The Success Of The Reagan Revolution - Career Over By 45 For Men & 39 For Women

[TheMastersNemesis]

Now that workers have accepted the multiple careers meme where you pay for schooling any number of times and job security or longevity is extinct the Reagan Revolution sponsored by the "New GOP" and big business is a grand success. Now just about every worker can expect to work like they did in Dickens London.

I have said for many years and it began in 1981 very subtly and has increased every year under "trickle down" economics that older workers began to be forcibly retired out of the work force. In the 1990's millions of worker were bought out at sometimes pennies on the dollar and actually forced to retire. Defined pension plans were actually stolen and made "payout" plans with up to 30% of their original value. And the "baby boomers" largely accepted this labor terrain.

It used to be that income plateaued around 60 just before retirement and a defined pension plan and Social Security kicked in. Now there is a new chart that income peaks at 45 for men and 39 for women. What that means is that for most workers they will see their career if they are lucky to have one pretty much ends about the time sports figures end theirs. At these ages it is a time when workers used to be preparing for retirement as they were paying for schooling that would help make the children financially independent.

A few years ago the AVERAGE STAY AT A JOB WAS 36 months. I would imagine that figure is much lower now. And full time jobs are being replaced with temporary jobs of all varieties. And many jobs are now "independent contractors". A lot of former regular jobs are now just "day labor" .

So congratulations conservative voters you have contributed to the success of the Reagan Revolution.

The question is what are workers going to to for 20 to 25 years until they get Social Security. And now the GOP wants to actually end that or make it a hokey 401K program. I have a better idea. Raise the retirement age to 70 or even 80. Now workers can work for Walmart or some other part time job for 30 or 40 years.

This scenario is what the voter continues to buy when the vote for the GOP. Merry Christmas AmeriKa. We now largely have a service economy with low wages that Reagan crowed about and said he would create. Daffy old bastard.

[Phhhtttt]

1. Saint Ronnie did a number on this country.

Thanks to the GOP we can't get out from under his failed legacy.Instead they erect statues to the bastard.


There was a national turn toward nastiness within Amerika after the bastard was elected.It was every man for himself.
Reagan's election marked the death to the republic.

[Egalitarian Thug]

3. reagan gave them permission to reject the new social standards and let their hatred out.

He offered a reprieve from the scary world that those DFH's had made over the preceding 15 years or so.

[Phhhtttt]

33. Yep,the hate in this country has increased exponentially.NT

[47of74]

19. Every GOP idiot with half a functional brain cell...

...looks at their hero like this;

[img][/img]

[Phhhtttt]

29. Ha Ha Ha,Super funny

[47of74]

32. I had that sitting around for a while

I think I made it in response to some reich wing troll either here or on another site and put that up with the suggestion that was how he and most teabaggers saw Raygun.

[NNN0LHI]

2. For the folks who are too young to remember this you had to be there

It went from the American dream to the American nightmare right in front of my eyes.

Don

[Egalitarian Thug]

4. And really fast. Like two, maybe three years to transform the entire landscape

from a nation struggling with rapid social, political, and scientific advances accompanied by a transforming economy and global status, to irrational arrogance and an undeserved sense of superiority.

He symbolized the return of a world that never was. He made it OK to pretend we didn't know what we had learned and that what he offered was a viable path into the future. We always liked fantasy and illusions, but it was the advent of reagan that allowed the nation to reject reality in favor of the implied fantasy that white men would return to their rightful place on the throne.

[CrispyQ]

6. Morning in America really means Mourning in America.

I was involved in another thread yesterday where the change after Reagan was discussed.

[NNN0LHI]

9. First time I seen that ad I was standing in line at the unemployment office

Never forget that day.

Don

[The Wizard]

5. Second hand actor and pitch man

The swine who pulled his strings brought us to the precipice of chaos.

[chervilant]

7. I am living proof

that St. Ronnie--figurehead that he was--succeeded in helping the Corporate Megalomaniacs corrupt our nation.

Every job I've held in the financial arena, the most recent being in mortgage lending, has been challenging to my integrity and morals: typical of the corporatists who lie, cheat, and oppress at every opportunity.

