Tag bad economy

A Million-Dollar Smile

By Brian Filed in Links, Misc Tagged with bad economy, dentistry, middle class, oral hygiene December 2nd, 2011 @ 11:32 am

Here’s an interesting idea: John Robb at Global Guerillas claims that a good smile has become a cultural indicator of being middle-class. It’s a signifier of adequate hygiene, personal responsibility, and the ability to pay for a higher level of medical care, and the more “perfect” your smile (straighter, whiter) the higher your socio-economic level is.

He goes on to say that the global economic downturn has thus, perhaps unsurprisingly, seen a correlated decrease in the earnings of dentists AND the forbearance of even basic dental care on the part of the hard-pressed middle class. His conclusion is that the indicators are signs of not just a short-term crisis but of a fundamental realignment (sorry) of society downward, back toward a larger lower class who consider dentistry of any kind a luxury rather than a necessity.

I’m not entirely sold on the argument, but it’s certainly an interesting indicator to consider as an unintended side effect of the economy.

Black Monday

By Brian Filed in Links, News Tagged with bad economy, Black Monday, Black Thursday, Black Tuesday, Crash of 1929, Crash of 1987, Crash of 2008, stock market, Wall Street October 10th, 2011 @ 11:34 am

Historically, October is the month of calamity for the stock market. The Crash of 1929 culminated with a trio of “black” days: Thursday the 24th, Monday the 28th and Tuesday the 29th. The next great crash, in 1987, was also dubbed “Black Monday”, however that crash ultimately only deflated a bull market and didn’t extend into the general economy (indeed, it is sometimes said that it was “black” only in the sense that a lot of people made a lot of profit in its immediate aftermath). And just three years ago, October 10th (which was a Friday) marked the end of a week-long series of shocks the repercussions of which are still resonating through the world economy (even though the stock market itself has largely recovered).

I’m not saying we’re headed for another crash in the next seven-to-ten days, I’m just saying it’s not a good week to quit sniffing glue.

We Are The 99 Percent

By Brian Filed in Blogs, Links, Misc Tagged with "We Are The 99 Percent", bad economy, Blogs, economic inequality, Great Recession 2011 October 4th, 2011 @ 11:36 am

The stories are heartbreaking, infuriating, inspiring, and they are ours. These people are workers, business owners, teachers, parents. They are not millionaires, bankers, CEOs, or celebrities. They don’t want bailouts or tax cuts, they want the inequity that has concentrated most of the wealth of the nation into the hands of one percent of the population to end. They are…WE are the 99 percent.

Fukushima Isn’t The Only Thing In Meltdown

By Brian Filed in Links, News Tagged with bad economy, capitalism, Eurozone crisis, Great Recession 2011, recession September 26th, 2011 @ 11:36 am

Guardian columnist Will Hutton recently posted this commentary about what he characterizes as “the meltdown of capitalism” stemming from the crisis with the Euro caused by the now-nearly-certain default by Greece and increasingly likely defaults by Spain, Portugal, Italy and possibly Ireland.

This International Business Times article doesn’t mince words about the situation: welcome to the Great Recession of 2011. IBT quotes Nouriel Roubini saying that the recession has likely already begun and that the Greek default will act like the first domino in a chain, and even China will not be able to keep things stable because their economy is also in jeopardy due to a housing bubble.

The time for real revolution is no longer in the distance. It is now.

Stick THAT In Your Eyjafjallajokull

By Brian Filed in Links, News Tagged with bad economy, economic crisis, Iceland August 26th, 2011 @ 11:34 am

Poor Iceland was the canary in the coal mine as the world financial crisis began to erupt like a volcano, but as the attention of Europe has shifted toward Greece, Spain, and the other countries teetering on the edge of collapse, there hasn’t been much said about Iceland.

A journalist named Deena Stryker writes on her blog about the decisions made in Iceland to reject the harsh austerity and repayment program imposed by the IMF and European banks. The tiny country voted overwhelmingly in a national referendum to NOT saddle the citizens with the debts incurred by the reckless actions of the banks. Instead, they arrested the bankers, rewrote their entire constitution through open and non-partisan participation, and has even earned praise from the IMF itself for its economic recovery.

Greece, Spain, and even the United States ought to start rethinking making their citizens bear the brunt of the enormous crimes committed by the international financial system.

I’d Buy That For A Dollar

By Brian Filed in Links, Misc Tagged with "The Dollar Store Economy", bad economy, dollar stores, economic inequality, Great Recession, retail sector August 24th, 2011 @ 11:34 am

This NYT article, “The Dollar Store Economy”, starts out running perilously close to one of those oft-parodied NYT Style articles about the latest fad among obscenely-rich Upper East Siders, but it’s actually a pretty good look into the business of selling to the largest growing sector of the American economy – the impoverished. Slumming rich people might get a kick out of playing poor for 10 minutes, but the reality is that retail is bottoming out and the only way left to sell all the crap that we can’t seem to get enough of is by dropping the price point a lot closer to what it’s really worth.

Not too long ago, my friend Shelley shared a link on Google + to this blog post about a surprisingly large number of items that you can buy at a dollar store for significantly less than at a standard department store or supermarket. It really emphasizes just how completely suckered most of us are by brand marketing and how little most commodity items can retail for. That blog also has a bunch of resources about building communities around the need to share resources in what is likely to be a very long-term down economy.

