Quote: In a Job Market Realignment, Some Left Behind By CATHERINE RAMPELL JACKSONVILLE, Fla. — Many of the jobs lost during the recession are not coming back.
Period.
For the last two years, the weak economy has provided an opportunity for employers to do what they would have done anyway: dismiss millions of people — like file clerks, ticket agents and autoworkers — who were displaced by technological advances and international trade.
The phasing out of these positions might have been accomplished through less painful means like attrition, buyouts or more incremental layoffs. But because of the recession, winter came early.
The tough environment has been especially disorienting for older and more experienced workers like Cynthia Norton, 52, an unemployed administrative assistant in Jacksonville.
“I know I’m good at this,” says Ms. Norton. “So how the hell did I end up here?”
Administrative work has always been Ms. Norton’s “calling,” she says, ever since she started work as an assistant for her aunt at 16, back when the uniform was a light blue polyester suit and a neckerchief. In the ensuing decades she has filed, typed and answered phones for just about every breed of business, from a law firm to a strip club. As a secretary at the RAND Corporation, she once even had the honor of escorting Henry Kissinger around the building.
But since she was laid off from an insurance company two years ago, no one seems to need her well-honed office know-how.
Ms. Norton is one of 1.7 million Americans who were employed in clerical and administrative positions when the recession began, but were no longer working in that occupation by the end of last year. There have also been outsize job losses in other occupation categories that seem unlikely to be revived during the economic recovery. The number of printing machine operators, for example, was nearly halved from the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009. The number of people employed as travel agents fell by 40 percent.
This “creative destruction” in the job market can benefit the economy.
Pruning relatively less-efficient employees like clerks and travel agents, whose work can be done more cheaply by computers or workers abroad, makes American businesses more efficient. Year over year, productivity growth was at its highest level in over 50 years last quarter, pushing corporate profits to record highs and helping the economy grow.
But a huge group of people are being left out of the party.
Millions of workers who have already been unemployed for months, if not years, will most likely remain that way even as the overall job market continues to improve, economists say. The occupations they worked in, and the skills they currently possess, are never coming back in style. And the demand for new types of skills moves a lot more quickly than workers — especially older and less mobile workers — are able to retrain and gain those skills.
There is no easy policy solution for helping the people left behind. The usual unemployment measures — like jobless benefits and food stamps — can serve as temporary palliatives, but they cannot make workers’ skills relevant again.
Ms. Norton has sent out hundreds of résumés without luck. Twice, the openings she interviewed for were eliminated by employers who decided, upon further reflection, that redistributing administrative tasks among existing employees made more sense than replacing the outgoing secretary.
One employer decided this shortly after Ms. Norton had already started showing up for work.
Ms. Norton is reluctant to believe that her three decades of experience and her typing talents, up to 120 words a minute, are now obsolete. So she looks for other explanations.
Employers, she thinks, fear she will be disloyal and jump ship for a higher-paying job as soon as one comes along.
Sometimes she blames the bad economy in Jacksonville. Sometimes she sees age discrimination. Sometimes she thinks the problem is that she has not been able to afford a haircut in a while. Or perhaps the paper her résumé is printed on is not nice enough.
The problem cannot be that the occupation she has devoted her life to has been largely computerized, she says.
“You can’t replace the human thought process,” she says. “I can anticipate people’s needs. Usually, I give them what they want before they even know they need it. There will never be a machine that can do that.”
And that is true, up to a point: human judgment still counts for something. That means some of the filing jobs, just like some of the manufacturing jobs, that were cut during the recession will return. But a lot of them probably will not.
Offices, not just in Jacksonville but all over the country, have found that life without a secretary or filing clerk — which they may have begun somewhat reluctantly when economic pressures demanded it — is actually pretty manageable.
After all, the office environment is more automated and digitized than ever. Bosses can handle their own calendars, travel arrangements and files through their own computers and ubiquitous BlackBerrys. In many offices, voice mail systems and doorbells — not receptionists — greet callers and visitors.
