Here's What Happens When Good Jobs Go Away and Don't Come Back

[HughBeaumont]

http://inplainsight.nbcnews.com/_news/2013/04/26/17825677-heres-what-happens-when-good-jobs-go-away-and-dont-come-back?lite

Call it the painfully long tail of the Great Recession: about two of every five people who lose a job these days, according to census figures, cannot find another one for six months or longer.

Even as overall unemployment has been improving, this long-term unemployment hasn’t been getting better – and it’s far worse than at any other time since the government began keeping track after World War Two.

Why, of all the places you could have been writing about, did you pick Janesville?

For starters, I wanted a place that had never been part of the Rust Belt, so that I’d be looking just at the effects of the country’s recent economic crisis and not at decades of accumulated economic decay. Janesville definitely fit the bill. Two days before Christmas of 2008, the Janesville Assembly Plant shut down. It belonged to General Motors and was a 4.8 million square foot behemoth that had begun turning out Chevrolets in 1923. When it closed, it laid off about 3,000 people and took thousands of other jobs with it, because Janesville also had local companies that had supplied goods and services to the plant, and when GM went away, they went away too. And after that, some small businesses couldn’t make it either.

snip

So, what does it look like in a community when thousands of good, middle-class jobs go away and they don’t come back?

I think the main thing I’ve been learning is that falling out of the middle class is very different than having been poor all along. If you’ve grown up poor – been in generational poverty, it’s called – you are used to it. Often, people around you are poor and, even if there are not great options, you pretty much know what to do: apply for what used to be known as food stamps, for instance, or go to the local emergency room if you’re sick. But when you’ve always thought of yourself as middle class, and suddenly you’ve tumbled downhill, well, that can be a real stunner. You don’t want your neighbors to know, and you’re not sure where to turn for help. You don’t even want to ask for help, because you never saw yourself as someone who would need it.

snip

You wrote an article about job retraining for the dislocated workers of Janesville. As you pointed out, the idea of retraining has a lot of bipartisan political support, and it sounds like a great idea – teach people how to do the jobs that are available so they can get back on their feet. Does retraining work?

I think retraining can work, but it doesn’t always. I looked at a two-year college in Janesville, called Blackhawk Tech, which was deluged with former factory workers. It’s been doing basically everything that policymakers recommend: working closely with local employers, steering students into fields where jobs seem most likely to exist, providing extra help for these people who’d been thrown out of their jobs and, sometimes, were scared, angry, depressed and nervous about whether they could succeed in school. Still, not everyone who has retrained there has found a good job – or any job at all. As one counselor at the college told me, “Retraining, yes. But retraining for what?”
.

The 33-Year Plague Called Reaganomics: The Rule, The Gospel, The Way of Life.

What do we do to change it? I say "we", because short of having a million dollars, it's quite evident we're on our own.

[BethanyQuartz]

1. There is only one way to fix it

Force corporations who make money here to create good paying jobs here.

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. Tax all of their income, eliminate deductions.

Throw in taxation of churches and sports leagues and gut the corporate welfare programs, and we could cut most, if not all, income taxes. Imagine that, those that benefit the most from our society would be paying for it.

[BethanyQuartz]

10. As they should!

[AnotherMcIntosh]

22. This is doable.

Taxing all transfers of funds to outside of the USA at 100% could do exactly what you want. If a corporation wants to transfer $1 million outside of the country, let them come up with $2 million dollars. One million for the tax liability and one million for the recipient of the funds. If anyone thinks that this is unfair, they can look at IRC 6672 which makes certain amounts (in a different context) subject to a 100% tax.

Without imposing any tarrifs on goods imported into this country, tax the transfer of money going out of the country so that profiting from foreign manufacturing jobs becomes unprofitable. If a 100% tax is insufficient, make it 200%, then 300% until someone gets the message.

[BethanyQuartz]

44. I want high tariffs too

For sweatshop goods, not necessarily for every good produced outside the US.

[SheilaT]

2. Thanks. I'm reminded of a physician

friend of mine who was utterly indifferent to the shipping of jobs overseas until she learned that radiology jobs were being outsourced. She was not herself a radiologist, but she suddenly understood that jobs we used to think were immune to outsourcing could be outsourced.

