Is 17.1% unemployment the real number? A permanent underclass?

A fairly interesting video accompanies some statistics provided by Wall Street Cheat Sheet. The video argues that the real number of unemployed is ~17.1%, which is horrendous, and that many of these people are not going to find meaningful employment in the near future. Furthermore, the video makes the case that America is on a dangerous path toward creating a permanent "underclass" of people who simply don't have the education or skills necessary to make it in today's economy. They draw a comparison to South America, where there is great wealth, but also grinding poverty.

Are we, as the video claims, creating an underclass?

Article and Video at link

America's Underclass: The Growing Gap Between the Rich and Poor

I think there is something to this, but isn't this already widely recognised as one of the unwelcome outcomes of globalisation? As globalisation will essentially make everywhere the same, but it doesn't look like it will raise poorer countries to the types of levels previously enjoyed by the old '1st world' economies/countries, rather that we are now likely to see those old '1st world' countries exhibiting the traits of the '2nd world' or developing nation lands where you have the 1st/2nd/3rd world populations all existing within the same border?

i.e. cue a simultaneous rise in gated communities, etc. for the better off?

Well, IMO...

I feel we are headed down a dark dark alley with Karma or Greed catching up with the ones trying to run the countries and our society with gross negligence coupled with hardly having a chance from birth. being distracted, entertained,poisoned, egoized to death

In a bigger metaphorical picture this is needed, though if this is an engineered collapse then we should try and keep in mind that certain billionaires will play the game with the intent of staying very wealthy.So a long term catastrophe crash is not a guarantee.

So with that in mind, combining the deterioration of health in general of most systems on the planet, a predictable network of power and greed. One could say we are headed for a rough ride. Maybe this is the alley which is really a shortcut, society doesn't change until the brink of it's death. Individual humans change, not so much when it comes to todays societies.

Many, myself included feel compelled to keep up on the latest deterioration of the worlds system, somehow to give as an indicator of when it's all going and if it's going to crash. we've watched all the documentaries, news articles, 1000's of blog posts to gauge the" free thinkers" opinions...but what does it do,really, I have a feeling for many it entrapped, paralyses, puts you in a perplexed mood which may come out on your choices in life, you lose your passion and switch to survival mode, which is good in moderation.

My passion has always been self sustainability prior to being aware of the "Fake economy" as per B. Hicks. A drive for Independence, relatively speaking. A new system coinciding which many attributes of what you hear around the web as new civilizations. I feel its birthing out via peoples imagination and creative capacity. So the old will fade, as it does every moment.

I have heard a great deal on how one should direct his energies towards what he wishes to creates and I feel by writing this I can put it out there, my opinion( from the top of my head) releases me of commiting my awareness,focus,time,attention to a situation which in the greater scheme of things , I simply don't wish to contribute to.

Regardless of what happens I will use my wisdom,intent,intuition,friends,family,resources at that very moment,every moment, to the best of my ability.

That's what I feel right now.


LaHaver

Yes, of course we're creating an underclass. Hell, we already have one.

We're also a plutonomy, which means the middle class and the poor class don't add or subtract significantly from GDP; which basically means they are irrelevant.


This is the world the conservative republicans created, and the "liberal" democrats are on board the same ship, btw. So it's both parties who have been doing this.. The republicans are doing it in "over-drive," though.

reply to post by Kaytagg


Btw, Noam Chomsky tried to warn you about this 15 years ago. I guess nobody listened.. Or wait, Noam is a liberal left wing socialist, or wait, he's a communist, or wait, he's too academic, no wait, he's.. Oh screw it. Listen if you want to. If you don't trust him, it's your loss.

Originally posted by Kaytagg
Btw, Noam Chomsky tried to warn you about this 15 years ago. I guess nobody listened.. Or wait, Noam is a liberal left wing socialist, or wait, he's a communist, or wait, he's too academic, no wait, he's.. Oh screw it. Listen if you want to. If you don't trust him, it's your loss.

sorry
I didn't know Noam 15 yrs ago
and have only heard of him
in the past few years.

BTW, he was held up at the Gaza border this
past week by IDF. Guess they dont like
him too much, lol

reply to post by Kaytagg


Yes, it is those damn conservative republicans and those non progressive democrats. /s

What you are saying is that the life we had 30 years ago in the US was an illusion?