And so, even when orders pick up, many of the newly de-clerked and un-secretaried may not recall their laid-off assistants. At the very least, any assistants they do hire will probably be younger people with different skills.
Economists have seen this type of structural change, which happens over the long term but is accelerated by a downturn, many times before.
“This always happens in recessions,” says John Schmitt, a senior economist with the Center for Economic and Policy Research. “Employers see them as an opportunity to clean house and then get ready for the next big move in the labor market. Or in the product market as well.”
Economists like Erica Groshen at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York have argued that bigger structural job losses help explain why the last two economic recoveries were jobless — that is, why job expansion lagged far behind overall growth.
But there is reason to think restructuring may take a bigger toll this time around. The percentage of unemployed workers who were permanently let go has hovered at a record high of over 50 percent for several months.
Additionally, the unemployment numbers show a notable split in the labor pool, with most unemployed workers finding jobs after a relatively short period of time, but a sizable chunk of the labor force unable to find new work even after months or years of searching. This group — comprising generally older workers — has pulled up the average length of time that a current worker has been unemployed to a record high of 33 weeks as of April. The percentage of unemployed people who have been looking for jobs for more than six months is at 45.9 percent, the highest in at least six decades.
And so the question is what kinds of policy responses can help workers like Ms. Norton who are falling further and further behind in the economic recovery, and are at risk of falling out of the middle class.
Ms. Norton has spent most of the last two years working part time at Wal-Mart as a cashier, bringing home about a third of what she had earned as an administrative assistant. Besides the hit to her pocketbook, she grew frustrated that the work has not tapped her full potential.
“A monkey could do what I do,” she says of her work as a cashier. “Actually, a monkey would get bored.”
Ms. Norton says she cannot find any government programs to help her strengthen the “thin bootstraps” she intends to pull herself up by. Because of the Wal-Mart job, she has been ineligible for unemployment benefits, and she says she made too much money to qualify for food stamps or Medicaid last year.
“If you’re not a minority, or not handicapped, or not a young parent, or not a veteran, or not in some other certain category, your hope of finding help and any hope of finding work out there is basically nil,” Ms. Norton says. “I know. I’ve looked.”
Of course, just as there is a structural decline in some industries, others enjoy structural growth (the “creative” part of “creative destruction”). The key is to prepare the group of workers left behind for the growing industry.
“You can bring the jobs back for some of these people, but they won’t be in the same place,” says Thomas Anton Kochan, a professor of management at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology.
The White House has publicly challenged the idea that structural unemployment is a big problem, with Christina D. Romer, the Council of Economic Advisers chairwoman, instead emphasizing that stronger economic growth is what’s needed. Still, the administration has allocated dollars for retraining in both the 2009 stimulus package and other legislation, largely for clean technology jobs.
Ms. Norton, for her part, may be reluctant to acknowledge that many of her traditional administrative assistant skills are obsolete, but she has tried to retrain — or as she puts it, adapt her existing skills — to a new career in the expanding health care industry.
Even that has proved difficult.
She attended an eight-month course last year, on a $17,000 student loan, to obtain certification as a medical assistant. She was trained to do front-office work, like billing, as well as back-office work, like giving injections and drawing blood.
The school that trained her, though, neglected to inform her that local employers require at least a year’s worth of experience — generally done through volunteering at a clinic — before hiring someone for a paid job in the field.
She says she cannot afford to spend a year volunteering, especially with her student loan coming due soon. She has one prospect for part-time administrative work in Los Angeles — where she once had her own administrative support and secretarial services business, SilverKeys — but she does not have the money to relocate.
“If I had $3,000 in my pocket right now, I would pack up my S.U.V., grab my dog and go straight back,” she says. “That’s my only answer.”
With so few local job prospects and most of her possessions of value already liquidated she has considered selling her blood to help pay for the move. But she says she cannot find a market for that, either; blood collection agencies, she said, told her they do not buy her blood type.
“Sometimes I think I’d be better off in jail,” she says, only half joking. “I’d have three meals a day and structure in my life. I’d be able to go to school. I’d have more opportunities if I were an inmate than I do here trying to be a contributing member of society.”
