Jobs Statistics?

Every week, or so it seems anymore, an article is published on one of the major news sites I watch about job creation statistics. While, all throughout the week, I read about companies dropping thousands of workers, somehow there are statistics out there that regularly show that the economy is “improving” and new jobs are being created in greater number than those lost in the same time period.

What no one seems to be discussing is the parity between the jobs lost and the jobs created. What I mean by that is, as far as I can tell, no one is evaluating the overall difference in compensation between the jobs lost and the jobs created.

Using the amazing powers of observation, I could deduce, however, that there is a difference, and that it is probably pretty significant.

First, I think it is worth mentioning that I don't see a lot of “Help Wanted” or “Now Hiring” signs or ads, but when I do, the jobs I see advertised are not impressive. Places like McDonalds always appear to be hiring, probably because the bulk of their workforce always seems to be under the age of 18 and those “kids” are probably heading off to college for large portions of the year. Basically, I don't really count working a fast food joint as having a “job” unless you're at least an assistant manager, and even that doesn't pay all that great and tends to leave much to be desired on insurance and long term financial planning (such as 401k programs).

I see a lot of warehouses offering jobs as pickers / packers starting around $9 (if you take the worst-offered shift). Again, that hardly counts as a “job” if you compare it to the thousands of high-end positions eliminated over the last month at companies developing pharmaceuticals or tech gadgets.

Maybe looking at a site like monster.com yields better results for some people, but every time I look about half the listings appear to be bogus (“werk at hom and make $100,000 a YEAR!”) and most of the ones that look legitimate make about the same pay I do working in a warehouse.

So what I'm attempting to illuminate is the fact that a lot of people see jobs numbers in the positive and think things are improving, but the numbers don't tell the whole story. I think we all need to be honest with ourselves – what we observe with our senses does not always mesh well with what we are being told by the media or government. I don't see anything improving in my little corner of the world, do you?

Also, while I have the moment, I want to share a link that tries to show the volume of debt currently being shuffled around by the U.S. federal government in a graphical format. Oh, come now, in light of the credit downgrade this week, you knew I wasn't going to let that subject drop, right?

http://usdebt.kleptocracy.us/

In game or life, “There is safety... in mindfulness.”

Be well, friends.

Thoughts on Current Events in Hickersonia

Well, I have the peculiar fortune of having the coming weekend entirely to myself for only the second time in five years. This isn't necessarily a bad thing, although I must admit that I'm a little disappointed that I don't really have any money to spend (always makes passing the time easier if one has money) or someone with whom to hang out.

Of course, it isn't that I don't have money – in fact, I feel more free financially than I have in three or four years. The issue at hand here is that we have a lot of things going on and have decided to spend our money in ways that make me feel like we don't have any.

The biggest problem I'm wrapping my head around is my scheduled FMLA leave in June... 3 days off work without pay is going to wreak havoc on the budget if I don't save up the difference in overtime hours between now and then, which doesn't seem hard to do (I do work a lot of overtime anymore...) but still keeps money tied up that otherwise wouldn't be.

Of course, the FMLA leave is essential. My father has a surgery scheduled that may shed light on his cancer condition, and while I may be able to get away with only two days off, I would be surprised.

The other big thing going on is our plan to move, yet again. It isn't that our apartment is the worst place to live – I would even recommended it to people so long as a few criteria are met. The first one would have to be that the person looking at it would have to be the sort of person that doesn't care about a yard. Funny, how we have a decent sized grassy area around our complex but I don't feel that anyone can go out there because of the dog shit randomly left around and about. Yes, dog shit. Everywhere. No one cleans up after their dogs, and many of the owners don't even bother to leash them.

Next big factor for anyone wishing to live here: Live small. 800 square feet is simply not sufficient for all of our stuff. Sure, we've made the place into a cozy, if crowded, home for us, but we just never found a way to downsize to where we really fit. Clearly, size matters.

Finally, the one that has been bothering us the most in recent weeks: Smoking. Lets just say this, if you don't smoke, you probably don't want to live here. It has gotten to the point where we are occasionally smelling cigarette smoke inside the apartment even with the windows shut, and forget about opening them... From what I can tell, every neighbor on our side of the building smokes like a factory and, being we're on the top floor and heat rises, well... we get it all.

Aside from the major drawbacks here, like I said, the apartment really isn't so bad. The management does maintain things reasonably well. Not an example of perfection, but decent, and they are responsive to issues as they arise, something we could not say about our previous complex. Fact is, we simply have a much better opportunity and feel the need to take it.