The progressives will save us! /s

Tell me, where does this utopia exist?

reply to post by endisnighe


The life you have NOW is a direct creation of the policies which are driving the middle class out of existence, hammering the poor class into perpetual poverty, and expanding the richest 1% of Americans into the stratosphere of wealth that rivals even what Kings had.


That is the America that Reagan and the conservative republicans created. The democrats do it too, but at least they want to, you know, take some of the billions of dollars being made by banks/CEOs/etc and spend it on poor/middle class families who really need it to give them a fighting chance at avoiding debt slavery for unavoidable things like medical bills.


But no, that's socialism. So when Lloyd Bankfein makes 300 million dollars in 2009, he should be allowed to keep 85% of it, while you dumb suckers pay in a much higher tax bracket to fund the bailouts for Goldman Sachs, subsidies to Exxon Mobile, and wars which are in reality profit centers for Robber Barons like Dick Cheney and his Haliburton corporation.



If you like that kind of America, then by all means, keep voting democrats. And if you REALLY like this kind of America, vote conservative republican!

These guys think that blue collar workers need to go back to school to learn to CODE and that's going to give them hope?

There's people CODING for less than 1.00 an hour in India.
I'm not so sure I'd listen to them.

But it never made sense to me how globaliszation was going to raise everyone's standard of living. It only made sense to me that it would AVERAGE it out - and the US was on top, and what happens to that top number in the range when it goes in the pot?? It comes out LOWER, that's what.

reply to post by hadriana


But it expands profits for Microsoft.. Profits good, right?

reply to post by hadriana

Very insightful and I have a BA in global studies.

Kaytagg- since you seem to want to play the left-right dichotomy, which ones thought is was a good idea to give loans to people who could never pay them back? Is big government welfare the solution or the problem?

Unemployment figures don't mean much.
Check out Shadow stats.
www.shadowstats.com...

Also,
how do you factor in illegal unemployment? Those drugs gangs running around, how many of them are out there?
The CASH economy. How much of that is going on.
TPTB will cry really loud when they are cut out of the action.

Big Pharma, Big Military, Goldman Sachs, etc., yes, they are destroying what was once a great country measured in PRODUCTIVITY. WE produced.
Now, the incentives are all gone. The common guy will NEVER benefit trusting these crooks. They are organized crime in a pin striped suit.
The gig is up. The emperor has no clothes.
The Fed chairman looks no different than the guy managing the local pawn shop, or "rent-to-own"...

So disengage. Recreate your reality. Without them.

reply to post by Moonsouljah


The private sector thought that was a good idea. I'll tell you why, in case you've been sleeping for the last 2 years: Subprime mortgage securities and related derivatives (including insurance policies sold by AIG, which could never be payed in the event of default).


The "market" found a clever way to make subprime mortgage's profitable for investors. As it turns out, though, the market was very wrong, and their clever securities wound up being worth nothing (despite being rated AAA).


Worse than that, there was a housing bubble. Trillions of dollars were misallocated into housing, over several years time. But again, this was deemed perfectly acceptable by the wizards on walstreet (as well as their investors (aka, "the market")) who figured out how to make it all stable and profitable.. the only catch is that they totally screwed up, and ended up crashing the world economy.


The government had nothing to do with the massive misallocation of capital (otherwise known as a bubble). And don't tell me they incentivized this. The govt never forced anyone to make a loan, nor did they securitize the mortgages, nor did they misallocate trillions in capital in the housing market, etc. This is a pure fault of the market, which there are many, and there will be many more (or do they not teach that in schools, anymore?)

Still low.

I go by us debt clock which puts us at 19.04%



Actual unemployment divided by U.S. workforce.

reply to post by Kaytagg


WOW, the government never forced anyone to take out a loan.

NO THEY FORCED THE BANKS TO GIVE THEM!

What is with the Democrat lapdogs and the trust they have for the government?

My God, you would think that they would have learned by the last 30 years.

But NOOOOOO!

edit to add, the Repubs are not much better, except for one or two of them.

[edit on 5/19/2010 by endisnighe]

Way to take an interesting topic and make it into an arguement about the two parties

From one of those dirty "liberal", "progressive" people (I get called that all the time, which is hilarious considering the democrats wouldn't have a thing to do with me. I voted for Nader too, don't get me started), the whole "teach them to code" thing was laughable. Yea, you are going to retrain a whole generation of people in coding? I can see it now, 50 something year old boomers holed in basements all across this country with flickering florescent lights just typing away for hours and hours on end. It seems strangely like some sort of hell.