But that just can't be .... remember how that Stimulus Bill was going to create or save 4 million jobs ........?
Micah 6:8; He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
John 14:19 Jesus said: Because I live, you also will live.
I do think that it's rather funy that a certain poster, on another thread, was all proud of how the average taxation for last year was 9.2% ... the lowest in 25 years or some damn thing ..... and that shows how great and wonderful the Democrats are ..........
Yet the bad things last year ..... and if something bad happens this year ... or next ..... it's all Bush's fault.
Micah 6:8; He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
John 14:19 Jesus said: Because I live, you also will live.
Not the first time I"ve seen this happen.. Jobs disappearing not because of the economy.. but because they become "un needed).
Used to be that there were Engineers who with the help of Designers, Drafters, Checkers, Detailers and Print boys were the norm in the process to bring a product from the mind to paper.
Today, engineers think it, design it, draft it, check it, detail it and send it via email in a file to a printer..
One guy does the job of 6..
I've seen it in my own business recently.. some of the folks that were recenly released weren't released due in any way to the economy.. but instead by the fact that thier jobs had become obsolete....
So what do we do? We do what we've always done. we adapt, we move on, we regroup and find another way to make a living.
Easy? Not at all.. Possible? You bet
Two things for sure, it doesn't happen overnight and it isn't fun to watch.
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
But I also get quite the kick out of those that decided that since this all seems to be happening on Obamas watch, it's entirely his fault.. I find that just as odd. and Equally untrue...
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
Quote: Good lord man,, is there nothing on earth that you won't blame Obama for..
ytown is a pretty smart guy. I think he has a good grasp of how much of this is Obama's fault.. I think he finds amusement in the same things I do which is..
1. watching people continue to blame Bush for everything..
2. watching Obama get praised for doing the exact same types of things they blasted Bush for doing..
3. watching Obama manipulate and distribute facts to prove that .. a. this is not his fault and b. his plans are working..
HOPE AND CHANGE MY FRIEND... I get a big laugh every time I see those bumper stickers...
But I also get quite the kick out of those that decided that since this all seems to be happening on Obamas watch, it's entirely his fault.. I find that just as odd. and Equally untrue...
Don't know about society in general, but I don't think there are many on here that blame O entirely - or even 50%, or 30%, or whatever.
BUT, remember back a few years? When people went ape crap trying to blame Bush for everything bad? Even 9-11, hurricane Katrina, etc?
Perhaps the people on here that seem to be blaming O are really saying things tongue in cheek, with sarcasm - actually, ridiculing to an extent the people that blamed Bush for everything. Suppose that could be?
That would be me. Personally I don't agree with much Obama has done to date ... but I don't think we will feel the full effect of the punch in the gut and the kick in the nads that Obama has given this county for at least a few years. Most of what has happened to date on his watch is not his fault.... yet.
Quote: That would be me. Personally I don't agree with much Obama has done to date ... but I don't think we will feel the full effect of the punch in the gut and the kick in the nads that Obama has given this county for at least a few years. Most of what has happened to date on his watch is not his fault.... yet.
I'm in the same boat as you.
It seems there are some on here that USED to want to blame the president for everything.......until O got elected and suddenly the president has no responsibility for anything.
Odd how that works. I haven't figured it out yet. I'd ask a certain poster to explain that to me, but he wouldn't answer I'm sure.
Quote: That would be me. Personally I don't agree with much Obama has done to date ... but I don't think we will feel the full effect of the punch in the gut and the kick in the nads that Obama has given this county for at least a few years. Most of what has happened to date on his watch is not his fault.... yet.
most of the real harm Obama has done on his watch won't take effect for a few years.
having the healthcare start really kicking in the January after the next presidential election was a real crafty manuever, among others.
Quote: BUT, remember back a few years? When people went ape crap trying to blame Bush for everything bad? Even 9-11, hurricane Katrina, etc?
I know arch,, I read you clearly.. Bush had his mistakes,, Clinton had his, Obama will have his too.. no question about it..
