seem
to see when I look at her positions. Now maybe she has in mind some
very interesting and dramatic solutions (and has some idea about how
to get them through Congress) but if so I am unaware of them. Maybe
you are more aware of them than I am and can help me understand. Is
it fair to put all this at Hillary's feet and say fix it? Well, no,
not really. Doesn't seem fair to me. But we do give the President a
lot of power and it is a good place to start.
Michael
Wahrman Finally, Sandra, I may very well be full of shit, but
probably not baloney. Aside from a degree in Economics and my time at
the RAND Corporation (for what that is worth, probably not much, but
it is true so why not) I have been a vegetarian since 1978 and so I
am unlikely to be full of baloney. I hope you are doing very well,
and that you are recovering from surgery, and that I am all wrong
about either Hillary's plans or the state of the nation, because if
there is one thing I am quite sure of, I am not in a position to do
much of anything at all except to complain. Feel better ! Nice to
hear from you!
Michael
Wahrman By the way, I write a blog and here is a post I wrote about
how the homeless are helped down here in N San Diego county.... I
wish that everyone who has read this far would read it, because I
believe I have done a good job at expressing my outrage and disgust. See Law Enforcement Provides Moral Instruction To The Poor
Michael
Wahrman Ok, I lied one more thing. If the three founders of Google
can share 7 widebody jets and rent Moffet field as a place to store
them, then I can see a program in a leading candidate's platform
about how we are going to help that homeless person I wrote about
above, and help her right now. I am tired of waiting. I have
waited long enough. I can stare in disbelief at what the Bureau
of Labor Statistics says how they measure unemployment only so often.
I can be disgusted at how the former chief of police of Los Angeles
will spend 4 months in jail after abusing the civil rights of tens of
thousands of prisoners in Los Angeles over two decades and see no
outrage anywhere only so long. So does Hillary care about the
unemployed? Really? Hey, I am hungry, anybody have some
baloney?
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