Of Course It’s Depressing, This Is A Depression!

By Brian Filed in Links, Misc, News Tagged with Baby Boomers, bad economy, capitalism destroys everything, Great Recession, income inequality, middle class, Nourel Roubini, political apathy, youth resistance movements August 15th, 2011 @ 11:32 am

The Atlantic asks “Can The Middle Class Be Saved?” The answer, of course, is “No, so stop asking.”

Just in case you were laboring under the misconception that the Baby Boomers fucking everything up for everybody else was strictly an American phenomenon, the British political magazine Prospect would like you to know that the geezers on their side of the pond are equally to blame for the mess over there.

Meanwhile, don’t count on the Millennials or the Gen Y crowd to ride in like the cavalry and save everyone with active resistance. This article at AlterNet is getting a ton of attention: “8 Reasons Young Americans Don’t Fight Back: How The US Crushed Youth Resistance”. Some of the reasons given, like the aggressive overprescribing of medication for “acting up” (ADHD and related “disorders”) reads like “Clockwork Orange”. Some, like “fundamentalist consumerism”, are even scarier.

Nourel Roubini, the economist who was one of the first people to foresee the economic disaster of 2008, foresees a 50-50 chance of the current situation deteriorating into another global recession. In this clip from a video interview with the Wall Street Journal, he tells the interviewer that Karl Marx’s assessment that capitalism would eventually destroy itself may be on the verge of coming true.

If I Had A Trillion Dollars

By Brian Filed in Infographics, News Tagged with bad economy, income inequality, infographics July 28th, 2011 @ 11:30 am

United For A Fair Economy has put together this handy list of 11 things that those 400 richest households could do with their combined $1.37 TRILLION dollars in personal wealth.

Your Daily Dose Of Gloom And Doom

By Brian Filed in Links, Misc Tagged with bad economy, Great Recession, unemployment June 9th, 2011 @ 12:20 pm

My favorite pinko dwarf, Robert Reich, offers a short lesson in American history and the path from Great Depression to Great Prosperity and back to Great Recession.

In April, blogger Ted McLaughlin looked at what was then hailed in the media as an uptick in employment numbers in March and found the realities somewhat less impressive. Since then, things haven’t improved.

Market strategist Peter Yastrow, guest posting at Naked Capitalism, details how and why we are on the edge of a “Great Great Depression”.

Center for Economic and Policy Research co-director Dean Baker agreed with Yastrow in this New Republic piece that ran on Monday.

Naked Capitalism’s main author, Yves Smith, on the stigmatization of the unemployed in American society

Slate’s Emily Yoffee explores how the long-term unemployed cope and solicits stories from readers who have been able to re-enter the job market after being out of work for a long time.

Three years ago next week, I was laid off from my full-time job, just as the recession was kicking in. As a middle-aged man with enough career experience to earn an above-average salary, I was immediately a less-desirable candidate for rehire in a downwardly-trending job market. My unemployment benefits ran out not quite a year ago. Three years out of the job market, even closer to the age of 50, with a skillset that is now very stale in the rapidly-changing world of IT, the aforementioned institutional prejudice against the long-term unemployed, and the looming threat of a double-dip economic disaster, it looks highly unlikely that I might ever return to “normal” employment. I have made a sincere effort to make something out of what had been a hobby of sorts — hand-holding for little old ladies who are afraid of their computers — but it still does not come anywhere near to filling the gap. Having already lost our house and gone bankrupt back in 2008, we live on the precipice of complete disaster; there is nowhere to go but into the street if the slightest thing disrupts our tenuous hold on security. If you wonder why I seem angry or bitter sometimes, it is from complete powerlessness and hopelessness. And I am only one of MILLIONS of people in this country in the exact same position.

I Was The Kid With The Drum

By Brian Filed in Life, Links Tagged with bad economy, recession, unemployment February 24th, 2011 @ 12:24 pm

This Big Think post by political scientist Robert de Neufville hits home very hard. The small improvements in the unemployment numbers in recent months are in no small part due to the simple reality that many people are no longer counted among the unemployed because they no longer qualify for UI benefits. Dropped off the radar of official accounting, they have also dropped off the radar of employers, and a huge percentage of those people are workers over the age of 45. People in their mid-to-late careers are, generally speaking, the most expensive ones for employers to hire: they (used to) command the highest wages and the largest benefit packages. Experience no longer wins out over cost-per-employee, and so the workforce not only sheds senior employees, it refuses to take them on when hiring picks up. Yet these people have the most to lose personally. What is one to do when one is too young to retire but too old to find a job? For me, it’s been lucky that I had a portable skill that I could turn into some (still very meager) part-time work, but the simple fact is that I would be totally unemployable if I started shopping around a resume, looking for the sort of job I used to have. It’s a very sobering realization that you are completely useless at age 47, with a very long road left ahead. It’s a good thing I’ll probably die young.

Read previous entries

Tag bad economy

A Million-Dollar Smile

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Black Monday

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We Are The 99 Percent

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Fukushima Isn’t The Only Thing In Meltdown

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Stick THAT In Your Eyjafjallajokull

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I’d Buy That For A Dollar

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Of Course It’s Depressing, This Is A Depression!

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If I Had A Trillion Dollars

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Your Daily Dose Of Gloom And Doom

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I Was The Kid With The Drum

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