The anti-Bush game

[Pug]

Pride has nothing to do with NOT being able to support a family on $5.15/hr.

Long story made short - we paid fewer people less money and asked them to do more. The end result is even worse than overseas outsourcing for those that remain.

The more I think about what Dark said the more angry I get. What kind of low life mother fucker would WANT other people to lose their jobs just so they don't miss out on any scheduled pay raises? It's always the OTHER people and never YOU, isn't it Dark? OTHER people should lose their jobs but NEVER YOU, God's gift to our world! Your business is having trouble because of OTHER lazy people who won't work for less and so THEY should lose THEIR jobs to outsourcing so that YOU CAN REMAIN COMFORTABLE AT THEIR EXPENSE.

Fuck you scumbag.

[Paelos]

It must be shocking to realize that people at the top look out for number one, or that America was built on the backs of exploited workers. Your outrage is misplaced by about two centuries.

[Pug]

I am not shocked by the result of capitalism, the world's largest pyramid scam. I am disgusted.

If more people shared the attitude that any attempt to correct long standing social injustice is too little too late then American slaves would still be picking cotton. It's never too late to fight injustice.

[Paelos]

Because slavery and outsourcing are so very close as to be lumped together under the header of social injustice. Outsourcing happens because somewhere down the line, America lost its competitive advantage in certain industries, and others can do them so much cheaper and more effectively. It's basic trade in economic forces. That's also coupled with the pendulum effect of bandwagoning inside corporations. There will be a flurry of outsourcing, and the people that get replaced will bitch. However, the pendulum swings back and people adapt in the job market. That the way business works, adapt or perish.

You say social injustice, but I say a harsh reality of the system.

[Pug]

Ah those whiney Americans who paid American prices to go to American colleges to be trained for American jobs in the American job market which no longer exist due to a record trade deficit. Yes, let's blame them for not being able to compete with a foreign cost of living.

Why stop at white collar jobs? Why not let third world countries sell us manufactured goods that are made by employees who make less than $100 per year? That'll teach those greedy Americans a thing or two about the harsh reality of global trade.

[Logain]

Ah those whiney Americans who paid American prices to go to American colleges to be trained for American jobs in the American job market which no longer exist due to a record trade deficit. Yes, let's blame them for not being able to compete with a foreign cost of living.

For the most part, no-one blames those people for getting laid off. Though admittedly those of lower competency are usually let go first, but that doesn't mean much when entire departments are outsourced, eh.

Regardless of where the fault lies, the fact still remains that many busineses decided it wasn't economically viable to have those jobs here in the U.S. The people hit by it will have to adapt, no matter how much they might cry.

The majority of jobs outsourced are very low-level jobs that anybody can do with little to no training. Yes, Apu the help-desk guy is hard to understand, but he can still do your job and he can do it for a lot cheaper.

In markets where more higher-level thinking and training is required(ex. software development), there is already a backlash being experienced. Those companies will realize that the loss in quality of their product hurts them more in the long-run than the money they saved from outsourcing the dev centers. The pendulum will swing back.

[HaemishM]

The majority of jobs outsourced are very low-level jobs that anybody can do with little to no training. Yes, Apu the help-desk guy is hard to understand, but he can still do your job and he can do it for a lot cheaper.

Not necessarily. In fact, Dell actually moved some of those Indian call-center jobs BACK to the U.S. because the Indians were doing such a rotten fucking job of it. Unfortunately for the little guy, they only moved the support for their REALLY BIG customers.

I'll give you an example of what I think is corporate responsibility.

Shortly after 9/11, the advertising market hit the shitter. I mean, within like 1 month. Many of my company's clients were tourism-related clients, and at least 1 big client went under during this time. Our executive board looked at the numbers, projected somethings out, and figured out that we were going to have to cut expenses or the agency might fold.

Now, they could have cut all the department's staffing numbers. At the time, we had 3 web developers. They could  have gone to 2 and made us work harder. But they didn't. Instead of laying people off, they made an across the board salary cut, as well as freezing spending on some things like tech upgrades. The salary cut hurt EVERYONE, but, and here's the really responsible part, the people who made from than I think 50k (which is a good salary here), got cut MORE than the people at the bottom. I think those under that number took maybe a 3-5% cut, while those higher took like a 6-8% cut. That included every VP, the CEO, all the department heads and people with seniority. Everybody took the hit, and no one got laid off. In addition, for Xmas that year, we got some of that money back in lieu of Xmas bonuses that we wouldn't have gotten anyway.

