Ten years ago we laughed at the movies representing Italian 40 year old
stay-at-home children. Looks like that syndrome has come to the N.A.
shores and now we may understand why it was occurring not only in Italy
but in other European countries as well. But the whining below by Mr.
Preston "I wasn't living. I was surviving." shows just how out-of-touch
most people are to the increasing problem over the past 20 years. Those
still with jobs blindly , and blithely, believe it will never happen to
them. Many parents still do not realize the difficulty their children
are having out there and just tell them to knuckle down and work harder.
Unfortunately as the U.S. continues to cater to the banksters and Wall
Street, Canada tags along like the silent puppy she is with politicians
like Harper starting down the road of punitive punishment that Texas
began 20 years ago; building super jails and increasing jail time for
minor crimes. I guess Canadian Corp's want cheaper labour for increased
profits too. Yet on his tour of the southern States, Harper was told by
the present Texas Governor that this retributive form of justice does
not work, it is better to have welfare at $20,000 per person per year
than to have that person in jail at a cost of $70,000 per year where he
can really learn to be a criminal.
It is the attitude of those who believe they should be in charge who
believe they can get away with it this time as opposed to all the
history that shows the opposite. Well, I suppose that is /their /crap
shoot as some of them will squeeze through the noose they are hanging
out there just to begin it all over again when they bankroll another war
and demand blood for interest.
Someone here on the list did not like the phrase "The masses are asses."
and, in a way, they are correct. Asses are not as easily led.
D.
On 11/10/2011 7:37 PM, Arthur Cordell wrote:
Young Men Suffer Worst as Economy Staggers
/by/CONOR DOUGHERTY . Nov. 7, 2011 Read Later
<http://www.readability.com/articles/dkj1zbsb?legacy_bookmarklet=1> .
wall street journal online
http://www.readability.com/articles/dkj1zbsb?legacy_bookmarklet=1
Few groups were hit harder by the recession than young men, like Cody
Preston and Justin Randol, 25-year-old high-school buddies who didn't
go to college.
The unemployment rate for males between 25 and 34 years old with
high-school diplomas is 14.4%---up from 6.1% before the downturn four
years ago and far above today's 9% national rate. The picture is even
more bleak for slightly younger men: 22.4% for high-school graduates
20 to 24 years old. That's up from 10.4% four years ago.
In contrast to those men, Messrs. Preston and Randol are old enough to
have had some time in the job market. They worked together installing
granite counters before the housing bust.
Mr. Preston married his girlfriend and settled into what he assumed
would be a secure pattern of long hours on job sites and enough cash
to travel and enjoy restaurants and bars. Mr. Randol at one point felt
flush enough to buy a 63-inch television set and a 50-gallon fish tank
for his apartment.
Then the recession hit. Neither man has found steady work since that
pays as much as he earned before. Mr. Preston's marriage broke up and
he moved back in with his parents, an increasingly common pattern for
jobless young men. Mr. Randol has made due with help from girlfriends
and by living in houses packed with roommates to keep the rent low.
For such men, high unemployment is eroding their sense of economic
independence. Their predicament reflects that of a generation of
Americans facing one of the weakest job markets in modern history.
*"We're at risk of having a generation of young males who aren't
well-connected to the labor market and who don't feel strong ownership
of community or society because they haven't benefited from it," says
Ralph Catalano, a professor of public health at the University of
California, Berkeley.*
Mr. Preston has a steady job, making parts for recreational vehicles
for $11 an hour. And living with his parents rent-free allows him to
start paying off debt he built up during the slump, he says. But he
keeps looking for work that will pay the $14 an hour he made
installing granite. What made construction especially attractive was
the potential for lots of overtime, which allowed him to beef up his
paychecks.
On a recent afternoon, he sat in his parents' kitchen, combing online
classified ads. But construction work remains scarce and other
positions available for which he's qualified don't pay more than he
makes at the factory.
Sue Preston, his mother, says several of her friends are helping out
their grown sons, providing either money or shelter or both. She works
in payroll at a telecommunications company, and neither she nor her
husband, a truck driver who worked his way up into operations, has a
college degree. That wasn't an issue when they were starting out, she
says: Trade and production jobs were not only available, in many cases
they paid enough that many blue-collar wives didn't have to work.
Now she worries that lower wages---and, more pressingly, the dearth of
jobs---has left young men like her son disaffected and depressed.
"They're working minimum-wage jobs and a lot of times, they don't have
benefits, they don't have a full 40 hours a week. It's such a struggle
they're kind of like, 'What for? All I'm doing is surviving,' " she
says. "They have to move back home or they have to have multiple
roommates. How are you going to take on a wife and a family in that
situation?"
*The share of men age 25-34 living with their parents jumped to 18.6%
this year, up from 14.2% four year ago and the highest level since at
least 1960, according to the Census Bureau.*
Mr. Randol, an ex-convict who is in irregular contact with his
parents, says he doesn't have access to the live-at-home reset button.
So the Portland native is stretching his $187-a-week unemployment
checks by living in a two-story $1,000-a-month house, 40 minutes away
in St. Helens, Ore., that he splits with a couple and a friend whose
claim to a small bedroom fluctuates based on whether he has a girlfriend.
Mr. Randol admits that over the last three years he's indulged in too
much beer and "Call of Duty," the popular war-simulation videogame.
Empty liquor bottles line the top of his kitchen cabinets as
decoration. "I just hope stuff gets better," he says as he battles
online rivals one evening.
Mr. Randol says he's looking for work but grumbles that the remodeling
jobs advertised pay between $10 and $12 an hour, with no assurance of
full-time work.
Mr. Randol was a poor student who got in trouble in high school and
earned a high-school equivalency certificate in lieu of a diploma. He
is the first to admit that a checkered past has hampered his job
prospects. In 2004 he served a year for burglary and not long after
added an assault charge that resulted from a fist fight during a night
of hard partying.
But when the housing boom came, he says, his past wasn't such a big
issue. After working fast-food counters and other minimum-wage jobs,
in 2007 he landed a position installing granite for Fineline Pacific.
He started at $10 an hour and within six months was making $15, with
plentiful overtime. Mr. Randol told Mr. Preston to apply. He did and
was hired.
"They were looking for anybody who would show up to work," says Ted
Sherritt, chief executive of Floform Countertops, the Winnipeg,
Manitoba, company that acquired Fineline.
Mr. Preston lived well with his construction money. He took out his
girlfriend frequently and paid for a snowboarding trip, during which
he proposed to her at the summit of Mount Hood, Ore. Married, they
settled in Canby, Ore., about 40 minutes from Portland. "I was in a
hurry to grow up," he says.
Both Mr. Preston and Mr. Randol say the first sign of trouble appeared
on a white dry-erase board at company headquarters. The list of jobs
became short, and then empty.
Mr. Sherritt says sales at the company dropped 40% through 2008 and
2009. When it reduced head count, Mr. Randol was among those let go.
Floform acquired Fineline late in 2008.
Mr. Preston was kept on a bit longer than his friend but eventually
lost his job, too. Mr. Preston was able to find work at a bike store,
a skate shop and other retailers, but at lower wages than at his
construction job and often with sporadic hours.
To save on rent, he and his wife moved to her parents' house in Salem,
Ore., a 45-minute drive from Portland. Later, when the couple
separated, he went to live with friends in Bend, Ore., 3½ hours from
Portland. He found occasional jobs---one was at a gas station---but
after a few months gave up and moved home.
"I wasn't living, I was surviving," he says.
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