Over 50 And Out Of Work

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1prophet

Diamond Member
Aug 17, 2005
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This is an incredible problem around here. Everybody was riding on the Big 3 gravy train and everything was going so well no one planned for the future. Nothing could possibly happen to the Big 3 right? Well, when the shit hit the fan an impressive number of people were left with no way to pay for their obligations. They had the opportunity to save money but the blew it on expensive cars, houses, electronics


Yet everyone on Wall Street were happy as pigs in shit when these people were spending and did their best to promote it, anyone that tried to promote savings and austerity during the boom times was decried as some sort of anti capitalist social chicken little type that had the gall to tell people what to do with their money.
 

piasabird

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
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You could reduce SS quite a bit if you just do some audits and get rid of all the free loaders. Get rid of all the fat people and psycho wierdos on SS, and the people that are able bodied and getting disability because they are liberal losers. You could also get rid of all the people on early retirement. Tell them to go wait in line like all the poor people. Most likely if you can afford to retire early you dont deserve to get SS. We should means test Social Security a little tighter also. SS was never meant as to be a supplement to people who already recieve a pension from the government.

Actually early retirement can save the government money, because people make less.

Could also get rid of spousal benefits. If you want SS you should get off your dead ass and do some work first to earn it like everyone else. If my mom can work, then you can work too.

Drug Addicts and Alcoholics dont deserve SS Either.
 
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Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
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Yet everyone on Wall Street were happy as pigs in shit when these people were spending and did their best to promote it, anyone that tried to promote savings and austerity during the boom times was decried as some sort of anti capitalist social chicken little type that had the gall to tell people what to do with their money.

Obviously people want you to spend money - it's what the ecomony is built on but 'ANYONE' who tried to promote savings and austerity? Really? If thats the case it shouldn't be too hard for you to show me multiple sources of of people being called anti capitalists social chickens (or otherwise criticized) for saving money
 

Thump553

Lifer
Jun 2, 2000
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I look at the baby boomer's I know (parents and their friends) and they seem to be doing just fine even though jobs have come and gone in the turbulent job market around here.

And they seem to have been able to save for retirement even though there were no 401ks, day trading, IRAs! Shocking! Maybe, just maybe, they took responsibility for their retirement into their own hands? No - that can't be it - they must have found some sort of magic money bean to provide for them

I've sat down with quite a few of those people as their confidential advisor. I'd say the odds are the ones you are observing are currently burning through their retirement savings and also taking quite a few financial risks-such as dropping health insurance coverage. And I'm talking about the ones that were conservative financially to begin we-those that were paying off their mortgage early, squirreling away money, no flashy vacations and driving a blah car until it dies. Many are hanging on by a much slimmer thread than outward appearances would indicate.

BTW we boomers have had IRAs and Keoughs available for a couple of decades now. Day trading has been around a long, long time too-but thats gambling, not investing or saving. Most boomers I know (regardless of political stripe) have always been pretty conservative with personal finances. You've got to remember our parents grew up in the Depression-something they may have told us about once or twice.
 

BoomerD

No Lifer
Feb 26, 2006
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I agree, but when you're over 50 and lose your job, it is going to be tough regardless of what opportunities you take advantage of during your time unemployed.

No shit. I got hurt at work at age 50...I retrained, yet still no job. Employers take one look at my resume, 30 years working construction as a crane operator...a few years off for the injury and school, I walk with a cane nowadays...and the resume goes right in the trash. Occasionally, I'll get an interview...but as soon as I walk in...I know someone else will get the job. It's in their eyes and attitude during the interview.
It doesn't matter that I was in the top 5% of all my classes, or that I graduated with a 3.94 GPA, or that in my years of construction, I was one of the top crane operators in the area, someone you called when you had a difficult job that had to be done well...all that matters is that I'm over 50 and injured.

For us folks who are over 50, retraining is a joke...and most of the time, a waste of time and money.
 

GTaudiophile

Lifer
Oct 24, 2000
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My mother could be on the site. But she has herself to blame...

-She was a highly respected, senior law librarian at a big firm in DC.
-In FEB 2009, she ONCE AGAIN left her job to ONCE AGAIN move back to a Greek island and ONCE AGAIN got married to a foreign man whom she had been dating.
-Marriage fails. She comes back to DC in September 2010.
-Whoops. No jobs. Now she is crying rivers.

Back in 2002, she did the same thing. Left a great job, moved to a Greek island, married a foreign guy, marriage fell apart, came back to the US. Only that time, back in 2005 or so, she was able to get her SAME job back at a better location.

Not this time.
 

wuliheron

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2011
3,536
0
0
Ah yes, the good old "it's the victim's fault" mentality/arguement. Oh AnandTech Forums - when will you EVER change?!