Now granted, that's only with about 120 employees in 2 locations, and taking a salary cut SUCKED ASS.

But it sure as hell beat pounding the pavement in a recessed economy. The heads of the company, the top executives (all stockholders) took the responsibility to find a way to not lay off anyone, even though it hurt their own wallets. Meanwhile, other firms in our area laid folks off, and some ended up folding anyway.

But I kept my job, and I'm eternally grateful to the company for that. They ain't perfect, but they are at least responsible to more than just their shareholders.

[Daeven]

Enlighten me.   If this approach actually *worked*, why are we at the biggest job decline since the great depression since Bush Jr. went into office?

This months jobs report: 250K jobs added. Past quarter: ~1,000,000 jobs added to the US economy.

Someone float new new canard please. This one is done.

[geldonyetich]

Enlighten me.   If this approach actually *worked*, why are we at the biggest job decline since the great depression since Bush Jr. went into office?

This months jobs report: 250K jobs added. Past quarter: ~1,000,000 jobs added to the US economy.

Someone float new new canard please. This one is done.

If that mattered I would say, "Yes, thank you, I appreciate that new facts have come to light that I may no longer take that as a problem and I'll stop bringing it up."   I did back on page two when somebody else said that.

However, you might find The Universe and the Teacup: The Mathematics of Truth and Beauty an interesting (if depressing) read about just how misleading numbers can be when taken out of proportion.

Take a look at the official government graph personman provided.   Yes, there has been 250k more jobs over the past quarter.   Unfortunately, it was just barely enough to keep up with our population increase.   Unemployment rate has noticably decreased since this time last year, and that's a good thing.   However, the unemployment rate has remained at 5.6 - 5.7% for the past 6 months!  That's not an improvement!

Why should 250k jobs make such little impact?   That's where The Universe and a Teacup comes in: You really have to do the math to appreciate it.     According to that graph personman brought up, currently 8,203,000ish people are registered as unemployed as of the end of may.   250k jobs should take care of 3% of those who are currently looking for work.   That's not 3% of the overall employment rate, because out of the overall registered employment force of 138,772,00ish people, 250k jobs would be less than one quarter percent, about 0.18% if I know how to calculate a percentage.  

In other words, that 250k jobs line is an extremely small drop in the bucket of the overall problem.   Clinton was able to manage at least that much nearly each and every month of his presidency, sometimes two or three times as much.   That was just cruising on interia for the most part, it would seem.  

In order to reach the 4.2% unemployment rate we had back in early 2001, we'd need to have over 2,000k more jobs, and we'd need them now, as the working population increases by about 200k every month.      That many jobs that fast is technically an impossibility, and barring major population-influencing catastrophe, that added number of eligable workers per month just gets bigger as time goes on.     We're in deep dog doodoo.

I have to wonder why between Jan 2001 and Feb 2001 the number of those employed actually went down when it usually goes up.   The Dotcom bubble burst either had occured years before (remember when Lum The Mad was telling us the internet exploded back in 1996?) or wasn't going to occur until March of 2001 depending on who you ask.   9/11 was still 8 months away.    I don't think Bush Jr. even had a chance to do anything yet.  

I'm guessing that simply the fact that the administration was changing at all was enough for employers to go, "Wooah! This guy's gunna suck.  Stop hiring!  Fire those slackers we could afford when the economy was good and hire cheap Indian labor to do their jobs instead!  Back off and observe for awhile!"  But I wasn't in the board room hearing them say this, so that's just an unneccessary dramatization.

To Bush Jr's credit though, I will point out that there was a good decrease in unemployment between June of 2003 and Dec of 2003 when it went from 6.3 (the highest it's been in a long, long time) to just 5.7 (which is still a full 1.7% higher than it was at the best Clinton managed).   I just wish it would go lower instead of just idling there like it has for the past 5 months.