It's getting pretty old hearing this rhetoric however.. I bet you feel somewhat the same way..
The blame game is boring and frankly serves no purpose. doesn't fix anyting.
It's like the hearing yesterday with all the execs whose companies are involved one way or the other with the Oil Spill in the Gulf..
All the Senators were doiing is trying to lay blame.. they weren't trying to brainstorm a solution..
I guess what they don't understand is, there will be plenty of time for Blaming someone once the we are out of immediate danger.. they don't get it.. Fix the problem first,, then figure out what happened.. and put in a fix so it doesn't happen again.
doesn't that bother you too?
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
My favorite part of any president's plan is that it always starts to work AFTER they are out of office. That way, the next game will come in, scrap those plans, make his own, and then say how HIS plan will work 10 years from now
Quote: It's like the hearing yesterday with all the execs whose companies are involved one way or the other with the Oil Spill in the Gulf..
All the Senators were doiing is trying to lay blame.. they weren't trying to brainstorm a solution..
Wouldn't you just dearly love to see a group of very well informed citizens sit behind the table and parade the congressmen and senators before them and let the citizens just unload on them for all of the crap that is wrong in this country with the politicians in a position where, if they lie, they could end up in jail.. I would pay good money to see that. But it won't happen because these idiot politicians enjoy their bully-pulpit where they get to make the rules, where they are above reproach, where their own integrity is beyond question... it's fairly disgusting really.
Look at the Health Care Reform mess. Are employers backing off of hiring plans until they figure out just how much each new employee will wind up costing them? I mean, our Congressmen and Senators don't even know ... and they passed the damned thing. Think that this doesn't add to the unemployment woes?
The President and his Congressional allies insisted that the "Stimulus" Bill was vital .. and the only thing that would keep us from 8% or higher unemployment. I didn't do a damned thing except for allowing states to play shell games with their own internal funding on things like road projects.
Now, there are other factors that are, obviously, not within anyone's control. There is currently a global economic downturn. Even China's economy has started to slow down. There are going to be economic challenges when that happens. However, how we respond to those challenges is what I judge our politicians by. The Bush administration forced through that abomination of a banking bailout bill, and I called them on the carpet over it. I felt that it was a massive giveaway. Hmm ..... did it ease lending and credit like they said it would? Didn't think so.
I also called out this administration over the bailout of the automakers. We "had to pass" that bill because otherwise the companies would go bankrupt and people would lose their jobs. Well, both companies went bankrupt, and people lost their jobs. The only real difference is that we spent billions and billions of dollars that we don't have. ($62 billion in all, between Chrysler and GM) GM has about 40,000 hourly employees in the US. I would assume, though I haven't looked, that Chrysler has fewer US employees. $62 billion spent ..... employment went from 61,000 in 2008 to 40,000 in 2010 ... which more cuts to about 38,000 planned in 2011 ...... and we spent $61 billion. Pardon me if I am unimpressed with the results. I happen to think that the same end result would have been reached through bankrupcy without government involvement. (and massive amounts of money) On top of this, we spent more money on the "cash for clunkers" program.
These are some things that I directly attribute to the current administration.
Micah 6:8; He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
John 14:19 Jesus said: Because I live, you also will live.
These are some things that I directly attribute to the current administration.
Oh, no doubt. There's alot I attribute to O. Sad thing is, the pain won't set in immediately, but it IS coming, make no mistake. Spending money they don't have...........Hello, Greece?
I've said it many times - this country is done - at least the country I grew up in. Things are going to change in a HUGE way, sooner rather than later.
May 11, 2010 The Failure of the Unfree Market By Randall Hoven What we have here is the failure of the unfree market. That means the failure of Greece. And the other PIGS (Portugal, Italy, Greece, Spain). And Europe. And it means the U.S., too. It even includes the Great Recession. The modern welfare state is collapsing around us.