Hey, whenever you get mugged, raped, fired, hit by a car, drugged and operated on to have donkey cocks grafted to your lips, ears and nipples - don't complain; because you did bring it all on yourself.


As I already said, I'm a Boomer myself! I'm one of the "victims"! If you won't take the word of a victim that they put a gun to their own head and pulled the trigger then who do you believe? How is it "blaming the victim" to say they chose to do this to themselves for 30 years? They chose to live the highest living standard in the world, to elect the assholes they elected, to pay the lowest taxes in the developed world, to go horribly into debt, and then to take huge risks. You can say they were fooled for 30 years, but if so then it is pointless talking to the American and trying to point out the error of their ways.
 
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highland145

Lifer
Oct 12, 2009
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No shit. I got hurt at work at age 50...I retrained, yet still no job. Employers take one look at my resume, 30 years working construction as a crane operator...a few years off for the injury and school, I walk with a cane nowadays...and the resume goes right in the trash. Occasionally, I'll get an interview...but as soon as I walk in...I know someone else will get the job. It's in their eyes and attitude during the interview.
It doesn't matter that I was in the top 5% of all my classes, or that I graduated with a 3.94 GPA, or that in my years of construction, I was one of the top crane operators in the area, someone you called when you had a difficult job that had to be done well...all that matters is that I'm over 50 and injured.

For us folks who are over 50, retraining is a joke...and most of the time, a waste of time and money.
You're going to burst a bubble or 2 here.

Sorry to hear. What did you retrain for?
 

piasabird

Lifer
Feb 6, 2002
17,168
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My wife was layed off From Bank of America after 20 years at age 55. Technically she retired early. So she took a part time job making a little over minimum wage just to make ends meet. There were no other jobs available. I think those people who are over-leveraged, living in a house they can not afford and spending down their pensions are making a big mistake. They would be better off just walking away from their loan and keeping their retirement money. A house is just a giant money pit.

This flies in the face of what is acceptable behaviour for some people, but if you dont manage your money well, in the end you will have no house and no retirement nest egg. What good is that?
 
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Exterous

Super Moderator
Jun 20, 2006
20,569
3,762
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I'd say the odds are the ones you are observing are currently burning through their retirement savings and also taking quite a few financial risks-such as dropping health insurance coverage. And I'm talking about the ones that were conservative financially to begin we-those that were paying off their mortgage early, squirreling away money, no flashy vacations and driving a blah car until it dies. Many are hanging on by a much slimmer thread than outward appearances would indicate.

I could be wrong but I don't think so. They are choosing to retire - not being forced out. I will say that a couple of them are staying on for just the Health benefits.
 
Oct 30, 2004
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Cry me a fucking river for making poor life choices. Fucking entitled assholes.

Could you please elaborate on the "poor life choices" that these people made? If 100% of the populace made "good life choices" would the number of solid middle class jobs for people magically increase to accommodate everyone, or would some people still lose out?
 
Oct 30, 2004
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While I feel for their loss, the entitlement attitude is what is dragging us down as a nation. As technology changes, and their skills don't match with the times, it's hard to put the blame on anyone but themselves if they aren't willing to adapt.

What skills do people need? Are the alleged shortages of people with certain skills so great to even reemploy 10% of the people who are currently unemployed in solid middle class jobs?

Much of the talk about a "skills shortage" is just propaganda put out by corporations that want to drive down American wages by importing foreign labor on H-1B and L-1 visas. The government goes along with it to please its corporate masters and also to perpetuate the higher education myth.
 
Oct 30, 2004
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2 years of unemployment, all kinds of money and incentives for training/education = extremely easy to do something about being unemployed. I don't know, like LEARNING A NEW TRADE!

Can you name some trades where an inexperienced (in the new trade) 50 year old could find entry-level work? What are some of these trades that desperately need people?
 
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Oct 30, 2004
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Well, not everyone goes to College or has the ability to succeed there.

Note that even if everyone went to college, it wouldn't change anything because the number of college-education-requiring jobs is limited and we already have a huge oversupply of college graduates, contrary to what the sheeple believe. Did you know that about 17 million Americans with college degrees work (presumably low-wage) jobs that don't require or make use of a college education?

Why Did 17 Million Americans Go To College?

Here's another must-read article:

From Wall Street to Wal-Mart: Why College Graduates Are Not Getting Good Jobs

There's a popular mythological notion in our society that there are or would be enough solid middle class jobs to employ everyone if only everyone went to college. In reality, that's not true. In reality only a small percentage of all jobs, perhaps 15%, actually require or make real use of a college education. (Look around you. The vast majority of jobs are things like truck driving, being a waitress, cashiering, being a garbage man, being a janitor, etc.)
 
