Millions More to Become Homeless
Federal unemployment data fail to provide true picture of market.: An article from: Westchester County Business Journal
In Oregon, for instance, with a mere total population of about 3.5 million (small indeed by comparison to many regions), only about 2 million are adults and/or are (were) members of the workforce in the first place. Everybody else is and has been long-term recipients of welfare, food stamps and the like; and now we have those who are collecting unemployment checks. But it was back in early February where some guy from the Oregon State Capitol was suggesting that if the extension doesn’t go through, it will mean that, in his effective words, an initial 12,000 unemployment recipients will amount to the first wave of beneficiaries who will be exhausting all available benefits.
Okay, so that amounts to 12,000 people right there alone; and it was stated as being only the first wave of people who will have exhausted their benefits. Granted that the gentleman didn’t manage to articulate how many more waves of people there would be projected to subsequently lose benefits, but it can be assumed that there would be a minimum of two (2) such waves given in view of the four (4) total extensions that have been passed thus far.
But this assumption still doesn’t include taking into consideration the fact that Oregon continues to readily lose more jobs than it creates on an ongoing daily, weekly and monthly basis, which has been inclusive of the loss of many public service jobs (e.g., police and firefighters). In short, and in the absence of what would be needed to determine a greater long-term extension of unemployment insurance payments to affected individuals in lieu of an unlikely seriously positive upswing to view economic conditions, then those persons would only be eligible for a single extension of benefits providing that an extension is approved at this point through the end of 2010.
It’s like the difference between old money and new money: Realistically, there is no “new money” being created out there in the form of a job surplus to override the continuing higher number of jobs that are being lost. For most formerly displaced workers who have managed to find new employment following a job loss, a large percentage of these jobs are located within the so-called “temporary employment services industry.” Withstanding a handful of business start-ups here and there and/or other nominal business expansion efforts on the part of some businesses that may be fielding a niche industry to exploit in terms of a given supply-and-demand economic ideal, there is still by no means any broad industry sectors that are creating new jobs due to actual economic growth, since there is no actual economic growth.
No matter what anybody says at this point in time, the overall U.S. economy is currently in a state of systemic decline. Saying that these conditions could, would or should become reversed by June – or whenever – is nothing more than a speculative feel-good statement and wishful thinking when weighed against all of the otherwise known poorly performing economic indicators.
But a lot of what is holding the precarious economic curve steady for right now to assume bare bones supply and demand economics (e.g., demand for food, clothing and shelter) is the money that people have been receiving in the form of unemployment benefits. So what happens when you take the equation of unemployment insurance monies out of the picture? Then, of course, you see yet more jobs being lost due to a furthering inability on the part of people to continue purchasing essential food, clothing and shelter.
Economists and politicians alike (of which economists are little more than glorified politicians in my personal opinion) will keep telling you that we have never entered into a full-scale economic depression the likes of the 1929 Great Depression; but what they are NOT telling you about is the very simple economic mechanics and equations that have thus far prevented the exact same Great Depression scenario – or likely much worse – from taking place.
What is that scenario? It is a very simple one and stares everybody square in the face:
Back in 1929, there was NO food stamp program; there was NO welfare program; there was NO unemployment insurance program; and there apparently wasn’t even any federal bailout programs tailored for gigantic and closely defunct financial institutions like we have seen recently, since all the banks back then simply went belly up in the wake of the ensuing collapse. Although it is worth reiterating that much of the money afforded to bail out these banks and other financial institutions in the past couple years really has not benefited the average American family; nor has the money actually prevented any defaulting home buyers from ultimately losing their homes even where it can be said that the banks were effectively paid off in full on the defaulted loans from the outset.
The picture is very simple to paint: Take all of the above three “NO” equations out of the current economic picture, and it becomes very easy to see that the doom and gloom of a full-fledged Great Depression scenario would unfold quickly and where the subsequent consequences of human toll-taking would easily become much worse than anything even remotely witnessed during the collapse of 1929.