Also, I'm starting to hear people say "Oh yeah we're hiring, drop an app" where past 5 months I've mostly been hearing "We did all our hiring for awhile, we're good".   I suspect that just because Bush Jr.'s really laying it on thick about how the economy is actually improving people are crawling under their shells.   If I'm a right, for this psychological effect alone now's a good time to go at the job market, and I've been redoubling my efforts.

[Pug]

Anyone see the trailer to Michael Moore's new movie, Fahrenheit 9/11? The official web site was hammered so hard that they had to take the clip down. Fortunately for anyone who is interested, Apple has a working copy on their site.

http://www.apple.com/trailers/lions_gate/fahrenheit_911/

I've never been interested in political movies before but I am interested in seeing this one.

[HaemishM]

Michael Moore is an overblown, fatheaded jackass, who spouts unsubstantiated half-truths and claims they are from God's mouth to his ears. He stopped being funny years ago, and was relevant for about the 15 minutes Warhol might have afforded him.

Hell, you might as well have linked to Ann Coulter footage for all the relevance Moore has.

[Pug]

Yes, he's a lot like Rush Limbaugh. Even so I've heard nothing but good things about this documentary not to mention that it won the Palme D'Or. Despite how you feel about Michael Moore, Fahrenheit 9/11 is suppose to be a very good movie.

[heck]

Moore's an easy target, because people really want to believe that Bush's real actions are made up by the loony left.  Even the left seems to want to believe that.

F/911: how about seeing it and then giving an opinion?  Anyone?

[WayAbvPar]

Moore's an easy target, because people really want to believe that Bush's real actions are made up by the loony left. Even the left seems to want to believe that.

It is more comforting than believing he is a C student corporate schill cowboy in charge of the world's last remaining superpower.

[personman]

This months jobs report: 250K jobs added. Past quarter: ~1,000,000 jobs added to the US economy.

Someone float new new canard please. This one is done.

Depends on what you mean by canard.  If all we care about is that we're seeing any sort of job growth again I agree with you.  It's a shallow victory to make though, useful only for political partisans.

The analysts I'm reading are unanimous the job growth is by far in non-quality services, which is to say Home Depot clerks and Walmart greeters are the better placements.

Fewer people are losing everything - that is good.  But we're not ready for snoopy victory dances either.  The real lessons learned are the quality of jobs and the stats on real household disposable income.

Anyway this is a pretty common hallmark of a real recovery - the quality job growth always occurs after growth of any sort of job.  What was disturbing about Friday's announcements last week is that durable purchases were sharply down, both new home and first time buyer purchases were significantly down, and inventories were down.

In other words this recovery is gasping for breath.  The amount of direct to business stimulation pumped in by the Bush administration is the largest ever in our history, even more than FDRs.  And all we've seen again is what we learned in the Reagan years: businesses don't grow just because we give them cash; the execs just personally pocket the difference.

Economies only grow when the populace has disposable income.  Trickle down theory is again shown to be voodoo economics.  Bread and circuses for a middle class eager to be deluded as the big boys plunder the government.

[daveNYC]

Hell, you might as well have linked to Ann Coulter footage for all the relevance Moore has.

Moore is a loudmouth idiot, but Ann Coulter scares me.  I think she's on the wrong side of the line between shouting from a soapbox, and leading the firing squad.

[Dark Vengeance]

Pride has nothing to do with NOT being able to support a family on $5.15/hr.

Christ almighty, I go away for a few days and Pug loses his fucking grip on reality.

Hey Pug, when has minimum wage ever been enough to support a family? Not in my lifetime, I can assure you of that. That's why some people on hard times work 2 or even 3 jobs.

You can make the minimum wage $50k per year, and it's just going to inflate the living shit out of the domestic economy, and weaken the dollar. Other rates of pay will increase proportionately to what the market will bear, and we stay pretty much where we are.

Despite popular belief, this is not the land of milk, honey, universal prosperity, and the everlasting hard-on.

The more I think about what Dark said the more angry I get. What kind of low life mother fucker would WANT other people to lose their jobs just so they don't miss out on any scheduled pay raises?

The only "pay raises" I've gotten have been when I sold nearly double what I had the previous year. My quota increased 60% over the previous year, my salary was cut by 25%. I increased my sales by roughly 93% year-over-year, and maintained a gross profit of 22% on my deals. Between the salary cut and the cut in commissions, I lost roughly $10,000 over what I would have with the same performance in the prior year.