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Oct 30, 2004
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Will just make consumer electronics more expensive. Can't buy that stuff made in the USA.

We need a national manufacturing policy combined with gradually increasing tariffs. There isn't any metaphysical reason why we cannot manufacture high-value-added electronic items in the United States. While front-end costs might increase, they will be balanced by even larger decreases in invisible back-end costs (unemployment, crime, taxes, other social problems). As evidence--the fact that we have a huge trade deficit and have had one for years. If we became a self-sufficient nation tomorrow we would gain the value of that trade deficit.
 
Oct 30, 2004
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I'm over 50. I know exactly two people in my age group that are fully employed at a mainstream type employer. One is self employed, but has been essentially his whole working life. The other is a state employee. All are at least college grads, most hold advanced degrees-including several JD's.

So, what you're providing us with is testimonial anecdotal evidence that college education does NOT magically solve career and employment problems? Stop the presses! Note that even people with advanced and professional degrees can suffer from employment problems.

But wait! Aren't posters in this thread, the media, and our politicians saying that higher education is the solution to unemployment problems and that it essentially guarantees vocational success?

Is it possible, could it be possible that unemployment and low-wages are not always a person's fault and that bad things can happen to good people in spite of their virtuous actions?
 
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Oct 30, 2004
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The worker for not developing their skill to rise to the top and recognize future opportunities. If you don't you're just base labor. I expect no loyalty from my clients or my employer. I DO expect to provide the best product at the best price, that would be my time and my work.

Cream rises. The water that sits around and wants to rise, gets left behind.

In other words, what you're saying is that widespread poverty is metaphysical? There's just no way to better organize society to increase wealth production and to better distribute that wealth?

If so, how do you explain the more widespread and higher quality of life that people enjoy in many Western European countries?

Perhaps that's what the Czar should have told the Russians or perhaps what the King should have told the French people before they had their revolutions.
 
Oct 30, 2004
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At least they didn't start bankrupt like this generation.

...and with student loan debt. I've come across articles reporting that as much as a whopping 85% of new college graduates move in with their parents after graduation. Obviously they are getting a great return-on-their-higher-education-investments. Not!

I don't see how the housing market will ever recover when an entire generation of people (who should be purchasing their first homes and starting families) is already heavily burdened with mortgage-sized student loans that cannot be discharged in bankruptcy.
 

wuliheron

Diamond Member
Feb 8, 2011
3,536
0
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We need a national manufacturing policy combined with gradually increasing tariffs. There isn't any metaphysical reason why we cannot manufacture high-value-added electronic items in the United States. While front-end costs might increase, they will be balanced by even larger decreases in invisible back-end costs (unemployment, crime, taxes, other social problems). As evidence--the fact that we have a huge trade deficit and have had one for years. If we became a self-sufficient nation tomorrow we would gain the value of that trade deficit.


Manufacturing isn't the solution, its the problem. The US is still the world's largest manufacturing exporter and corporations are back to making record profits. As much as outsourcing is a problem automation is the bigger long term issue and we're going through a transition similar to what occurred in the nineteenth century with sweatshops.

Now in addition to sweatshops overseas we're increasingly loosing jobs altogether to robots and computers. Some countries like China are already literally ruining their environment and creating sweatshops just so they can compete with robots and computers. No doubt the US can go the same route, but inevitably someone needs to impose sanity on the system and draw a few lines in the sand or revolution will break out again.

Its really the same process we've seen all along. Slavery and peasantry were extremely common and often a decent way of life for countless people. Then came the cotton gin and sugar industry and slaves became horribly exploited by the millions. Then came the sweatshops and now its the robots and computers. The problem is the US has simply gained too much for the last 140 years by greasing its ass and bending over for corporations and now that behavior has become counterproductive and ritualistic. That means it is more likely we wait until the problem becomes so severe revolution is the only alternative.
 
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spidey07

No Lifer
Aug 4, 2000
65,469
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In other words, what you're saying is that widespread poverty is metaphysical? There's just no way to better organize society to increase wealth production and to better distribute that wealth?

If so, how do you explain the more widespread and higher quality of life that people enjoy in many Western European countries?

Perhaps that's what the Czar should have told the Russians or perhaps what the King should have told the French people before they had their revolutions.

No. What I'm saying is thanks to our great country if you work hard you will be rewarded. Everybody can open a business, learn a trade (mechanic would be good with people keeping cars longer) and be successful. But it will take hard work, recognizing trends and applying yourself.

A job is not a right, nobody is entitled to one nor are they entitled to success. But in our country they are entitled to the opportunity. People from other countries still flock here and live the American Dream. And wealth is NOT to be distributed. That's not the American way.
 

Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
This is exactly the entitlement type bullshit that is ruining America.

Here is a hint for you whiners - employers trade money for work - employees trade work for money. THAT is the extent of the relationship. If either decides the relationship is more - great but it isn't to be expected. Either can terminate the trade at any point.

BTW, I know many 50+ employed professionals, even in the fast moving technical field of automation. Sure some of the old are culled as they can't keep up can't make the transition to a management role but those with ambition and skills have had no problem and will continue to have no problem.

You understand very little of what the problems are with America. Germany is spanking everyone in manufacturing and low unemployment and you can literally never work there if you choose to. Not just envy of Europe but world. Chad is as free market laissez faire low tax paradise as you can get and couple billionaires and everyone else sucking dust and eating bugs. hmmm....


America IS headed for third worldism but for opposite reasons you think. Poor education which requires investment so firms come/start here (the next Microsoft will not start in USA), poor retention from frightened workers, people "over the barrel" spend 40 hrs a week looking for another job instead of task at hand, poor income distribution for their labors destroying moral and final product. etc. There is no I in team work and all Americans today know is I.
 
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Zebo

Elite Member
Jul 29, 2001
39,398
19
81
Manufacturing isn't the solution, its the problem. The US is still the world's largest manufacturing exporter and corporations are back to making record profits. As much as outsourcing is a problem automation is the bigger long term issue and we're going through a transition similar to what occurred in the nineteenth century with sweatshops.

Now in addition to sweatshops overseas we're increasingly loosing jobs altogether to robots and computers. Some countries like China are already literally ruining their environment and creating sweatshops just so they can compete with robots and computers. No doubt the US can go the same route, but inevitably someone needs to impose sanity on the system and draw a few lines in the sand or revolution will break out again.

Its really the same process we've seen all along. Slavery and peasantry were extremely common and often a decent way of life for countless people. Then came the cotton gin and sugar industry and slaves became horribly exploited by the millions. Then came the sweatshops and now its the robots and computers. The problem is the US has simply gained too much for the last 140 years by greasing its ass and bending over for corporations and now that behavior has become counterproductive and ritualistic. That means it is more likely we wait until the problem becomes so severe revolution is the only alternative.

Not its not. US is largest manufacturer, barley, china 2 Germany 3. Percapita Germany 1 then a bunch of Europeans.

Exporter China is #1 then Germany. USA is 7th and pathetic on a percapita or deficit schedule.
 
Oct 30, 2004
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Manufacturing isn't the solution, its the problem. The US is still the world's largest manufacturing exporter and corporations are back to making record profits. As much as outsourcing is a problem automation is the bigger long term issue and we're going through a transition similar to what occurred in the nineteenth century with sweatshops.

Technological innovation--automation--is not the problem. Confusing innovation with global labor arbitrage is a common error in this debate. If innovation and technological advance increases the amount of production per unit of human effort expended on the job, it should result in lower prices which means that money will be spent in other areas of the economy, resulting in new jobs to replace the ones lost to innovation. In theory, the prices of manufactured goods produced by automation should decrease faster than any resultant decrease in wages.

The invention of the light bulb put candle makers out of work, and the invention of automobiles and the assembly line put buggy makers out of work, but our nation's economy didn't stop growing and the standard of living increased.

The real cause of our nation's employment problem is (1) foreign outsourcing for domestic consumption, which is reflected in our multi-hundred billion dollar per year trade deficit, (2) the use of H-1B and L-1 visas to displace Americans from often college-education-requiring jobs and to drive down wages in those fields, and (3) mass immigration (legal and illegal) which displaces lower class Americans and depresses their wages.

And do note that it isn't just manufacturing jobs that have been offshored, but also many knowledge-based jobs, including some functions related to patent law (knowledge of science or engineering plus law).
 
Oct 30, 2004
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No. What I'm saying is thanks to our great country if you work hard you will be rewarded. Everybody can open a business, learn a trade (mechanic would be good with people keeping cars longer) and be successful. But it will take hard work, recognizing trends and applying yourself.

But we've seen evidence that a great many hard-working people have ended up being laid-off and unable to find work in their fields or any field. Also, the vast majority of new businesses fail. It takes a lot more than just hard work and personal responsibility to make a business successful (uh, like having capital and a lack of competition).

A job is not a right, nobody is entitled to one nor are they entitled to success. But in our country they are entitled to the opportunity. People from other countries still flock here and live the American Dream. And wealth is NOT to be distributed. That's not the American way.

No one is saying that a job is a right. The issue is whether or not sufficient opportunity is available for responsible hard workers. There are a great many people who probably have your own personal virtues of character who are just unemployed or who's businesses failed.