For one thing, it was back in 1929 where an estimated 40% of the population was still living on farmland and where those families were hence raising their own food. In today’s economy, only about 5% of people live on farmland. In today’s economy, virtually every last person is entirely dependent on the sustained movement of goods via aircraft, cargo ships, rail and by truck.
But in getting back to the asinine argument surrounding erroneous unemployment numbers, it was about three (3) weeks ago where my local television news was reporting a rough number of about 125,000 unemployed people in Oregon; then again, however, it was about a month before that (January) when I had alternately heard a number proposed for Clark County Washington (bordering Portland, Oregon) suggesting about 120,000 unemployed people in Clark County alone. That’s just one county out of the entire state of Washington. I never heard that number mentioned a second time, so perhaps it accidentally slipped out someone’s mouth.
During the first or second week in March, it was Oregon Governor Ted Kulongoski (now serving his last term as Governor) who was interviewed on the local television news regarding, among other things, the dismal state of affairs currently facing the Oregon economy. When the news’ commentator asked the Governor, to the effect of, what his most pressing concern was for the Oregon economy, Mr. Kulongoski responded by using a number of roughly between 220,000 and 250,000 people (I forget which at this point) to cite people in Oregon who are out of work, and who want to find new work, as being tantamount to his utmost concerns for the welfare of Oregonians at large.
No further elaboration was made on the part of the Governor, and neither on the part of his commentator during the interview, to question his effectively attributed number of about a quarter-million unemployed people in the State of Oregon. Assuming, however, that a quarter-million unemployed is closer to the truth than anything else I’ve been hearing, then the math is simple enough to do in determining a true unemployment rate of approximately 20% to 25% of the former existing workforce in the state.
But wait a minute anyway! How do we go from 1.2 million unemployed people throughout the entire country (e.g., 12k people per state on average), to 125,000 unemployed people being reported for Oregon in January (two months ago), to roughly a quarter million being suggested by the Governor of Oregon himself? And to that end, therefore, the question bears asking: "What are the real numbers of unemployed?"
Surprisingly enough to me, it was also back in January where I actually heard a comment made from a news’ person (woman) whereby she effectively stated that, although the statistical unemployment rate was set at about 10%, the “true unemployment rate” was closer to 17%. At that point, I thought to myself, “Now we’re getting somewhere!” However, I suspect the actual number may really be higher than even 17%.
The thing about unemployment statistics (which many people may not realize) is that those statistics are based entirely on people who are currently receiving unemployment benefits. The statistics don’t count people who never find another job and end up exhausting their benefits’ allotment. Based on using this same model, it is conceivable that if everybody currently receiving benefits ends up exhausting those benefits before finding another job, there would be nothing stopping these “political statisticians” another year and half down the road from stating that the U.S. economy is back to enjoying a 3% or 4% unemployment rate, or whatever fictitiously nominal number might be used. After all, since people who are off the dole are not counted anyway, there would be no census to include those long-term, chronically unemployed (homeless) people into any future present-day statistics.
During the peak periods following the 1929 Great Depression, assumed unemployment figures of 30% to 35% were being consistently floated around. The fact that there were no “unemployment insurance programs” back then, whether state or federal, may point to a greater likelihood of truthfulness in those reporting figures, since neither would there have been any political reasoning – or ulterior motivation – to dilute the figures with abstract notions of people who have “given up on living and working” just because they fall off the unemployment money dole prior to ever finding another job.
That being one of the more disgustingly flippant arguments I have ever heard portrayed through various means of news’ media reporting, which is that many chronically unemployed people who don’t end up reentering the work force amount to people who have – “simply given up on looking for work.”
Look, people don’t work their entire lives and then just give up on the ideal of working in the interest of living in a cardboard box and eating out of a soup line, nor to end up collecting welfare and food stamps in lieu of earning a living by being a productive member of the workforce. A lot of people are forced into situations of financial insolvency, whereby they no longer have the means to keep a roof over their head, keep their bodies clean, keep their teeth clean, keep their health up generally and/or specifically, or to even be able to effectively search for a job. Beyond a certain point, and perhaps contrary to the popular suggestions of some, there comes a time when people really do end up flat broke with absolutely zero options left except to try and work their way out of a cardboard box.