At some point the fast-food places will figure out how to totally automate their food delivery. You'll walk in or drive up, press some buttons and voila! Your food will be handed to you without the intervention of any humans at all. If they ever figure out how to automate the roads my son's pizza delivery job will go away.

I'm sure a lot of routine health care could wind up automated. The first stop at an ER or in a doctor's office will be with a computer which asks questions, working through a diagnostic tree until it figures out what ails you, then prints up a prescription or administers a shot or whatever.

ATM machines really could replace vast numbers of bank tellers. And so on.

It is absolutely true that our old manufacturing jobs are never going to come back. And I've been reading and hearing since the 1970's that the typical worker will have some astonishing number of careers -- not jobs, careers -- in their lifetime. Three or five, can't remember the number now. And each new career will require retraining.

Personally if I were even ten years younger -- I'm 64 -- I'd look carefully at getting training in some medical field, possibly something related to medical records. Fortunately, I have a job I plan to keep for a few more years, decent savings, and should be able to live adequately in retirement. Others aren't that lucky.

[HughBeaumont]

3. Just ask Tommy Friedman . . . he gleefully muses about the Death of the Server:

"Fallback", "Second" or "Starter" jobs can now be replaced by a console; a phenomenon, no doubt, that makes The Mustache Of Eternal Understanding giggle with delight . . .

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/25/opinion/friedman-average-is-over.html?src=me&ref=general&_r=0

And you ain’t seen nothin’ yet. Last April, Annie Lowrey of Slate wrote about a start-up called “E la Carte” that is out to shrink the need for waiters and waitresses: The company “has produced a kind of souped-up iPad that lets you order and pay right at your table. The brainchild of a bunch of M.I.T. engineers, the nifty invention, known as the Presto, might be found at a restaurant near you soon. ... You select what you want to eat and add items to a cart. Depending on the restaurant’s preferences, the console could show you nutritional information, ingredients lists and photographs. You can make special requests, like ‘dressing on the side’ or ‘quintuple bacon.’ When you’re done, the order zings over to the kitchen, and the Presto tells you how long it will take for your items to come out. ... Bored with your companions? Play games on the machine. When you’re through with your meal, you pay on the console, splitting the bill item by item if you wish and paying however you want. And you can have your receipt e-mailed to you. ... Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to 42 cents per hour per table — making the Presto cheaper than even the very cheapest waiter.”

I'm really all ears, free traitors: How does capitalism continue when the only jobs will be ones that older workers can't retire from, middle-aged workers can't leave or get fired from at any cost, and younger workers won't be able to get?

One of them logically needs to explain to me how is this going to pan out for the better. PLEASE.

[Egalitarian Thug]

6. The advance of technology will inevitably force us to redefine work and full time.

We invent labor saving devices to save labor. We just forgot to keep adjusting our expectations to keep pace with the reductions in the labor required to maintain equity.

[GoCubsGo]

7. That jerk was on NPR the other day.

I had to turn it off. He's fucking clueless. He doesn't even know how his own government runs. He was bashing the president for not doing Congress' job. It's beyond me how this clown got to be the "expert" that the media always turns to on economic and political matters.

[HughBeaumont]

13. He's the "go-to" because he pushes the narrative they want to hear.

Mainly, the narrative that shifts blame for the wholesale destruction of the economy and worker progress from the short-term, quarterly-profit corporation (where it RIGHTFULLY belongs) and onto the workers, who in Tommy The Terrible's mind are expected to be wealthy, super geniuses and fortune tellers.

[Recursion]

26. There's not a finite amount of work to be done.

That fallacy is old. What happened to all the people who used to thresh wheat?

[HughBeaumont]

31. Is anyone saying there's a finite amount of work to be done? I'm certainly not.

What I'm saying is that corporations nowadays cry poor when it comes to hiring or, at the very least, sharing the productivity/profit spoils with their existing workers even though corporations are more profitable now than any time in history. On the other side, governments on federal and state levels cannot hire due to either staggering debt levels/budget shortfalls or obligations to the military/industrial complex.