Also, did I note that my company sells integrated solutions that includes products as well as services? The more new business we secure in sales, the more employees we need on the service end. At the high-end of the sales spectrum, a single deal can create several new jobs within my company.

Fuck, if it weren't for the sales organization in my company, we'd be losing jobs as our client base diminimishes. Just be retaining current customers, we preserve the support and service jobs in our organization.

How again is it that I am greed personified? Because I want to see my lifestyle improve a bit when my performance and job responsibilities increase significantly?

It's always the OTHER people and never YOU, isn't it Dark? OTHER people should lose their jobs but NEVER YOU, God's gift to our world!

Who the fuck are you? How fucking dare you presume that I have no sympathy or compassion for people that have lost their jobs, or are facing a cut in pay, like the one that I experienced?

If you want to talk about God's gift, might I suggest Galatians 1:3-5 in the NIV?

Then try again and tell me what I think, feel, and believe, motherfucker.

Your business is having trouble because of OTHER lazy people who won't work for less and so THEY should lose THEIR jobs to outsourcing so that YOU CAN REMAIN COMFORTABLE AT THEIR EXPENSE

My business (i.e. the business of my empoyer) had trouble because what we do is often viewed as discretionary spending in the B2B world. In truth, the solutions we provide are often done to improve employee efficiency through technology and process improvement.

But tell that to a purchaser or CFO that can't see past that short-term increase in costs, despite a substantial ROI within a 5-year span....or cannot authorize such a transaction because the company had a spending freeze in effect. In some cases where we could overcome those obstacles, my company even helped to PRESERVE jobs.

Fuck you scumbag.

Why is that again? Because I agree with the notion of dismissing 5 people so that another 95 can keep their jobs? I do...I'd rather that 5 people lose their jobs than 100....what a silly, heartless notion. But perhaps you missed that part about me being pissed off that I make less money to do more work.

I want those people to have their jobs, and a healthy rate of pay....but when push comes to shove, I realize that's not always possible. It's about priorities...the good of the many has to outweigh the good of the few. If that means that I lose my job, so fucking be it....I'd accept that with the same understanding that I've accepted the current circmstances.

Moron.

Bring the noise.
Cheers...............

[Comstar]

I just want to say, to see a cool trailer, go see the trailer for the Hunting of the President. Far better trailer than Moore made, much more Hollywood in stlye.

It's the trailer Michale Moore would make if he was writing Tom Clancy (it even has Morgan Freeman in it!).

No shot of helo's low over the water, or submarines, but in that genre.

[Dark Vengeance]

I've actually been adopting a "asking questions while eyes and ears open approach".

I'll keep that in mind when I read your next 8-10 paragraph diatribe that contains fewer than 3 question marks. You are making more statements than you are asking questions.

But, are you're telling me you totally lack bias yourself?

I'm not the one who tried to claim the neutral position here.

Well, that's not terribly fair of me to say seeing how I asked for some defence for Bush Jr. in the first place.   Granted I did it in a somewhat biased manner because I knew that was the only real way to produce some results.

If you have questions, there is this amazing new thing people are doing....it's called "asking questions". IIRC, it is a relatively new phenomenon, it only goes back to about THE DAWN OF SPOKEN LANGUAGE.

I can appreciate the mindset that blames Bush for your job troubles....but he didn't get you fired

Didn't he?   I used to work for a small company which was having such troubles in the current economical situation that they repeatedly had to tighten their belt and move more and more work onto my position while cutting our training and increasing our work load for no pay increase.   After going through nearly four years of that, most people are going to succumb to the stress.

So now Bush is responsible for your inability to handle your job??? More work for less pay....I seem to recall saying something about that. I've also been in my job for 4 years. Amazing how I'm not yelling at people and getting my ass canned.

Though, if I weren't such a tool

Amen to that.

sporting such lofty ideals of company loyalty I'd probably have done the smart thing and bailed out the moment I saw things were going the direction they were.   Unfortunately due to several jobs in the tech industry at about my level of qualification (just call center ISP stuff) moving over to India where it could be done much cheaper, I really haven't had much places to go.

Again, how is Bush to blame for that? Was he supposed to somehow give you the ambition to quit your previous job to find something better?