Not far from our pre-bankruptcy house there is a little house on a quiet, dead end street where a whole bunch of elderly folks have made their last stand. This little house is empty and the owner seems to want to rent it to us. The house isn't huge, but it has a room that would make an ideal classroom for our son, plus a basement and garage. Fact is, even if the house is only 1,200 finished square feet, the classroom space and additional storage room alone will de-clutter our home tremendously, and lately it seems as if the constant state of disarray is the only thing that really depresses me from day to day.

So we come back to the fact that I'm home alone this weekend with little available money. If I get bored enough, my wife may return home to the clutter re-organized... *evil laugh* Netflix and Fallout 3 for three solid days sounds like enough to keep me busy, though, what do you think?

Oh, My Debt Ceiling!

All this talk about the Federal Debt Ceiling has me thinking a bit. What is the debt ceiling? In effect, it operates as the Federal Government's maximum line of credit, much like a credit card, except that Congress can increase their credit limit any time it wants to.

First and foremost, the debt ceiling that has been in the news so often really has nothing to do with the total unfunded liabilities of the Federal Government, like social security, medicare, and medicaid benefits over the next 30 years, so it is a little misleading. All of those future expenditures will require further increasing the debt ceiling, massively increasing taxes, or insane cuts to future so-called “services.”

Secondly, the debt ceiling has been increased 74 times since 1962, and I don't particularly doubt that they'll raise it again. The past tends to be an excellent predictor of the future, and the alternative is random debt defaults by the Federal Government, which would surely have damaging effects on the economy.

In any event, I can do a little fuzzy math myself, but my scenario still looks reasonable (at least in my opinion.

Hickersonia's current debt ceiling: $1,905. This is approximately 4.6% of our income for 2010, and isn't really “debt” in the classic sense. We don't owe this amount to a bank and pay it back to an account I have set up as the result of a “loan” from my wife's parents that, for whatever reason, they have been reluctant to let us repay.

So, in effect, any time that account has less than $1,905 in it, I treat it as a debt that needs to be repaid.

Right now, Hickersonia's “national debt” is $864.13, factoring out medical debts. What is this debt the result of? Vehicle maintenance. Figures, huh?

In comparison, the Federal Government's debt is currently in the realm of 14 trillion. Actual revenue, on the other hand: 2.16 trillion. How any entity can survive with debts that are around 7 times the value of their income, I will never know, but I sure can't operate that way.

As a little aside, I wanted to post the following YouTube links. They are each part of a five-video series titled “Money as Debt.” While I'm not sure I agree with every conclusion the author comes to near the end, I do believe that the basic concepts of our financial system are well represented, which should really infuriate anyone who has so much as half a brain.

Money as Debt:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vVkFb26u9g8

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sanOXoWl0kc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=kTv1fo6sKmo

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3qicabStQkc

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7kpSbkaD4tM

And now I'm off -- to go make some of that money. Ha!

Gassy Gripe

Been quiet again for a while, I know.

The thought had crossed my mind to play an April Fools joke by posting that I was going to close down the blog, but I realized that in the off-chance that anyone read it, it would probably be 30 days before I'd post again. Probably wouldn't be very funny by then.

Anyway, I feel like griping a little.

The only real gripe I have right now is the cost of gasoline going up so dramatically over the last couple months. I can attest to a 17% or more increase in the price of gasoline since December 20, 2010. Some people tell me that we're still nowhere near Europe's prices, of which I am well aware, but this isn't Europe. This isn't a country where mass transit is readily available, or even practical if it were, for half or more of the population. Further, I've noticed a cost increase between 4-10% on everything we buy (except beer, oddly) that I believe is linked to the rising fuel cost.

The mantra I hear repeatedly is that we need to drive less, and I agree with that in principle, but I can also say that I already drive near the absolute minimum. I don't go cruising about town for fun like I did when I was a teen, and I generally only drive to and from work every day with no other stops.

Sure, I could use a bicycle for my six mile commute, but I have to admit that my fear of other drivers maiming or killing me (particularly at midnight on the return trip) dissuades me completely from the idea... that and I'm woefully out of shape for the task and a significant portion of the trip to work is an uphill climb. But really, I think I'd do it if it weren't for other drivers sharing the space with me, I'd just have to walk part way until I reconditioned my body to the biking again.

So I look at this situation as an ever-depressing downer on my otherwise stagnant internal economy, and I'm not impressed. Worst of it is, some jackass is making money off of me and I feel powerless to prevent it...

Hell, I even had one guy at work tell me that I needed to buy a more fuel efficient car because of the fuel costs. I guess he doesn't realize that first, we're bankrupt and would probably be laughed at when we try to apply for a loan, and second, the monthly car payment (even at a “good,” pre-bankruptcy interest rate on a used vehicle) would certainly be larger than the fuel costs that it would be saving.

