Thursday, August 14, 2008

The Second Coming and not from the Bush League but from the land of IS...



In the Land of "is" where everything depended on what your definition of "is"- is, the U.S. was going through the most massive dislocation of jobs in its history with a new working poor class created and an underclass suffering in a silent drepression. See all the jobs that were lost in 1998 while a Statistical Prosperity was being proclaimed......

Based on- Turning Myth into Reality by Burke Hedges

In the early 1970s, the average yearly income for a 30 year old male in today's dollars was over $29,000. In 1992, it slipped to $22,000. And each year it slips a little more. In the span of one generation, young men are earning nearly one-third less than their fathers....... The average American work week jumped from 40 hours in 1973 to 47 hours or more today. Yet with inflation, and buying power stays the same..

Experts predicted 35% of all white collar, college-educated people , would lose their jobs by year 2000 (and they did )

Based on 'Could be me,' many of us say of the homeless -by Constant Casey

The traditional image of a homeless person is an older single man. But the poll found those who felt they could become homeless were primarily women, and people under the age of 35. "They hear person saying, 'Just a year ago I had a good job, a home, a car, a family......here I am a year later, and I have nothing." Today, there are even working families who are homeless because they do not make enough to afford any housing.

"We're finding more and more people with long work histories, they get laid off, then they get a temporary job, then they are laid off again." During the 1990s through 2002, supposedly a period of economic recovery, the number of people needing emergency and social services has broken records almost every year with up to 40 million Americans in needing emergency food. Reportedly, the USA has more children living in poverty than in most other developed nations.

THE HIGH-TECH MIRAGE- IS HIGH-TECH THE PLACE TO BE?

Over a million workers lost their jobs in the computer industry alone. We know about all the Dot Coms that went bust but here are lists of lost companies and jobs. (We represented the last computer that was made in the USA. Now micro computers are only assembled here by $5.50 an hour workers with parts coming from the sweat shops of the world. It is a no win situation.)

American Computer, Advance Electronics, ALPS, American Micro, American Systems, Alpha Micro, Applied Data, Altos, Atari, Ball, Beehive, Bull, Cado, Centurian, AT&T Micro Computers, / NCR Micro Computers, Bytec, Megadata, Durango, Kaypro, Northstar, Olivetti, Commodore, Compugraphics, Computer Automation, Computerm, Computone, Condor, Corvus, Data Systems, Delta Data, Datapoint, Four Phase, Radio Shack, Redactron, Remex, Standard Logic, Sykes, Eagle, General Automation, Redcor, General Computer, Intertel Data, Itek, Ohio Scientific, Novar, Prime, Sundance, Sperryrand, Televideo, Mohawk, Leading Edge, ITT, Lobo, Micromation, Modular Comp., Micropolis, Monroe, Nixdorf, Nothern Telephone, Ontel, Perkins Elmer, North Star, Packard Bell, Leeds and Northrup, Pertec, Osborne, Vector, Vista, Vydek, Wango, Wordstream, Zilog, Wells America-(last PC computer made in the USA), Zenith, Unisis Micros, Datatron, Datronix, Franklin, Basic Four, Synon, QDP, Quasar, Star Tech, Tandem, Wang, BTI, Pronto, Rodine, Contel, CTI. Data Design, Data Logic, Datatronics, Heath, Interetek, Datatron and this is only a partial list. We could easily come up with a thousand or more companies listings from old directories.

In MainFrames alone , over a millions workers lost their jobs too.
Honeywell, GE, Sperry, Univac, Burroughs, Control Data, NCR, RCA, Xerox, IBM ( 150,000 in the 1990s) DEC, Data General, Wang, and more. (AT&T laid off 50,000- merged with NCR who already laid off 50,000 and then the new merged company laid off another 50,000) And most of the manufacturers of Cat Scans (Technicare) are gone too. Recently, in our region, several bio-tech companies quit operations or layed off most of their workers. The media made a big deal about this citing the fact that about 300 people lost their jobs in bio-tech while they reported very little over the years about 600,000 steelworkers and about 400,000 autoworkers losing their jobs.

In Computer Media and Components:

3M sold out to Imation who then laid off thousands, BASF Magnetics sold and sent their US factory to Korea, Dysan, Memorex and Verbatim are just brand names- no real factories left. Seagate laid off 20,000 workers in 1998- and over 250,000 lost their jobs in high-tech in 1998 alone while a statistical prosperity was reported. It is difficult to trace more companies because so many were bought and sold more than twice back and forth etc. With each change, more employees lost their jobs.

More contradictions regarding the reported statistical prosperity

We kept a record of company layoffs and closing in 1998 while a Statistical Prosperity was reported by the Media, many lost their across the board--- it was not just the so called "smoke stack" industries that layed off workers or folded.....This again is just a partial list