No offense, but I don't see how Bush is to blame for the state of your resume, or your career choices.

But no, I guess your perspective would be that this really isn't the BUsh Jr's administration's fault, as you're pointing out that Bush Jr. didn't cause the economy to have issues. Maybe you're right.

I'm certain it isn't "Bush Jr's" fault. Our President, George Walker Bush, does not have Junior as a suffix to his name. Some have referred to him as "W", "Dubya", or even simply "Bush 43". His dad, George Herbert Walker Bush (note the difference), was the 41st President, now sometimes being called "Bush I", or "Bush 41".

Back to the point, it's pretty hard to say that the economic trouble from 2001-2004 are entirely George W Bush's fault. Lots of issues impacted the world and domestic economy that had little to NOTHING to do with White House policy.

As for overseas outsourcing, the potential for this have existed for quite some time, and have only been helped by the advancement of technology. You can blame Bush for not changing laws to prevent it from happening....but then again you could blame Clinton for not doing it during his term as well.

As for what to do now, it's a tough situation...you don't want the recovering economy to take one on the chin, yet you want to spur the recovery in the job market, both in terms of quality and quantity. Bush and kerry both have workable plans...Kerry seems to be favoring the "penalize outsourcing & incent new jobs creation" route, while Bush likes the "cut corporate taxes to make us more the US competitive in the world labor market, and cut personal taxes so US workers have more money to spend" plan. I actually side more with Kerry on this one, just because I think the best route is to reduce the cost savings from outsourcing...though both plans could work, and the Bush plan appears less restrictive overall.

I think I have established at least that the business politics have not been favoring me during his administration, coincidentally or otherwise, so it's only natural for your average man on the street to pick up that impression.  Ask CNN, most people think the job market is poor, even though it's supposedly improving.

The job market is poor, but it is improving. You understand the concept of improvement, right? My Detroit Tigers lost an AL-record 119 games last year, I expect them to make a 20-30 game improvement....that's still 89-99 losses. Just because it's improving doesn't mean it no longer sucks.

I still don't see how you getting canned for yelling at people, and then being unable to find work is a direct fault of Bush. All I see is a lot of shifting personal responsibility away from yourself and shifting the blame onto the President. Certainly easy to do...but that doesn't make it correct.

It's entirely possible that you lost your job because of your own actions, and then are unable to find a new one because your resume, education, job experience, and/or interviewing skills suck ass. Hate to splash you in the face with that bucket of cold water, but I think you should focus more on improving your situation than blaming people for your current job woes.

Personally, I'm going to school, but maybe I should start going to church instead.   That's why we need to start cutting money from schools so there can be more government funding for faith-based institutions.

Good to hear you're going to school. That should certainly help the resume, and make it possible to get a better job, with a stronger career path. I'm leaving the rest of that statement alone, because I've heaped plenty of abuse on you already, and the subject of faith is one best left out of this discussion.

Bring the noise.
Cheers............

[Tebonas]

I like to call him Bush the Younger, but only because then I can giggle at the historical parallels to the Punic wars. But don't you think you just play semantics for the sake of them now, Dark? Its not like anybody doesn't know what is meant when you call him Bush Jr, so why the frenzy about that? Of all things said about him, the Jr. is the most harmless, ain't it?

[Dark Vengeance]

I like to call him Bush the Younger, but only because then I can giggle at the historical parallels to the Punic wars. But don't you think you just play semantics for the sake of them now, Dark? Its not like anybody doesn't know what is meant when you call him Bush Jr, so why the frenzy about that? Of all things said about him, the Jr. is the most harmless, ain't it?

Because in this case, it's symptomatic of a larger problem. Namely, the notion of geldon educating himself on the subject matter before posting.

I'm just never understood how anyone considered "Bush Jr" a better shorthand for the Prez than Dubya, Bush 43, Bush II, GWB, or even simply "W".

It was a minor point anyway, certainly not central to the post. Don't read too much "frenzy" into it. Re-read the paragraph with the patient tone, inflection, and tempo of a preschool teacher that is correcting a child's grammar...that's how it was intended.

Bring the noise.
Cheers................

[Neph]

Very funny, but not work safe.

http://www.emogame.com/bushgame.html

Do not breed. That was fucking stupid.

This my friends is the epitome of wit!