There IS a lot of work to be done; one only needs to look at our woefully outdated networks, our loser of a public transportation system, our whiskey-throttle financial sector and our badly crumbling infrastructure for evidence. What there ISN'T a lot of is interest in filling the positions NEEDED for that work, but rather, finding shortcuts so more profit can be gained. This comes in the form of automation, job offshoring for cheaper labor and squeezing every last drop from your remaining workers.

Companies are thriving hand over fist with less and less staff. It's all about profiteering and productivity. Workers are no longer part of a company's equation because corporations follow a myth that they purport as obligatory corporate law (which it isn't), and that's the old standby of "fiduciary duty to the shareholders is the number one concern".

[wickerwoman]

34. There is an increasingly small amount of necessary work that needs to be done

and more and more people to do it.

Since under the current system the market pays workers as little as it can get away with and only for what is necessary, this means more and more people competing for fewer and fewer jobs paying less and less.

Either we consign a huge number of potential workers to the scrap heap and let them starve or wait for them to revolt or accept the cost of the social welfare state or we reorganise our society in a way that allows everyone an opportunity to work and have a decent standard of living.

What happened to all the people who use to thresh wheat? In the US, they got factory jobs. When the factory jobs went, they got service jobs. And when the service jobs go... hell, there's always the army, right? Or we could choose to socialise the problem in a more productive and humanitarian way.

[Recursion]

40. I agree the economics of plenty will take some adjustment

But that doesn't mean that we can or should turn back the clock.

Personally, what I think will have to go is the 40 hour week. We should be working 20-25 hours a week. That also means either wages will have to go way up or prices will have to come way down.

[wickerwoman]

47. I agree,

except 30 hour week, same wages/salaries for all but the top 5%, same prices, profits go down.

[lunatica]

49. The problem is one is assuming the people doing the ordering have jobs and money to spend

That's were it all falls apart. Who is going to order these e-la-carte meals if no one has a job or has one that doesn't pay enough to survive?

[HughBeaumont]

54. Well, that's the thing. Tommy doesn't know and worse yet, he doesn't CARE.

He's wealthy. Everything he writes is from a wealthy man's perspective. And he really doesn't like it when one points that out.

[BethanyQuartz]

12. Outsourcing medical recordkeeping

Totally doable. So not sure I'd consider working in that area, either.

[SheilaT]

19. I know. I actually work in a hospital,

although on the information desk.

So far, and into the foreseeable future, my job is safe, thanks to the privacy laws. Theoretically a kiosk could replace me, but there'd be a huge problem with the privacy thing, especially as more often than you'd think the person in front of me has no good idea how to spell someone's last name. Or they're not totally certain of the first name, and the surname is a common one. I get to exercise judgement about what to tell them.

So far as I can tell, the medical recordkeeping is not being outsourced, although it's becoming more and more computerized. A lot of transcription work is being outsourced I understand, although I've also heard many complaints that transcriptionists who do not know English very well make all sorts of errors in their transcriptions.

[BethanyQuartz]

45. Errors in medical transcription now that's a scary thought

But not surprising. Corporations aren't going to choose patient well-being over more profit. They never have yet.

[Autumn Colors]

20. Don't bother (with medical records jobs)

I'm a self-employed medical transcriptionist and with all practices and hospitals required to implement electronic medical record systems by 2015, I saw my income drop by 80% in the course of less than a year. I had a small company, but had to let everyone else go and now do all the work myself ... I'm now clearing just barely over the poverty line (before taxes - I have to pay Soc. Sec. contribution).

Many of the doctors use the voice recognition function in the EMR and have one person in their office who listens and make corrections. In other places, they have a medical assistant in the room entering info into the EMR during the exam.

These things do the chart note, will write a form letter with pertinent info to a referring doctor, does some if not all of the billing codes, and faxes any prescriptions to the pharmacy and the required documents to the patient's insurance company.

Do NOT go through the time and expense of anything to do with transcription or billing/coding. There are still coding/billing jobs right now, but those are going away, too. By the time you finish the training, there may be no jobs (and you'll be competing with those now-unemployed transcriptionists who have already been in the process of retraining to do billing).

I would say to go for medical assistant (which is more administrative) or physician's assistant (which is more patient care) training if you already have a college degree.

[SheilaT]

46. I'm 64. I plan to keep my current job

which is only part time anyway but includes benefits. I will start collecting SS when I turn 66 and will probably continue working for a few more years.