Yes, I learned this the hard way when we bought the Escort a few years back. On paper, it looked OK, but in practice we still spent more. And then the insurance cost more too... that was nice.

Well, I guess that just kinda came out as a ramble. Not sure how best to close this, so I'll just go random. Coffee FTW! Oh, and come on Cardinals! Start winning!

Massive Debt + Math Wrath = Insane Financial Fail.

I've heard a fair bit of conversation, and been involved in quite a bit of it myself, about the idea of the United States defaulting on its debts. I often hear it said that the United States “has never defaulted on a debt,” or that the strongest economy in the world “could never collapse” (much like the Titanic could not sink?).

No one learns about this particular subject in Civics class, but I think we all should. The United States has indeed defaulted on it's contractual obligations to pay debts, particularly as it pertains to paying them in gold, and one specific mention of such a default is the result of the Joint Resolution To assure uniform value to the coins and currencies of the United States, enacted June 5, 1933.

http://en.wikisource.org/wiki/Gold_Repeal_Joint_Resolution

Once passed, this effectively told all creditors of the United States, most or all of whom previously had the legal right to have our debts be repaid in gold, that we repudiated the obligation to do so – that they would be paid in our national currency instead. Of course, at the time, our government (under President Franklin Roosevelt) was in the midst of the Great Depression and enacting policies that greatly devalued the US Dollar, making it an unattractive medium of exchange for investors (sound a little like what is going on today?). This resulted in lawsuits landing in the United States Supreme Court, where the law was upheld (barely), and set the stage for the complete abolition of the Gold Standard (or Gold Exchange Standard, as it might be better described after 1933) in 1971 under Richard Nixon.

Fact is, claims that the United States has never defaulted on a debt are false, and if it has happened before, it certainly can happen again. Today we see signs that the Federal Reserve is devaluing our currency (Quantitative Easing) and that, in particular, foreign investors are less interested in our currency as a major medium for trade. Of course, making your money less valuable makes sense when you owe 14 trillion dollars (not to mention the trillions of dollars in obligations that we are contractually obligated to pay over the next 50 years). Hell, our debt roughly equals our nation's Gross Domestic Product (the total market value of all goods and services produced in the country in a year). Everything I observe tells me that the United States government is not simply capable of defaulting on its debts, but that it will be forced to do so.

Financial Comedy

12 cents each. That's all, I swear!

You want 1.1 billion of them? That's great!

There is just one catch. Some random percentage of them will be defective due to faulty equipment and sloppy processes, and those will have to be destroyed and new one will need to be made, all at your expense.

http://www.cnbc.com/id/40521684/The_Fed_Has_a_110_Billion_Problem_with_New_Benjamins

That's pretty much what is happening in relation to the newfangled, so-called “high tech” $100 Federal Reserve Notes. Aparently there is a defect that will cause some number, as of yet undetermined, to be useless, and each one of these worthless pieces of “high tech” paper costs 12 cents.

I guess it is OK to waste so much money when you consider that the money used to pay for it is also worthless... but that doesn't make it sound any better when you consider all the stuff people can still, for now at least, buy with it.

I sometimes wonder if we waste more money implementing new anti-counterfeiting measures than we'd waste simply dealing with the counterfeiting directly. 12 cents doesn't sound like much, but that's 12 cents for each of 1.1 billion bank notes... totaling 132,000,000 dollars. If these were one dollar notes, each one would cost 12% of it's face value to create, but regardless of the tiny fraction of the cost involved with these $100 notes, 132 million dollars is still a lot of money to see disappear into thin air.

Of course, I'm sure they printed enough to compensate for it...   

Circular Reasoning Prevails

One thing I've noticed about all the overtime at work recently is that I don't really mind the 500$ weekly paychecks. I don't mind that at all, seriously. I think my problem is that I work harder and longer for it than I used to and I have a major objection to that in and of itself.

Yes, I do realize I'm not the only one in the country that has gone from one job to another with a net decrease in pay. I admit to be quite perplexed at how easily my wife tolerates her own, rather massive, income drop, but I never hear a complaint about it from her. Face it, folks, if I didn't complain about it, I simply wouldn't be me.

My biggest problem with getting a different job right now (ignoring the economy) is a problem on paper only, or that of lacking paper to be more exact. I spent ten years working with and learning a great deal about computer networking, and even with that aside, I've got the same period worth of data entry time that should still land me a much less stressful job. Thing is, I don't have any documentation (or degrees) to prove that I have any skills at all. Sure, that's no one's fault but mine – it only serves to illustrate how I incorrectly expected employers to be more interested in workplace experience than book knowledge.

