What R they Teeching?

I’m sure you heard that there is going to be a Jobs Summit in December.  That’s like holding Spring practice for baseball a week after the World Series.  Not quite the right timing.  December is when retailers are expecting their big selling season.  Christmas help (are you allowed to say Christmas?) is hired in November, trained in November, and put to work the end of November for the Christmas selling season.  Retailers wait all year for this, their big selling season.  They hope to make enough money in this season to get them through all the other months of the year.  If people have a job they can partake and make purchases; but this year the unemployment level has grown to 10.2%.  We haven’t seen a level like that since 1983.  People annually anticipate being employed briefly for the Christmas season.  They’re called temporary workers.  Then you have part time workers.  But with 10.2% unemployment, you know in advance that this is going to be a dismal December.

I’m sure you have seen in the old business district, the signs that say “Available”.  Space is available.  If they haven’t already rented the space for Christmas, it’ll be a long time before they rent the retail space.  People like to go shopping in a festive surrounding.  Empty selling space does not quite bode well for a successful season.  People like to eat in jam-packed restaurants; you know everything is fresh, no left overs from yesterday.  Singing to empty tables is not quite a hot time out on the town.

Back to the 10.2% figure.  That’s the reported figure.  That figure in itself should be a daily headline, but the drive-by media drives past it.  Doesn’t consider it a headline worth reporting on.  Doesn’t see the human element to 10.2% unemployment.  That’s your drive-by media for you.  When the unemployed go back to work; when they find a job; many are accepting lower paying jobs (because there aren’t any higher paying jobs), temporary jobs, part-time work, or work in a new field.  They are not going back to their old jobs.  Some people have years of experience, some are beginners.  What do you do after you have years of experience and you have reached a high level of competency?  A highly competent person should be remunerated for their accomplishment.  The demand for those people in this economy is just not there.  The supply of those people is there.

Certain workers cannot find work in their old field.  New technology is replacing the physical person.  Take the printing industry.  The new copy machines produce color copies; they scan; they email; they punch holes; they collate.  It’s like Jackie Gleason selling the slicer/dicer for every kitchen.  It does everything.  Machinery replaces labor.

We heard about the Stimulus Package.  Money went for education.  What about the old education, the stuff you spent years learning.  The old education taught you how to work with obsolete machinery?  Why should the new people without experience be taught what the teachers know how to teach which is the old stuff?  The people who are out of work know the obsolete stuff which won’t qualify them for a new job.  Why not teach the old people how to work with the new stuff?  How long does it take the new people without experience to learn the new stuff for which there are no jobs, because you really need less physical labor, just the machinery which the company that the manufacturer trains somebody on anyhow.

The company that does the manufacturing does the training.  So why have stimulus money for education in the public schools for stuff the teachers don’t know about?  And if you put stimulus money into education, how does that help kindergarden children?  The college graduates from June of this year, 2009, had fewer job offers.  About 20% graduated without having a job to go to.  Because they didn’t have a job, they weren’t employed; so now that they are really unemployed they can’t be counted in the 10.2% figure which is really higher than that.  That means that the loans that they had for the education in that college may not have been money well spent.

College graduates put in time and money.  Like their youth and their parent’s savings.  College is a big chunk of money.  The stimulus money that went into education should get a good rate of return on the investment; they say they want to put more money into education.  More money means good rates of return.  If you’re not getting good rates of return on your investment, you invest elsewhere.

What R they Teeching?

If there were less government controls on the economy and the economy were allowed to rebound normally, bet ya we would get out of this economic problem a whole lot faster.  A free economy takes care of its own excesses; redirects money to profitable situations, that’s called disintermediation; allows people to make their own economic decisions; and doesn’t tax away incentive to succeed.

Before December arrives, before the Jobs Summit arrives, here’s hoping the economic restraints from the government are lifted.  I know I’m dreaming, but I also hold fast to the ideal for a Norman Rockwell Thanksgiving.

A Happy Thanksgiving to all of you out there in the realm of The Right Perspective.