He's lucky to have a good wife and family support... this is the new reality, when you're his age and lose a decent job, the odds of finding a living wage job again with a liberal arts background are really small. I lost my $35 an hour contract graphics job in May of 2012 and knew it was game over for me now at the age of 58. And I knew that once again I would have to reinvent myself to find work as I continue to struggle now 17 months without a pay check (and I got no unemployment benefits). We are in a new depression era where 40% of Americans are making less than the 1968 minimum wage inflation adjusted and the unemployment rate is a bold face lie.
some other comments from this story: Thure W. (shwicksdad)
Say what you will, but this whole show is headed for critical mass. The employers are keeping millions out of work because they massively profit from minimal work forces motivated to produce beyond capacity through fear of joblessness and minimal wages able to be paid to the desperate that need work. The conservative right is neck deep in resentment to the poor ginned up as a tool to destroy Obama and gain political support for themselves as the defenders of hard working "real" Americans. The poor and jobless are becoming a growing mass that right now stand at some 65 million people. The income disparity grows daily as wages have gone beyond being stagnated to being depressed. The cost of living continues to rise and more people fall off the ladder each day as their wages slip below the poverty level. Almost 80% of the population divides just over 20% of the income among them and that 20% shrinks every day as the wealthy continue to try amassing wealth by siphoning every penny possible away from the pockets if the poor, the working and the middle class. As the cost of living rises the value of the worker dollar diminishes and soon even those being paid "decent" wages will begin to badly struggle. You can only hide the pea under the shell for so long. You can't hold your finger in the dike indefinitely. It will soon reach a point where tens of millions will face the choice between being homeless and eating. Even more will have no ability to afford, provide or procure either because business refuses to hire them and their social service benefits have either been cut off or run out. When it reaches that point, civil unrest will slowly begin. It is inevitable. The people will reach a breaking point of poverty and hunger. It is simmering now. Soon it will begin to boil, then overflow. What will anger the masses will not be so much the lack of money, jobs, shelter or food, but the unabated arrogance of those financially benefiting by driving them into misery continuing to act as if it is their ordained right to impoverish others they consider insignificant in order to enrich themselves. There is nothing uglier than a crowd of people driven into destitution and starvation looking to settle the score with those that put them there. I do not say these things lightly. History shows us the result of similar treatment of the masses over and over through time. Those that do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it.
We need universal pay. These long-term unemployed, those who have been out of work for 26 weeks or more aren't likely to ever be employed again. Studies have found that most companies will barely even consider their résumés. Employers seem to assume that if these workers have been unemployed for so long, there must be something wrong with them. Universal pay could be provided to every adult in the country, at a rate just above poverty scale. It would be provided wether you were working or unemployed or in school. It would be the same rate regardless of marital status or number of children you have. This would be a big help to the working poor and maintain the chronic unemployed. We could pay for it be eliminating all the other, overlapping programs, WIC, Food Stamps, Welfare, Disability, Unemployment Insurance, etc.