Early in my halcyon days of employment, I worked briefly for a wealthy investor who ran a robust fishing rod manufacturing business into the ground, even as he attempted to move it to Puerto Rico, where labor costs were a fraction of what he was paying the country folk who desperately needed their jobs. When I made him aware that it was costing him almost $5 to produce a rod that he sold to his SOLE customer for less than $3, he went back to the city and committed suicide.

I tried non-profit work, until a colleague brought in a new board member, who began making policy decisions unilaterally (in violation of a federal grant and the agency's by-laws). After he began sexually harassing me (in part because I found out he was a convicted embezzler who owed our county almost $40,000), I tendered my resignation.

I've spent the last four years in an accelerated teacher certification program. I am appalled at the caliber of 'administrators' in public education, but I realize they must jump through hoops to meet the absurd standards imposed by NCLB and furthered by RTTT (and this administration's SecEd: Arne "I play basketball" Duncan). I cannot get an interview for a teaching position, because I haven't 'earned' my certification by holding a teaching position for two years--AND because I have an MS, which automatically makes me more expensive for any school district, most of which are running in the red (and have been for years).

Currently, I have been un- or under-employed for the almost four years I've been pursuing certification. I am receiving food stamps for the first time in my life. I am living with a friend I've known since St. Ronnie's reign of terror. I don't know how long she'll be able to give me shelter during this economic storm.

I am 56 years old... no insurance, no income, no home, no hope of a job. I have one final retirement account that I plan to cash in, despite the penalty. That will give me enough to make it through another six months.

After that, who knows...

[mmonk]

15. Best of luck to you.

[chervilant]

28. Thanks for your kind words

I just keep putting one foot in front of the other...

[Zorra]

8. Words cannot express my profound contempt for that self-deluded, self-serving

fascist egomaniac.

And they cannot express the sadness I feel regarding the enormous, inestimable damage he did to our country and world as the fawning, boot licking puppet of the 1%.

That fracking monster is personally responsible for an enormous amount of human misery and suffering.

Here's just one of many examples of the continuing horrors this monster inflicted upon the entire human race:

Perhaps the greatest criticism surrounds Reagan's silence about the AIDS epidemic spreading in the 1980s. Although AIDS was first identified in 1981, Reagan did not mention it publicly for several more years, notably during a press conference in 1985 and several speeches in 1987. During the press conference in 1985, Reagan expressed skepticism in allowing children with AIDS to continue in school, stating:

It is true that some medical sources had said that [HIV] cannot be communicated in any way other than the ones we already know and which would not involve a child being in the school. And yet medicine has not come forth unequivocally and said, 'This we know for a fact, that it is safe.' And until they do, I think we just have to do the best we can with this problem.[72
snip---
Possibly in deference to the views of the powerful religious right,[citation needed] which saw AIDS as a disease limited to the gay male community and spread by "immoral" behavior, Reagan prevented his Surgeon General, C. Everett Koop, from speaking out about the epidemic.[citation needed] When in 1986 Reagan was highly encouraged by many other public officials to authorize Koop to issue a report on the epidemic, he expected it to be in line with conservative policies; instead, Koop's Surgeon General's Report on Acquired Immune Deficiency Syndrome greatly emphasized the importance of a comprehensive AIDS education strategy, including widespread distribution of condoms, and rejected mandatory testing. This approach brought Koop into conflict with other administration officials such as Education Secretary William Bennett.

[mckara]

10. Reagan + Thatcherism + Neo-liberalist Economics =

Failure and the Death of the middle-class

[Blue_Tires]

13. +1

[AnotherMcIntosh]

22. You may already know that she was also discovered to have senility.

Both of them played their roles like persons going through second childhoods with adult handlers.

[Risen Demon]

11. My dad lived through this era

Worked for Hunt-Wesson for 4 years before I was born. Started off at 22k in 1976. NINE-TEEN-SEVENTY FRIGGIN SIX! TWENTY-TWO KAY!

One month after I was born, he was transferred to Atlanta from New Orleans. The company paid for EVERYTHING.