I would sort of like to find seasonal work, and only work about six months of the year, but haven't figured that out yet. Meanwhile, I have enormous free time at work and I write. As in, I'm writing a novel. It does not at all look like I'm doing anything other than actual work, but what other job would allow me to work on a novel for most of the time I'm at work?

[Autumn Colors]

48. Train to work tax season with H&R Block

My sister does that. She's required to take a course each November to update her knowledge of anything new with the software, taxes, etc. She works full time from December to late April each year and has May through (most of) November off.

EDIT: It might be possible to work part time instead of full time for those months.

[SheilaT]

51. As someone who is not crazy about numbers

I've always avoided that. Perhaps today the tax returns are sufficiently computerized that I could consider it.

I use an accountant for my own returns because they're much more complex than I'm willing to deal with.

I've thought about seasonal retail work, especially if I could get on at a jewelry store or the jewelry department of a store and therefore earn commissions.

I've also given thought to simply going with a temp agency and just doing temp work, a few weeks or a couple of months at a time, but taking hunks of time off between jobs. Unfortunately, that would probably require my getting to a job at 8am and I am not a morning person. Plus, my hourly rate is significantly above the prevailing minimum wage that I probably wouldn't earn as much as a temp.

I do have it pretty good right now, and I know it.

[Autumn Colors]

56. If you're able to afford it

Try buying TurboTax and use the "walk-through" method to see if you come up with what your accountant does. I've been using that for several years now and it's pretty simple when it walks you through everything - and I have my (very small) business that requires filing a Schedule C and in the past, had deductions related to my mortgage payments.

I don't think my sister has ever been any kind of a math whiz. Her college degree is in Social Studies (education), but she's mostly worked retail in the past. She gave up on teaching after subbing with no permanent offers for a long time.

[SheilaT]

57. I have complicated taxes, with all sorts

of things like foreign tax credits. Not a basic return by any means.

But more to the point, does your sister earn enough in those months of employment to carry her through the rest of the year?

[Autumn Colors]

58. She has very little in the way of expenses

She lives with our elderly mom in our mom's paid-for house. For her, she earns enough. For other people, I have no idea. It depends on how much you need.

I know that TurboTax is set up to deal with things like that. It asks you if you have this or that and then walks you through the categories you need to complete. Usually, on those things, I click no on all of them. At the end, if you're mailing the forms in, you hit print and all the forms needed are there. It will e-file, too, but I've never done that.

[raccoon]

5. Rec'd, and thanks for posting this. nt

[xchrom]

8. Du rec. Nt

[olddots]

9. The simplistic scum bag computer religious are going to be the first to starve .

This brave new world is nothing but humans being replaced by machines run by 'things" that are neither .

Don't agree ? you may be one of those "things "

[antigop]

11. exactly WHAT are laid off IT workers and engineers supposed to train for? nt

[HughBeaumont]

14. It's really the most galling of all wealth/corporate axioms . . .

. . . If degreed business leaders with any kind of expertise and foresight have no idea WHAT these theoretical "21st Century Jobs" are going to be, logically explain to me how a worker just trying to survive life is going to have any clue what they are??

Even if they knew, where does the mythical money tree for these multiple trips to college to retrain COME from? I say this because the corporation in no way, shape or form is going to be part of the re-training process. That's the way it is nowadays.

[Dragonfli]

15. Free trade agreements are not the answer, that is for sure.

President Ronald Reagan spoke of a North American agreement in his campaign in 1979 but he and his handlers didn't finish formulating the treaty concept until late in his final term. Bill Clinton mistakenly took up Reagan's cause and signed NAFTA in 1993, the results as expected enabled the hemorrhaging of jobs to cheaper labor markets, jobs that in all likelihood will never come back without addressing the flaws in such agreements that make this outsourcing profitable to the corporations.

In 2008 Barack Obama blamed NAFTA for lost American manufacturing jobs and suggested that terms might be renegotiated to include higher labor and environmental standards. The idea would be to stem the "race to the bottom" among companies seeking the cheapest costs of doing business, ultimately encouraging them to keep jobs in place in the U.S.
Many agree with such an approach, myself included, unfortunately for whatever reason that rhetoric was discarded after the election and has not resurfaced since.

