A Tale of Two Countries 518
theodp writes "Over at TechCrunch, Jon Bischke is troubled by the growing divide between Silicon Valley and unemployed America. While people who spend most of their days within a few blocks of tech start-up epicenters are enjoying a boom/bubble, the number of unemployed now eclipses 14 million nationwide, labor under-utilization is 16.2%, and the mean duration of unemployment has spiked to 40 weeks. 'Which bring us to an important question,' writes Bischke. 'Should Silicon Valley (and other tech clusters throughout the country) care? After all, as long as people in Nebraska or the Central Valley of California have enough money to buy virtual tractors to tend their crops in Farmville, should the tech community be worried about whether those same people are getting paid to do work in the real world? Is what's best for Silicon Valley also good for America?'"
are they capable of caring? (Score:5, Informative)
look, no offense.
but a lot of people whose life is a never ending string of relatively well paying jobs, "interesting" work, conferences, tech seminars, etc, tend to lose their ability to empathize with the rest of us losers.
Re:hmm... (Score:4, Informative)
U-6 Total unemployed, plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force, plus total employed part time for economic reasons, as a percent of the civilian labor force plus all persons marginally attached to the labor force
U-6 jumped a full point from 15.4 in May to 16.4 in June.
Re:hmm... (Score:2, Informative)
It's way too easy to remain unemployed.
My friend's unemployment check is $347/wk. He's already filed for and received "Emergency Unemployment Compensation" which extends his benefits for up to a year. His only requirement to remain on unemployment is that he has to "make and active job search" meaning 3 job-searching activities (job fairs, interviews, etc.) or 3 job applications, or any combination per week. Job applications includes applying online to jobs via the state's unemployment office.
And $347wk covers all his bills, so why should he look for a job? Yet he counts as unemployed.
It's just our government messing up its own programs and making things appear worse than they should be.
Re:Welcome to the Obama economy (Score:2, Informative)
Not for a couple of centuries. Between 1800 and 1913 USA became the world's strongest economy, largest creditor nation with probably the strongest currency as well, while seeing new technologies being created, innovation and inventions were everywhere and people were really looking for a better, FREER life in USA.
Freedom of 19 century is what allowed USA to become the super-wealthy country, and since the beginning of 20th century, USA has been living on that credit while burning it away with more and more regulations and taxes, fewer and fewer freedoms, bigger and bigger government, which became sort of a separate nation in itself, existing for itself, feeding on the productive part of the economy and society.
The way they did it is by convincing the general public that the law that governs the government - Constitution, was not a law, but a set of loose guidelines open to interpretation. All that was needed was some unscrupulous people, who were willing to take that idea and implement it into reality, so the politicians but also the judges of-course. Another important step was taking over the economy - so more and more regulations and various types of income taxes. Of-course this wasn't enough for the insatiable appetites of government machine, it needed to be able to print money itself and allow itself to get into insurmountable impossible to pay back debts.
The Fed, the IRS, the Treasury and SCOTUS became the tools of self-destruction, not the tools of building the country up, they became the tools of mass destruction and that's where the country is finding itself now, with people being weak, of-course, bought by the impossible to fulfill promises and filled with hate towards the wrong target (the rich, the employers, companies, etc.etc.), all of this to ensure that nobody asks the real question: what's the deal with the two countries - government and the rest?