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The devalued American worker: The past three recessions sparked a chain reaction of layoffs
Washington Post ^ | December 14, 2014 | Jim Tankersley

Posted on 12/15/2014 7:13:39 AM PST by C19fan

Midway through the last game of the 2013 Carolina League season, after he’d swept peanut shells and mopped soda off the concourse, Ed Green lumbered upstairs to the box seats to dump the garbage.

Green was already 12 hours into his workday. He rose at dawn to lay tar on the highway. As the sun sank, he switched uniforms and drove to BB&T Ballpark, where he runs the custodial crew for a minor-league baseball team. Now it was dark and his radio was crackling. It was his boss, asking him to head back downstairs. Green walked onto the first-base line and into a surprise. In front of 6,000 fans, the Winston-Salem Dash honored him as the team’s employee of the year.

(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...


TOPICS: Business/Economy; Culture/Society
KEYWORDS: class; middle
Story about what economists called Hysteresis. The job market, especially for the middle class, has never fully recovered during the past three recessions. One has seen this in Europe for the past 50 years where every recession has caused a permanent increase in the baseline unemployment rate. I think our governing on both sides of the aisle has been at war against the Middle Class for the past two decades or more.
1 posted on 12/15/2014 7:13:39 AM PST by C19fan
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To: C19fan

Once again, the Washington Post only gives us one side to this story.
It seems to me that Ed Green working the equivalent of two low wage full time jobs, is depriving some poor, illiterate, low/no skilled illegal immigrant of a well deserved job.


2 posted on 12/15/2014 7:24:36 AM PST by Tupelo (I am feeling more like Phillip Nolan by the day.)
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To: Tupelo

So far the lack of the work “immigration” in the first 2 parts of this Washington Post serial is deafening.


3 posted on 12/15/2014 7:26:32 AM PST by C19fan
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To: C19fan
Liberals don't understand that the fed gov is straggling private business and therefore job growth.

Their go-to answer is always another gov program which inevitably makes the situation worse.

4 posted on 12/15/2014 7:27:43 AM PST by Pietro
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To: C19fan

Whenever I read these stories, I always think of the scene in season 1 of “Breaking Bad”, where the car wash owner orders Walter White to start cleaning the cars.


5 posted on 12/15/2014 7:28:25 AM PST by rbg81
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To: C19fan

Now that ALL of the GOP Rinos came out of the shawdows and voted with the Democrats to prop up Obama and do the bidding for Wall Street we can be assured that there will be plenty of part-time jobs available at minimum wage.


6 posted on 12/15/2014 7:39:01 AM PST by KeyLargo
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To: C19fan
“When middle-skill jobs vanish, those workers must either take low-skill jobs or compete for the fewer middle-skill jobs left.”

Or, they can do what many people did: re-tool your skill set by taking classes at your local community college or technical school. I saw a rudimentary computerized lathe machine in 1968. It didn't take a genius to understand that similar repetitive tasks in the factory would eventually be automated.

7 posted on 12/15/2014 11:47:54 AM PST by riverdawg
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