These are tough times. These are tough times globally, but for the United States this is also no day a the beach. These are tough times economically, what with personal wealth devastated by the real estate market, the depletion of pensions funds. Money is scarce and credit is tight.
What money there is in the banks and among the fat cats is being horded. The government seems weak and ineffective in forcing the banks to literally get off a dime. While the media shifts back and forth, trumpeting contradictory statistics, supposed financial and industrial experts inveigh equally conflicting predictions about the the economic recovery. The more honest of the pundits, after hemming and hawing on air time, in order to collect their money or sell their book, finally admit, “hell, I don’t know.”
Whether there will be an economic recovery or where there will be a double dip, where the economy drops, recovers and then drops again like some erratic roller coaster ride, it all remains to be seen. Meanwhile, people need to find work. They need to make bucks just to survive or in the luckier cases supplement their diminished savings, before it leaves them looking like bit players in “The Grapes of Wrath.”
So where do you find work when there is not work? Good question. Where do you find work when a great many jobs have either been rendered obsolete or have been outsourced to another country? Simply. Why you go to Disneyland, of course.
If not Disneyland, then you attend the job fairs at any one of the amusement parks and destination sites where people with a couple of bucks left still take their families. According to an article in The Los Angeles Times, amusement park job fairs are enjoying, if that’s the word, record turnouts. It’s not just kids anymore, recent high school and college graduates looking for a summer job or something to do until they can find something else, that are attending the job fairs. Be it the Disney Parks, Knotts Berry Farm, Six Flags, Universal Studios, or Hoolah’s Tuba Land, job candidates from every background and of every description are lining up and looking for work.
At a recent job fair at Six Flags Magic Mountain, in Valencia, California, more than 1,600 applicants stood in line in search of work. Another 1,100 attended the job fair at Universal Studios, Hollywood. Those who attended were mortgage agents and sales clerks. These are teachers and construction workers, forklift operators. These are office managers and restaurant managers, loan processors and once-retired seniors who thought they had enough to retire until the economic meltdown and the loss to their portfolio and pensions made them think again.
These are people looking to work for less than $400 a week. To be Goofy in an amusement park. In this day and age, $400 a week is a long way from big money. It is a long way from what most of us deem “a living.” It is the kind of salary that makes you feel impotent and humiliated, that assures your purchases will be largely guided by what is being featured at the Dollar Store. It is the kind of money that allows you to believe at least you are doing something to tide you over and feed your family, until something better comes along. And then, if nothing better does come along, it is the kind of money that reminds you at the end of every week there is probably no way out.
In short, we have not only ruined an economy. We have damaged its people. Through greed, unnecessary risk, and blatant audacity we have all but bankrupted a country. We have caused such grievous harm to ourselves, and yet we wonder why there are so many among us who become Tea Baggers or whatever, to vent their anger. No matter how misdirected we believe the anger may be, there is no denying people have the right to be extremely pissed off.
We have allowed the few, the venal, and the undisciplined to not only steal away our money but steal away our future as well. For this they are rewarded. For this, we make excuses and mumble something about our institutions being too big to fail and then pray that people will be distracted by one more stupid romance, an athlete gone awry, or a prefabricated news event. We hope that the distractions will prevent the anger from escalating into more tangible manifestations, other than parading around with misspelled signs.
Some claim this is the Great Recession and second only to our Great Depression. While much of it may be true, I also beg to differ. When the Great Depression ended, American people had jobs to which they could return. We had our industries intact. There wasn’t talk of technical innovations and alternate fuel sources creating new jobs, while our present industries were demoted to the trash heaps or shipped offshore. We didn’t have a situation where the greatest concern was the bottom line, to the point where industries were downsized and American workers deemed obsolete by virtue of their professions and job descriptions.
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When we recovered from the Great Depression, there was industry and with the industry there were jobs. And from the jobs came money, and with the money people were able to buy what they needed. But after the Great Recession, many jobs are gone and will never return to these shores. These were jobs were people worked, made their livings, had their dignity. But not now.
If there are no jobs, then where do people come up with the money to buy what they need? How do they send their kids to school? How do they enjoy the brief time they have on Earth? Certainly those who used Tarp money to consolidate their own businesses and award themselves bonuses haven’t given it much consideration. Clearly, from the way they ran this country into the ground, they are not prone to think that far in advance.
In short, we may have demoted ourselves to a second tier nation. We have former industrial workers now performing menial service tasks in rusted and blighted cities. We have journalists out of work, news sources collapsing around us. Small businesses are in jeopardy and have no credit sources. We have collapsing infrastructures and a public education system that does anything but make our kids competitive in the global economy.
I know, I hear others say, “well hey compared to other countries around the world, we are still doing pretty well.” This is sophistry. We have been reduced as a nation to comparing ourselves to less fortunate nations, developing nations, so that we can somehow feel better about our own condition. It is no longer a nation where we are looking toward a brighter future, except for maybe in television commercials and in the rhetoric of politicians. Never mind that our condition stinks, and as adults we are looking for jobs in a theme park. We should take refuge in the fact our long term outlook isn’t quite as dismal as that of some other country.
In an oblique way, it may be a good thing millions of us are on Prozac or some other antidepressant. If not, then the wacky outbursts we are seeing in the news with increasing frequency may turn into ever more violent wacky outbursts. The pissed off may become more organized and encourage true public disobedience. The Tea Baggers in true American tradition may put down those misspelled signs, grab a little tar and feathers, and start hoisting the bonus babies on rails. Out of work intellectuals could join them, along with the downsized and disenfranchised and the permanently neglected.
I am not saying this should happen. There are better ways to address our problems and to solve the present and future crises. But when the political body proves unresponsive, and when people feel they are being overtaxed and without representation, true representation, legislators concerned with the public interest and not lining their own pockets, then history dictates that things can get out of hand. History is indeed in this way a cruel teacher. History is an even harsher teacher when its lessons are ignored.
I don’t believe we are in anyway near the breaking point, reaching critical mass, if you will, where the people start acting up and the Shays Rebellion and the Boston Tea Party start looking like good ideas. I think we are a country too smart to tear itself entirely apart, having learned that lesson 150 years ago in our previous debacle known as The Civil War. But life is full of surprises, and with the advent of modern media and technology, news travels fast if not all that accurately.
But let’s face it. Unemployed people need something to do. If you are an adult and working a menial job for $400 a week, then the magic is gone from our magic mountain.