While I'm not entirely confident that a degree would save me in today's economy, it has caused me a lot of grief to not have it. Pretty much every job advertisement to which I would consider responding has declared firmly “those without at least a two-year degree need not apply” or similar. Even then, a lot of such jobs advertise lower pay than I receive today – are the overseas techies really willing and able to work for so much less?

So I guess I've resigned myself to sticking it out in the job I'm in for the foreseeable future... I mean, putting it in another way, if the economy isn't going to start adding “real” jobs until, oh, 2019 or so, I guess I'd better get entrenched where I am or get used to the idea of taking less pay in order to get out. So, like I said at the start of the post, I guess I don't really mind the 500$ weekly paychecks...

I Wasn't Kidding...

On September 24 I made the comment on Facebook that I was feeling as if I were “starting a new chapter of my life.” I have found that this is more true than I at first believed... Over the weekend we came to the realization that Michelle is pregnant, and calculated that she is possibly as far as five weeks along.

Of course, this revelation compels me to the realization that I do, indeed, need my job a lot more than they need me, first and foremost in order to maintain health insurance to cover the to-be-determined cost of bringing another child into the world. Of course, I also have great need of many, many more Federal Reserve Notes... Even if the currency is merely a fake paper facade, it still proves useful from time to time.

So now I have the daunting challenge of funding the further growth of Hickersonia under the circumstances of a seemingly endless economic crunch. I have some measure of faith that things will be OK, but I have to admit my hesitation to assume it at face value... More on this later.

Continued Economic Blues

I've come to the conclusion that my employer, either by accident or design, has realized it's position as the giver (and taker) of life. This is an unfortunate economic truth that I suspect many local employers are enforcing, especially with Ohio's average unemployment rate at 10.4% (with the Cincinnati rate closely mirroring the state average). In my case, I'm paid a so-called “competitive wage” of 13.30$ hourly (a wage I had surpassed by about a dollar an hour over four years ago at my last job), and I find little comfort in it except that it is currently sufficient, albeit barely, to meet our needs when supplemented by my wife's part-time employment.

I find myself asking, however; whatever happened to the times of the single-income family? I wouldn't feel so bad frustrating myself needlessly at work every day if my wife didn't have to work for us to still meet our needs, but as it stands there is just no way to survive without the second income. No one ever said life had to be “fair,” I realize that, but with no debt, no major medical problems, and a reasonable rental payment for our home, what does it take to manage on a single income?

I assure you, I'll be working on a solution to this question over the next few months.

But beyond that, I will continue the struggle to balance my work life with my home life... something that seems harder to do with each passing month.

Turning a Page

This morning my wife embarked on the first day at her new job, turning yet another page in Hickersonian history, even if not quite starting a new chapter yet. She goes from a full time daycare/preschool position at a seemingly underfunded company to a part-time gig with a church-operated preschool. 40 hours weekly down to 16; 7.75$ per hour up to 11$.

Technically speaking there is a pay decrease but certain other factors apply to make this a potentially favorable change. The biggest such factors include the elimination of child care (and the 74$ weekly expense involved with it) and the fact that she'll have more time for home schooling our son, which I dare say is the actual start of our next so-called “chapter.”

Overall, this change was budgeted as a $2,430.80 decrease in our yearly income, not an inconsequential amount, but we feel it is worth the cost to secure the proper environment for home schooling our son. Of course, this sort of deficit required an extensive package of trimmings to our expenses, forcing us to move to a smaller, lower-rent apartment (hoping for lower utility costs as well), drop certain cell phone services, and change where we store our excess items. I have estimated the total cuts to the budget around 200$ monthly.

This job change, while nearly guaranteed to work for the duration of the school-year, has a major drawback in that it leaves us without a second income during the summer when school is out. This is, you might imagine, a major stressor to me (even if it isn't so much so for my wife). This is where most of the income drop comes into play, an amount I think we'll be hard-pressed to save up over the next seven or eight months while managing our other needs. My wife may be left with no option but to get a temporary part-time gig for the summer – something we can't guarantee when you consider the state of the economy. After I finish the 2011 budget, I'm sure additional cuts will be on the table.

Even with these probable financial hardships, with the turning of this page my wife sees not only more time for our son's home schooling, but the opportunity to work more closely with her church and to do work to which I believe she feels called by a higher power. I can't stand in the way of that, nor can I argue the impossibility of our financial situation because I am still fairly confident in our ability to adjust our lifestyle to nearly any need... but I'm not going to claim any of it will be particularly easy.