He was there fore nine more years when the moguls on the top decided that outsourcing was better than paying experienced, highly motivated, well paid workers and he as laid off, making a wage of near 50k per year. IN 1989!

He had to take a job at Averitt Express, another shipping company, because that's what he invested most of his life experience in. Hunt Wesson was willing to hire him back about a year later, but at less than half of what he made before. So he took the job at Averitt where he got more pay, with slightly longer hours. Lesser of two evils.

Now, still employed there after 22 years, he currently takes home near 60k per year working 55-60 hours a week. It took him 22 years to reach that position at a pay rate that is only 10k more than it was in 1989, and working longer hours.

When i was younger, I never understood why he was so angry all the time. I was afraid of him. His temper would flare up at the slightest inconvenience. I resented him for it for several years. Now I know why he was angry all the time. He was a man who had lots of ambition, a drive for greatness and who was making it until his dreams were shattered by the decisions of a few elitists who who though making millions a year wasn't enough. A few years ago he apologized to me for being so angry all the time and explained that the reason he has calmed down is because he's accepted that there are some things you cannot control. Little did he know was that I forgave him long ago and never truly resented him. I was just a raging teenager. An extension of him who was only living in a childish mindset.

Today we get along great and agree on many political views. The corruptors of this nation are the people on Wall Street who make money out of nothing. No products or services offered. No dimes put back into the economy. Nothing but high-roller gamblers on a rush.

[Blue_Tires]

14. welcome to the site!

[Skittles]

26. wothy of its own thread

welcome to DU, RD

[johnd83]

12. There was a lot of technological changes in that same time period

I completely agree that the policies of the GOP over the last few decades have been horrible for workers, however the technological changes have also had a significant effect. During that time period automation through robotics and computer have made a lot of jobs obsolete. It has also "increased productivity" so fewer workers can do more. The government and the GOP in particular completely fail to recognize this reality.

[Johonny]

16. I don't think they've failed to reconize it

they just don't care about workers. To them it is so what if you are out of work do to changes in technology? They want you to have the freedom to work for less and you better because they'll warn you somewhere else is a computer, robot, foreigner that will work for less so exercise your freedom and take a big pay cut. You do over and over, then they fire you anyways.

[johnd83]

17. I think the elites have, but the tea party base certainly hasn't

The tea party base is made up of mostly lower-middle class (at least I think) that has been hurt the most by the changes and yet they support the exact forces that are depressing wages and unemployment.

[NNN0LHI]

25. Baggers tend to be wealthier and more well-educated than the general public

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/15/us/politics/15poll.html

Poll Finds Tea Party Backers Wealthier and More Educated

By KATE ZERNIKE and MEGAN THEE-BRENAN
Published: April 14, 2010

Tea Party supporters are wealthier and more well-educated than the general public, and are no more or less afraid of falling into a lower socioeconomic class, according to the latest New York Times/CBS News poll.

[Skittles]

27. that's the BACKERS

[NNN0LHI]

30. Read the first sentence of the paragraph I posted

[Skittles]

31. the old white men factor

they are also most likely to be racist and assholes

[Buns_of_Fire]

18. In looking over this thread, I feel pretty fortunate I made it to 48...

...before the bottom dropped out of my career. EEOA, my ass. Just TRY to prove age discrimination! Every time you farted without written permission, every time you disagreed with your disagreeable "manager," every time you mistyped a "<" when you meant a ">" will be dragged out to prove that you're basically incompetent and deserve to be out on the streets, away from the loving bosom of Mother Company.

[uponit7771]

20. OMG!! I thought the same thing 2 weeks ago!! I'm in my late 30s and said to my wife it's like the...

...propbabalities of going higher are slim to none vs how I started out in this field.

Great article, didn't think it was due to RayGun nomics...

[uponit7771]

21. Could you post a link to the chart? Thx in advance for your help

[librechik]

23. Clearly, it's time to slash the social safety net.

Stop being hungry, you lazy bums, and jump off a bridge! No net for you!

[eridani]

24. Link for income peak data?

Thanks. A chart would be nice if available also.