Quote from Scataphagos:
Sadly true. But unfortunately, America WILL NEVER RECOVER UNTIL/UNLESS WE MAKE DRAMATIC STRIDES TOWARD A CAPITALISTIC ECONOMY... Tax and business friendly regulatory policies... .not "in the sights" at this time.
Point fingers... blame "the other guy"... piss and moan all you want, it ain't gonna get better without MAJOR, MAJOR revisions in how we do business and assess taxes.
Sure as HELL won't occur on Odumba's watch...
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Quote from CommunistMonkey:
A couple of observations from someone who lives here:
A clerk job in San Jose probably pays more like $60k (with crazy union benefits.) There's a reason 2000 people applied for 4 jobs - it's a essentially a x10 unemployment check with equivalent responsibilities.
The locals are very entitled (more so if they were born here.) That plus the crazy money Silicon Valley used to generate put a bunch of these people in bad situations. They got used to big salaries earned mostly through dumb luck and when the gravy train dried up they basically had no chance of adjusting so it's hardly a surprise where they've ended up. Worse, the skilled people in Silicon Valley are still making good money so it's not like anything got cheaper. Essentially, the Valley identified the least productive 5-7% of workers, kicked them to the curb and kept functioning at almost the same level.
If they'd played it right, they would have saved and moved some place cheaper as soon as 3-6 months went by and it was clear the game was up. It's hard to judge them after the fact though. (The $200k personnel guy was "saving for retirement/college" but is out of cash in 2.25 years? I guess he wasn't saving much.)
As for working in the fast food industry, it's a possibility but they've got to convince the hiring guy they aren't like the thousand other 50 year old, college educated people who've come through looking for a job all while making it abundantly clear the job is WAY beneath them. It's not surprising they prefer to hire younger people.
I've got no idea how you fix this - these people needed to be retrained for lower paying jobs 10 years ago.
Quote from cactus_trader:
I feel bad for those who fall on hard times due to the economy. Those filing bk and foreclosure right now arent the ones who tried to game the system, its the ones who used 401k, IRA, and savings to survive and it all ran out.
San Jose is about the worst place to be jobless, reason why? High cost of living, especially if you are a home owner with your large mortgage and property tax bills. In my city of Phoenix, AZ at least with the cheap cost of living and cheap apartments you can work at wal-mart, SBUX and other jobs to keep a roof above your head and put some food on the table.
Quote from hippie:
In California, unless u have an under-18 kid in your household, you can't even get food stamps until u run your IRA or any "liquid funds" down to $2000 or less. It doesn't matter if u have no income at all.
Quote from Vinny1:
Can you get food stamps if you have less than $2,000 in liquid funds, but own a home and a car?
What if you have $100k in the bank, withdraw $98k of it or more and then put it in a safe; can you then get food stamps?
True thanks.Quote from carterfx:
That would be the 1973 Richard Fleischer classic "Soylent Green".
Quote from hippie:
In California, unless u have an under-18 kid in your household, you can't even get food stamps until u run your IRA or any "liquid funds" down to $2000 or less. It doesn't matter if u have no income at all.