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January 7, 2008
SouthAmerica: I was watching today on CNN the Democratic Party debate broadcasted live yesterday on ABC TV.
I did not watch the entire debate, but in the part that I did watch Senator John Edwards was talking about the US job market and the estimated figures that he saw last week saying that the US economy is going to lose 30 million jobs in the coming years.
I am not surprised by this massive loss in jobs in the US economy in the coming years and he reminded me of one of the articles I wrote a few years ago.
I did read Jeremy Rifkinâs book more than once and I also saw his presentation on this subject on a television program â His book really opened my eyes, and I learned a lot from him, I also read most of his other published books.
Quoting from my article:
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Economic War
It is very hard for any country to create good paying jobs for everyone, to build a solid middle class and in turn generate economic growth and prosperity. Each year that goes by, it becomes even harder to create new jobs in the economy.
In 1995, a book was published, "The End of Work" by Jeremy Rifkin, which described in detail the current and future trends in the job market. I recommend reading that book to anyone who wants to understand the current catastrophic job market.
I will quote the following from Jeremy Rifkin's mind-opening book. He wrote in the introduction: "Global unemployment has now reached its highest level since the great depression of the 1930's. More than 800 million human beings are now unemployed or underemployed in the world. That figure is likely to rise sharply between now and the turn of the century as millions of new entrants into the workforce find themselves without jobs, many victims of a technology revolution that is fast replacing human beings with machines in virtually every sector and industry of the global economy.
"...In the past, when new technologies have replaced workers in a given sector, new sectors have always emerged to absorb the displaced laborers. Today, all three of the traditional sectors of the economyâagriculture, manufacturing, and servicesâare experiencing technological displacement, forcing millions onto the unemployment rolls.
The only new sector emerging is the knowledge sector, made up of a small elite of entrepreneurs, scientists, technicians, computer programmers, professional educators and consultants. While this sector is growing, it is not expected to absorb more than a fraction of the hundreds of millions who will be eliminated in the next several decades in the wake of revolutionary advances in the information and communications sciences.
"...Now, for the first time, human labor is being systematically eliminated from the production process. ...Substituting software for employees...To begin with, more than 75 percent of the labor force in most industrial nations engage in work that is little more than simple repetitive tasks. Automated machinery, robots, and increasingly sophisticated computers can perform many if not most of these jobs. In the United States alone, that means that in the years ahead more than 90 million jobs in the labor force of 124 million are potentially vulnerable to replacement by machines. With current surveys showing that less than 5 percent of companies around the world have even begun to make the transition to the new machine culture, massive unemployment of the kind never before experienced seems all but inevitable in the coming decades.
"...A study was published in 1989 by the International Metalworkers Federation in Geneva forecasting that within thirty years (by the year 2019), as little as 2 percent of the world's current labor force will be needed to produce all the goods necessary for total demand." I want to remind you that it is 2 percent of today's world labor force and not 2 percent of the world labor force in 2019, which could have many more millions of people.
The Current Job Market
As we can see, it will become even harder for countries to create jobs in the future for their population. A job, any type of job, it is worth saving to keep most of the members of the population employed. Keeping jobs in your country has become more important than ever before.
Here is what is happening to unemployed workers in New Jersey, this is what happened to some people that I know. Two people were evicted from their homes recently. Another person was in the process of his car being repossessed. Three other people have filed for bankruptcy protection under chapter-7. And many who have used up their unemployment extensions, are now depleting any savings that they have left for their retirement. These people have no idea how they will be able to manage financially, when they get to retirement age, and all their savings are gone.
The situation is getting more and more scary by the day, since I see a drastic increase of people who are losing their jobs and are going to the Labor Department to ask for help. The quality of the people unemployed is mind boggling, since over 50 percent of today's unemployed have at least a college degree. One fellow that I met is a young man who graduated from Harvard University, and he also has an MBA from Wharton School of the University of Pennsylvania. He has been looking for a job for over a year.
For the first time in US history, over 50 percent of the people who are unemployed are very well-educated people. Does it make any difference if the unemployed people are well educated or if they are blue color workers as in the past?
You bet it does.
Well-educated people can fight back the system that has discarded them for no good reason and they can expose the weaknesses of the entire system because many of these well-educated people know where the cracks are in the wall of the dam.
In the age of the internet and of knowledge the well-educated people can fight back the system like never before with the power of the pen.
I am sure the people who runs the US government today have never grasped that simple fact, and they think that it is just business as usual.
The reality about the âAmerican Dreamâ
So much hype for the American dream, but according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics out of 100 people that start working at age 25, by age 65â1 percent are wealthy, 4 percent have enough money to retire comfortably, 3 percent are still working (can't afford to quit), 63 percent depend on Social Security, friends or charity, and 29 percent are dead.
The reality is that over 90 percent of all Americans retire almost in poverty after working for 45 years.
For the people who are unemployed, the economic depression is already here. For the people who still have jobs, they know that if they lose their jobs it will be almost impossible to find a new job. The difference between past recessions and the current job slump is that the people laid-off in the past would be rehired when the economy recovered. This time around most people's jobs have gone forever.
We are in the beginning stages of a possible worldwide depression. Americans still in denial and they donât want to recognize the realityâthe best days of the American economy are long gone, and today the system is running on borrowed money. The federal government, the states, the companies and the public are all surviving on credit. How far can this situation keep going on before the house of cards collapses?
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