Instead, a new set of trade agreements are on track to add to the problem, in fact the Trans-Pacific Partnership is said to give corporations the power to further lower labor and environmental standards which would likely accelerate a race to the bottom for workers.

Increasingly all that is left to "retrain for" are low paying service industry jobs, and without making changes like the ones suggested in 2008 while refusing to sign even worse trade agreements this trend will continue destroying the very concept of "middle class blue collar jobs". The middle class will be the exclusive realm of the professional and corporate middle management classes leaving working people nothing to work towards but a somewhat higher class of poverty than the unemployed.

Tech jobs are facing similar challenges with the increased importation of workers from a much cheaper labor market to replace well trained workers here (using the pretense that the trained workers being replaced can't be found here)

What do we do to change it? There is nothing we can do as what needs to be done is abandon "free trade" and replace it with fair trade while also stopping the increase of work visas that are specifically targeted to replace jobs being done by those that are qualified here.

They ignore us and we don't have the power to do what needs to be done. All we are left with is

to not go gentle...

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on the sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

by Dylan Thomas

He was writing of a different death, but I am applying it to the death of the blue collar middle class.

[antigop]

16. what can we do to change it? UNIONS. Put it in the contract --- NO OUTSOURCING. nt

[Dragonfli]

18. I agree that unions are what is needed to give workers collective power

I even believe that unions are the only way for labor to demand and receive a fair share of their productivity gains and are likely the only way to ensure a safe work environment, but a union has no power over a corporation with a workforce in a slave shop overseas. If the workers are not here to form a union then we would have to expect the overseas workers to form the union and vote to demand their jobs be given back to the Americans they were stolen from.

Another flaw is that even if some of the corps. workers are still in the US, if the company wants to break a strike with scabs, they will hire scabs in Foxconn or some other contracted labor/slave farm. The scabs would have to cross an ocean before even facing a picket line to cross, they would work all day not even knowing there was a line or what a scab is let alone that they are being used as scabs.

We have to take away this power given the corporations to bypass labor and unions before we can fully utilize the power of unions and solidarity to demand equitable concessions from management.

Unions won't change it, not until we take away their power to bypass unions via outsourcing.
Unions are always the best way to organize labor, we must never abandon Unions, but the problem goes beyond that struggle and includes the need to end the way they bypass them.

Unionizing labor not easily outsourced is another matter and they can fight and win NOW! Food servers, retail workers, even farm workers are starting to feel that power and use it! (they are not the only examples, any jobs still safe from outsourcing can still wield power when the labor is unionized)! That is unfortunately a different discussion from outsourcing encouraged by trade deals that make it profitable to do the manufacturing overseas.

[antigop]

25. the ones who are still in the US get it in their contract -- NO OUTSOURCING, medical care,

huge, huge severance packages, etc., etc.

You make it very difficult for the corporations to get rid of US workers.

[Dragonfli]

29. I hope they can and do!

I just don't know that the threat of a strike will carry much weight when the scab market is overseas and ready to take a call from management and provide labor that wouldn't even need pinkerton types to "open up" gaps in the picket lines for them to walk through and do the work.

They should try as hard as they can, it's all part of "not going gentle"
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

[antigop]

35. right now, it's the only real leverage they have. nt

[AnotherMcIntosh]

23. "Bill Clinton mistakenly took up Reagan's cause" If Clinton didn't benefit from this, I would agree

[Dragonfli]

24. LOL, I was only being polite, even then only as a reflection of my weird sense of humor

I put it that way to see how many would catch it and remind me he was more complicit than mistaken, glad you caught it!

[antigop]

27. Noam Chomsky - Clinton's Vision - December 1, 1993 (free trade, NAFTA)

http://www.democraticunderground.com/1017111501

[Dragonfli]

30. Noam Chomsky was right, that was a good OP thanks for linking me to it

You should embed that video in post 27 above, for those too lazy to follow your link.

[Cleita]

17. Here's a fix.

Pass a law at the federal level forcing big box stores like Wal-Mart, Target and K-Mart to carry 60% of their inventory with American made goods. Put import levies on the foreign goods to make the American good competitive with them. I bet we then stop importing goods that can be made here. Only more exotic goods that we don't need to make here would be put on the shelves. Then provide low cost loans and grants for manufacturers to start up factories making these goods.

