from
(snip)"Even the criminals have fallen on hard times in America's poorest city as the long-term unemployed struggle to keep a grasp on normality
Richard Gaines is one of the best-known faces on Camden's Haddon Avenue. It is a rough-and-tumble street, lined with cheap businesses and boarded-up houses, and is prey to drug gangs. Gaines, 50, runs a barbershop, a hair salon and a fitness business. He works hard and is committed to his community. But Haddon Avenue is not an easy place to make a living in the best of times. And these are far from the best of times.
Just how badly the great recession has struck this fragile New Jersey city, which is currently the poorest in America, was recently spelled out to Gaines. In happier times – whatever that might mean for a city as destitute as Camden – local businesses on Haddon Avenue could at least rely on a bit of trade from those who made their money on the street.
Young men bought flashy clothes and got sharp haircuts and always paid in cash. But no longer. The economy is now so bad in Camden that even the criminals are struggling and going short. "Even the guys who got money from illegal means really don't want to spend it," Gaines said."(snip)
I suppose the pertinent points are that A. the 'criminal element' is ineligible for unemployment benefits thus their 'incomes' immediately track the economic conditions affecting their 'customers' or 'victims', and B. that those 'customers' and 'victims' are running out of money / objects of value for the 'criminal element' to exploit.
the same article also made other important points ... in particular about the '99ers'
(snip)"Though corporations, especially in the banking sector, are posting healthy profits, they are not hiring new workers. At the same time, government cuts are sweeping through city and state governments alike, threatening tens of thousands of jobs and slicing away at services once thought vital. Schools, street lighting, libraries, refuse collection, the police, fire services and public transport networks are all being scaled back.
America appears to be a society splitting down the centre, shattering the middle class that long formed the cultural bedrock of the country and dividing it into a country of haves and have-nots. "A once unthinkable level of economic distress is in the process of becoming the new normal," warned Nobel-prize winning economist Paul Krugman in a recent New York Times column. Or, as Steven Green, an economics lecturer at Baylor University, put it to the Observer: "We are really in a tough spot right now."
There is a new name for those falling down the black hole of joblessness that has opened up in America's economy. They are the 99ers.
It is a moniker that no one wants. It refers to the 99 weeks of benefits that the jobless can qualify for in America. Government cash helps those laid off keep a tenuous grip on a normal life. It keeps a roof over their heads, pays a phone bill, puts food on a table and petrol in a car. But once the 99 weeks are up the payments stop – as is happening now for millions of people – and they are 99ers.
For many, that moment, which America's politicians have refused to extend, represents the moment of destitution; a sort of modern American version of the old Victorian trip to the workhouse. There are now more than a million 99ers and the number gets bigger each week.
Strauss, along with about 50 other 99ers, protested on Wall Street last week, demanding an extension of the benefits that could keep them out of poverty. As bankers and financiers strode into the flag-draped Stock Exchange they chanted: "Shame! Shame!" and told their stories. It was a litany of middle-class lives shattered by the recession. There was Connie Kaplan, a corporate librarian who was desperate to resume her career. "We are not bums, we are hardworking," she said. Or Lori Ghavami, a New Jersey financial analyst in her 30s, who had once worked on Wall Street itself and now was staring at landlords' bills she was scared she could not pay. Or New Yorker Steven Bilarbi, 62, who had worked for the same employer for 37 years, until 2007. He has not worked since, despite refusing to spend daytime hours at home and engaging in a permanent job hunt. He is now living off savings and depleting his pension.
"I go to job fairs. I don't feel like staying home. What would I do? Watch game shows and soap operas?" he fumed.
Meeting 99ers is to tap into a deep well of anger at lives that have been knocked off course, shattering the enduring vision of the American dream that many had felt they had achieved. Just take Donna Faiella, a 53-year-old New Yorker who lives alone in Queens. She spent 28 years working in film post-production and video-editing. She was successful and had a career. Now she is desperate for a job, any job. But she cannot find one. "I will do anything. I will sweep floors. You think I look forward to collecting unemployment? It is fucking degrading," she said, almost quivering with anger.
Faiella is in dire trouble. Joblessness has eaten away at her sense of identity. "I feel like we are worthless. We are lost in the world. I don't know what to call myself. I don't have a title any more. What do we do? What do we do?" she implored. Faiella has one week of benefits to go. Then her 99 weeks will be up. She will have a title again. But not one she expected. She will be a 99er. "I am petrified. Do I become homeless?" she said, adding that she has begun making inquiries at local shelters.
If the 99ers are coming to symbolise a human segment of society that America is slowly abandoning to its fate, then Camden is the geographic expression of that marginalisation"(snip)
I'm not sure that the author intended it or not, but the comparison of the 'criminal element' ( who are ineligible for unemployment benefits ) falling on hard times only emphasizes the fact that, via extended unemployment benefits and other gov't social welfare benefits, a whole lot of Americans have been able to postpone their 'day of reckoning' and preserve their middle class lifestyle / standard of living. However, as extended unemployment benefits eventually expire ( even though they were recently extended again just past election day this coming november ) , and as state budget problems force eventual cutbacks in social welfare benefits, that 'day of reckoning' draws closer and closer.
(snip)"Whether it's the poor of Camden or Colorado Springs or Atlanta, or among the growing throngs of the 99ers, millions of Americans are discovering that working hard, doing the right thing and obeying the rules are no longer enough.
Back at the 99er rally on Wall Street, Anne Strauss felt that way. During her working life she had refused to claim benefits to which she was entitled as she thought she was doing just fine. Now, as a newly minted 99er, she was looking for help from the country that she had always believed in. But the help was not forthcoming. It is hard to see how the version of the American dream that Menendez described could now ever apply to her. For Strauss, living on credit, desperate to work, but with no job in sight, that dream looks a thing of the past, not the future. "This is not the country I grew up in," Strauss said."(snip)
The obvious take-away from the last section circles back to another economic fact frequently discussed in Dollar Den ... that the actual ability of many Americans to generate 'added value' through their skills and work efforts simply no longer offers enough 'value' to pay for a middle class lifestyle. And as the last bastions of workers that have been 'overpaid' relative to their actual 'value' generation capacity i.e. gov't employees, union workers etc. face job elimination and eventual expiration of unemployment benefits, America's traditional 'middle class' paradigm will officially die.
Also, for what it's worth, I'll point out that this arguably honest assessment had to be found in foreign media !
~



Reply With Quote



Bookmarks