A question for Browncoats outside of the United States...

POSTED BY: chrisisall
UPDATED: Saturday, July 23, 2005 07:55
VIEWED: 4665
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PERFESSERGEE

Thursday, July 14, 2005 12:40 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by chrisisall:
In this global economy the poorer countries will become less poor, and the richer countries will become less rich. I'd have less of a problem with that if the gorram rich dungbrains would just accept having that tiny bit less, and get off the little people's backs as if there was a way it could be stopped.

Well, that's the theory anyway, but that isn't actually how it's working out in many cases. I've spent a lot of time in Argentina, and my friends there are all what used to be middle class. It's been squeezed beyond belief - they survive by having very extended family networks. If you haven't read it, I highly recommend Stiglitz's (Joseph, I think) book "Globalization and its Discontents". It does a marvelous job of describing how globalization could work, and how it's not doing the promised job as it's currently being carried out.

As for the status of the middle class in the US, the LA Times did a long article a few weeks ago (I'll try to find it and post the link), which came to a similar conclusion to the link posted above by Hotpoint from the UK - intergenerational economic mobility is actually fairly low in the US, and it's gotten worse in the last few decades. Further, what mobility exists is mostly downward. Real income for the middle class has dropped during that same span (concurrent with a breathtaking increase in executive-level salaries). The difference between living in a house in the 'burbs and living in your car can be a matter of a single major illness, and that's when you have insurance. If you don't it doesn't even take that much.

I'm grateful to be one of the lucky, but I think that it's been a matter of both luck and perseverance. I'm a 2nd-generation academic, but not many people in the US (even those with as many years of education as me, and including some people I went to grad school with) have a job anywhere near as stable and reliable as mine.

I'd be very interested to hear from some European browncoats on this thread. How's your middle class doing?

perfessergee

SIGMANUNKI

Thursday, July 14, 2005 2:32 AM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:

First just an observation - so this I think is part of what you have obliquely referred to in the past, in terms of uncertain, unstable conditions. I truly sympathize. (Though at least for now Canadians have something the temps here are desperate for - medical care.)

Thanks.

Temps don't get anything? When you refer to temps are you refering to people working acouple weeks or term positions? Are they part of your union?

But yes, I (we) are very greatful for our medicare, even with its problems. It's one of the (many) reasons why I am thankful that Harper didn't win the election. He wanted to privatise it. *shutter*

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:

So apparently a healthy, well-educated, motivated population is not enough yeast to raise the national economic dough. Do you see any answers on a broad economic scale? (I'm not going to ask you about your personal future. When so much is out of your control, it's just impossible to address.)

There is a contradiction in what people are saying and the observables.

The baby boomers are retiring so in the next 5-10 yrs there should be a lot of positions opening up. But, what I'm seeing is Universities not even hiring to replace those that are leaving.

Also, the NRC is having its funding cut. This means less research grants and scholarships.

Things are not looking good for at least the next couple of years.

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

RUE

Thursday, July 14, 2005 4:42 AM

SigmaNunki

I think I need to think some more to do other than explain 'temp': temp agencies are somewhat like managers for performers. They get people gigs, negotiate the contracts, and take a cut of the money. The agencies do not pay temps out of their own business money either between gigs or during. They pay temps out of the contract they've negotiated with the company who is looking to work the temp.

The temp agency is the employer of record - not the company looking to work the temp. So the temp is not protected under existing union agreements with the company who is working them. On the other hand, the temp agencies are not regular employers either (ie they don't pay the temps a regular wage). In addition the temp agencies are not required to or contracted to or bargained into providing any (nada, zip, zilch) benefits, either out of their own business monies or through the contracts they negotiate. No health coverage. No sick time. No vacation time.

The only thing they DO have to provide (under old federal FLSA 'Fair Labor Standards Act provisions - which have been recently rewritten) is overtime pay if overtime work is worked.

Sick, isn't it?

SIGMANUNKI

Thursday, July 14, 2005 6:01 AM

@Rue:
Wow

----
"Canada being mad at you is like Mr. Rogers throwing a brick through your window." -Jon Stewart, The Daily Show

CHRISISALL

Thursday, July 14, 2005 2:04 PM

Quote:
Originally posted by rue:
In addition the temp agencies are not required to or contracted to or bargained into providing any (nada, zip, zilch) benefits, either out of their own business monies or through the contracts they negotiate. No health coverage. No sick time. No vacation time.

We have them
right where they want us.

I had a scary thought: in the near future nobody will rent, you will buy a house or apartment that has been foreclosed. It will be a 75 year mortgage. As the economy dips, and you miss a payment, it will be foreclosed on you and sold at a slightly lower price to the next family waiting. It will be known as the 'Foreclosure Wheel'.

Chrisisall

CITIZEN

Thursday, July 14, 2005 10:19 PM

This discussion and its repercussions reminds me of a book written by a friend of my father called Steve Edwards called The Self-Destruction Syndrome. It depicts a rather destopic future which at the same time seems to be a projection of our present society taken to extremes.
Scared the hell out of me...
The thing is that the majority of the people didn't see how oppresive and depressing their enviroment and very existence was, becuase it was all they had ever known and they were caught up in the whole flow of society so much they just never thought about it...
Would our ancestors used to true freedom be able to live in a world where they are never alone (the mobile phone) and constantly watched (CCTV), and would we if we had not be subjected to it for so many years or indeed most of or all of our lives?

"The past has revealed to me, the future..."
Teilhard de Chardin

CHRISISALL

Thursday, July 14, 2005 11:42 PM

I don't know, citizen, I can't deal w/cell phones so I don't have one. I don't have digital satelite service either. This computer is only tollerable to me 'cause it lets me talk to folk like yourself, otherwise I'd never touch it.
I think anyone from even the eighteenth century would think this was a Jules Verne penny dreadfull novel we live in.

There's a reason they're called 'cell' phones.

Live in your cell Chrisisall

PBI

Friday, July 15, 2005 2:11 AM

Like everywhere else, the work situation in Canada depends on where one is. The middle class is slowly, but surely, disappearing. Only the rate at which it is disappearing is different, it seems. More jobs are being created, but more and more of those jobs are part-time, temporary, or, if full-time, not as secure as they were a couple decades ago, and without the same purchasing power. Maybe things will turn around once the last of the baby boomers are out of the work force, but maybe not, too.

If you can survive death, you can probably survive almost anything.

RUE

Friday, July 15, 2005 9:27 PM

Thanks everyone for posting. I learned some more, as I always do when people come to a discussion willing to ask questions, and exchange views and information.

CITIZEN

Friday, July 15, 2005 9:36 PM

Don't get me wrong, i see how technology has helped us in a great way, but i also see how it has enslaved us too. CCTV is there to protect us (so the authorities and organisations that employ it tell us) but it could so easily be perverted to a more Orwellian purpose.

Thing about capitalism is that its guiding concept is greed. How can any system based on a negative emotion like greed lead to good in the end?

Communism is evil where it fails...
...Capitalism is evil where it succeeds...

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