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

21. there's only ONE way to fix everything

A Congress and president who want to change things. Otherwise, nothing changes. Believe it or not, we actually know how to fix things. We just lack the political will to do so.

[antigop]

36. but not a damn thing is going to change until Democrats figure out that THEIR PARTY is part of the

problem.

(Not directed at you,)

[WhaTHellsgoingonhere]

42. Absolutely spot on. Just enough are beholden to big money interests...

...that nothing is going to get done.

THE BIGGEST JOKE EVER: The Democrats had the House and 60 Senators and didn't get anything done.

Actually: we had just enough Dems beholden to big money interests that nothing had a chance to get done!

[duffyduff]

50. At bottom, the problem is with Washington polices

that have sold the American people down the river.

Thirty-plus years of ruinous economic policies MUST be reversed if this country is to have a future.

The enemy is Washington politicians of both political parties who spout a discredited and debunked political/economic philosophy of neoliberalism.

[reformist2]

28. There aren't enough jobs to go around. The solution is to permanently send money to the unemployed.

[HiPointDem]

33. not a solution.

[reformist2]

39. Nobody has proposed any way to employ everyone. And I understand why.

Because not even the most liberal politicians can dream up enough make-work government jobs. And of course the answer is not the private economy, either.

[HiPointDem]

32. it's called ghettoization.

[kimbutgar]

37. What's shocking is the number of comments in the original article that are defending Walker

and blame unions and the American worker as the reason why jobs go away. They don't get it that it was Wall Street greed that took their job to China so the CEO can get the stock price up or that CEO getting that big bonus by destroying communities. They don't get that people like Mitt Rmoney plundered their companies, piled on the debt and then sold it off piece by piece so they could enrich themselves. The one thing about the right is they sure did a great job making people stupid by attacking unions and saying union members are thugs and that poor ceo shouldn't have to pay a living wage so they sent that job to places like Bangladesh where factories collapse and kill over 200 people or where non regulation caused a fertilizer plant in Texas to blow up killing over 14 people (still a lot of people not accounted for but we will never get the truth on that incident) I am so ashamed of my fellow Americans who are being duped everyday on hate talk tv and radio to think and vote against their best interests.


History will not be kind to these duped fools.

[HughBeaumont]

38. Comments sections to nearly EVERY website other than here make me weep with agony.

Just loaded to the hilt with foot-shooters and Tea guzzlers who, when they've lost every argument, fall back with the brilliant "LIFE'S NOT FAIR YEW STEWPID LIB!"

I don't even want to HEAR it from the TeaHad any longer. I don't. I will not listen to these uneducated assclown bootstrapper idiots spin yarns about "gumption", "rugged individualism" and "startin' yer own business" as the cure-alls for 33 years of corporate malfeasance, the Great Risk Shift and the destruction of the social contract. I especially ignore any asshole who Red Baits; those terms have ZERO significance in 2013. Time has moved on, and Cold War fighters have not.

Anyone who defends unbridled corporatism and sees themselves as a "temporarily embarrased millionaire" instead of the genuinely screwed person they are is about as useful to me as Thomas Friedman.

[antigop]

43. Preach it, Hugh! nt

[woo me with science]

41. K&R

[CincyDem]

52. This is also a concentration of wealth issue

link:

|

There was lots of controversy when this TED talk was presented, posted, then pulled, and finally (after much outcry) reposted.

Nick Hanuaer's point is that as we concentrate wealth, we actually depress demand. On guy with 10 million needs (and uses) fewer cars that 10 guys with a million each or a 100 guys with 100,000 each.

The reasons these jobs aren't coming back include concentration of wealth is dramatically reducing demand for labor.

[Jamaal510]

53. Reaganomics is officially the biggest scam in U.S. History.

Thank you very much, GOP.

[HughBeaumont]

55. And America is still in LOVE with this scam!!

Interview anyone that comes out of a business school. That's all they're TAUGHT. And these people go on and run our businesses and influence politics and we sit and wonder why nothing's changing!!

[Liberal_in_LA]

59. kick