Would you hire a person who apparently hasn’t had a bath or a change of clothes in the past several days or more? No, you probably wouldn’t. It is only in rare instances of human empathy, sympathy, compassion, understanding, or whatever else you want to call it, that people will offer a job – and another chance – to an apparently destitute and indigent person.
Regardless of the circumstances that lead people into a life of being homeless and destitute, it is – unfortunately – still mostly a case where those people are arbitrarily held directly responsible for their own personal plight, and with no further indirectly consequential considerations being made for such ideals as effectively having been rear-ended by a runaway, deteriorating economy.
Just about any venue in life can be afforded with an “odds factoring” scenario, such as with betting on horse races, playing the lottery and so forth. My understanding is that there is even a market for people to bet on the “weather” in any given part of the country. With just about every aspect of life being presented as a presumed or assumed risk association to one degree or another that can and often is “wagered” against in a realistic “gambling” scenario, it would not surprise me to know (although I haven’t heard as much) that someone, somewhere is literally placing a bet on whether YOU will end up becoming unemployed tomorrow, next week, or in six months from now.
If I had to bet on presumed projections of unemployment possibilities for the general population of people who are currently employed, I would place my bet at a 25% chance that any given ordinary American may lose his or her job within the next 3 to 6 months. Perhaps 25% is optimistic, but I don’t know.
Much of my guesswork here is just that: It’s guesswork, since I am not the “comptroller of the currency” of the United States and therefore don’t have an educated knowledge as to just exactly how many free dollars are out there floating around in the economy in contrast to future projected ongoing plans for the printing of more dollars intended to keep the economy going for the longer term. All I know for sure is if they were to stop printing dollars tomorrow (or more precisely if the federal budget doesn’t get passed for this upcoming fiscal year ending September), that the economy as you and I know it would come to a grinding halt.
Presuming that economic conditions remain more or less sustainable, stable and predictable given in hopeful retrospect to the past several decades (which also may not be a fair presumption for all I really know), then if you – or someone you know – ends up becoming chronically unemployed and invariably driven into the stark reality of living on the streets, then just know that there are a few people around like me who understand the reality of life enough to know that you did not want things to happen that way.
The simple analogy of people who are (on a daily basis) being driven out of their homes and into financial and social ruin is like that of a multi-car pileup collision where it is always (legally) the fault of each preceded vehicle that becomes involved in those multiple rear-end collisions for their part in the ensuing collisions that take place. When the bus hits you from behind, it was the bus driver’s fault; then it’s your fault for hitting the car in front of you that was made possible only because the bus hit you in the first place. The assumption for fault continues in logical progression all the way up the line of cars for each and every car that subsequently becomes rear-ended.
In the case of this economy, the figurative “BUS” that has started the economic pileup collision is the overall fiscal policies set in place within this society, regardless of whether some may argue to cast particular blame on the banking industry singularly, to blame the U.S. government singularly, or to blame both such entities more or less equally.
At least as far as you – or someone else you may know – would be concerned, the final details wouldn’t actually matter very much. The rear-end collision would have taken place; and although you didn’t want it to happen, nor was the collision a direct result of your own actions, you are still going to face the full brunt of the financial consequences purveying an at-fault accident just as surely as if a bus had rammed you from behind and pushed you into the next vehicle in front of you.
The ultimate rear-end collision in the total financial demise of practically everyone in this society could come very quickly; and my personal guess is that it probably will come suddenly if and when it does come during our lifetimes. If further extensions of unemployment insurance benefits are denied to affected and needy recipients in the absence of a truly sustainable economic recovery (which we all know is a long way off and is not even present within the foreseeable future), then that prospect will certainly lend itself to seeing millions more people becoming destitute, poverty ridden and homeless.
Conversely, however, if the next thing you hear is that the federal government is suspending the “food stamp program,” suspending payments of supplemental security income (SSI) for the disabled, and suspending other federal “social subsidy” programs, then those collective circumstances will surely be the signal to the beginning of a swift and calculated end for the greater solvency of the U.S. economy as we know it today…
