Now, whether or not you’re a supporter of Trump, whether or not you think he could have done anything to prevent the pandemic outbreak here in the U.S., one thing is clear: we are in a real live Depression. The economists and politicians will deny this, for the obvious reason that because of the historical and psychological connotations make them fear that the downturn will self-reinforce on a downward spiral, crashing everything if they use the D-word. — And history will remember it as the Trump Depression because, even if everything was beyond his control, he was President when it happened.
A true assessment would likely reveal that 2008–2010 was a Depression, too — and I would argue that we never really recovered from 2008; I remember the job market around then, and it was a slow ramp-up, but that’s when we started to see the “Entry Level” jobs requiring prior experience, that’s when I saw the Computer Science and IT fields really start to require more experience in a technology than that technology had existed… that’s when the corporations made it plain that they not only desired H1Bs but preferred them over the Citizen.
I remember 2011/2012, where it was common to hear people (especially employers) talk about how lucky someone was to have a job — and the mayhem that the Affordable Care Act caused, providing incentive for employers to drop hours rather than keep people full time. I remember job-hunting in 2015/2016/2017 and how job-postings for even the Entry Level jobs had gained requirements for 3-, 5-, 7-, and sometimes even 10-years: something rotten was going on — I believe it’s systemic H1B fraud, such that the HR departments in companies are gathering resumes from applicants to send back home, where their countrymen plagiarize the résumé and then be pushed by advocates in HR — and you would have to be a fool to think the economy was either healthy or strong.
And now we have 2020: the businesses lost number in the tens of thousands, and they AREN’T coming back, despite what overly optimistic politicians claim — and 44 million unemployed out of an employment-population of 150–175 million (it varies due to seasonal employment) yields us an unemployment rate of 25.1–29.3% — and this is before people have gotten desperate.
It doesn’t take a genius to figure out what’s going to happen: employers are going to inflate requirements, drop wages, cut benefits… and wait until people get desperate. They’ll use the phrase “you’re lucky to have a job!” again, and push for things like unpaid overtime, working off-the-clock, taking advantage of your ‘luck’ and fear of being replaced with someone more desperate and therefore more pliable.
Recently [14-Jul-2020] Ivanka Kushner, President Trump’s daughter, announced a White House campaign “Find Something New” aimed at the unemployed which has been observed to be rather tone-deaf, if you’re feeling charitable this is the sort of cluelessness found in the story of Marie Antoinette where upon hearing the peasants were starving without bread exclaimed “Let them eat cake!”, or if you’re not feeling charitable it’s mean-spirited taunting akin to seeing a homeless man starving on the street and while eating biggest sandwich possible while exclaiming “Be well fed!” and then throwing the sandwich on the ground and grinding it underfoot. (It’s about apprenticeships in the U.S., but that’s putting the cart before the horse given the requirements on jobs.)
Those of us who have been unemployed in the last five years know one thing that Ivanka and Donald Trump likely have absolutely no clue about: how utterly demoralizing and dehumanizing the modern job-hunt has become. Not only do most applications disappear into nothingness, thanks to Applicant Tracking Systems (ATSes) wherein you have to fill in your résumé’s data again and again, but when you finally do get an interview it often ends with someone saying something like “we’ll get back to you, whether or not we go with you or some other candidate”… and that’s the last you ever hear from them, and this happens even for interviews where you do very well.
Now here’s where the generational divide comes in: Boomers will say ‘just walk in, demand to see the hiring manager, look him in the eye and give him a firm handshake!’ oblivious to the fact that a lot of places don’t allow access to the hiring manager and force you to go through the ATS — Generation–X will tell you “it’s a number’s game, just keep applying and move on.” — Millennials know ATSes and how utterly broken they are, acting as a firewall against candidates, the scams corporations pull to hire ever more H1Bs, the ridiculousness of being simultaneously underqualified and overqualified and will offer you “good luck” but have no delusions that the job-seeking is anything close to a fair game.
The answer is clear: in order to secure jobs for the citizens who are out of work, the U.S. must immediately cancel all ‘guest worker’ visas, deport all illegal immigrants, and let the citizens take those jobs — otherwise, if the U.S. will not take care of its own People… what use is it?
And that is why it is imperative that we seek to make the virtue of Justice a goal in government: without Justice, we fall apart — and it is because of injustice that God destroys nations.
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| The “Find Something New” Ad. | And CBS’s take. |
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There are reports that the Three Gorges Dam in China has failed: they have opened the ship-locks and are using that to disgorge water from the reservoir thereby relieving the pressure. This means that the dam cannot fulfill its function as a flood-control mechanism and the downstream cities are in danger of flooding.