If you had believed in the 72-Year Rule, you would have seen this coming. The 72-Year Rule says the lifetime of any social order or governing paradigm is about 72 years. For example, how long was it from the adoption of our original Constitution (1789), which sanctioned slavery, to the Civil War (1861)? Call it 72 years. And from then until the New Deal in 1933? Another 72 years. How about from the Bolshevik Revolution (1917) to the fall of the Berlin Wall (1989)? That would be 72 years again.
Do you know when the first Social Security check was issued? January 31, 1940. If my guess is right, Social Security has maybe two more years left.
Generally, the modern welfare states were born in the 1930s. So the 72-Year Rule says the modern welfare states will collapse and/or turn into something else in the 2002-2012 time frame.
Kinda makes you believe in the 72-Year Rule, doesn't it?
Of course, there are more immediate explanations than this rather mystical pattern recognition. The problem is government debts. Huge debts. Unsustainable debts and structural deficits, not just temporary ones to get through recession or war. And what is behind all these debts? The very programs we started setting up in the 1930s, our "social safety nets." Feeling safe?
Blame it on Bush and Iraq or whatever you want. But Bush was not President of Greece. And Greece was not one of the thirty nations willing to admit to being part of the U.S.-led Coalition in Iraq. In fact, Greece was one of the more socialistic of the modern welfare states. The problem was debt. Debt caused by things like government retirement programs, government health programs, and government unemployment payments.
No one has a free market. I encourage you to look at the U.S. Statistical Abstract, Table 1324. That table tells us how much various governments spent as fractions of their economies. The U.S., the supposedly "free market" cowboy of the bunch, had a government that spent 38.6% of its country's GDP in 2008. The lowest of the bunch was South Korea, at 30.9%, and the highest was France, at 52.5%. Five countries, of 28 listed, spent less than the U.S. did, including Australia and Switzerland. Greece was merely in the middle of the pack at 43.2%.
And that was the U.S. of 2008 -- before the Wall Street Bailout, before Government Motors, before Porkulus, before ObamaCare, even before Obama. Now, in 2010, the U.S. is not even considered one of the "Free" countries in the latest Heritage Freedom Index.
We are all forty-percenters now, essentially spending forty-something percent of our GDPs on government. And we're all going broke together. A bunch of broke blokes cannot save themselves from bankruptcy by lending money to each other that they borrowed from each other in the first place. At least not for long.
"But," you say, "it was the free market that led to all this -- you know, unregulated credit default swaps and derivatives and such." No it wasn't. You have no idea what caused the financial meltdown. While government regulators are quick to say that lack of regulation was the culprit, too much regulation was likely the real culprit.
You want specifics? OK, take the Recourse Rule, adopted by the U.S. and Europe in only the last few years before the Great Recession. It forced banks to invest more than they otherwise would have in mortgage-backed assets. Or how about "mark to market," which came with Sarbanes-Oxley in 2002 and froze credit because banks had to valuate their assets based on temporary and unrealistic current market prices? Or maybe it was the way Andrew Cuomo, Bill Clinton's HUD Secretary, forced Fannie Mae into the subprime mortgage market in the first place.
I just gave three specifics of over-regulation or government interference that might have caused or contributed to the financial mess. Can any late-night economists who blame it all on Bush's deregulation tell me one thing that was deregulated by Bush?
In any case, the market was not free in the first place. The Federal Register of regulations was 2,620 pages (about two Bibles) in the middle of the New Deal. By 1992, it had 62,928 pages (about fifty Bibles). By 2002, it had 80,332 pages, or another fourteen Bibles added in one decade. Federal spending on finance and banking regulation approximately doubled (in inflation-adjusted dollars) over the last twenty years.
...Not to mention that the financial crunch was merely the last straw on the camel's back, not the cause of all our problems. The GAO saw the unsustainable debt problem clearly in 2007, before anyone even thought the Great Recession was coming. I encourage you to look at this GAO presentation from April 2007. Even then it said, "The status quo is not an option: We face large and growing structural deficits largely due to known demographic trends and rising health care costs."
We all knew this was coming. Republicans would try to do something about it every so often. Reagan had a bipartisan commission headed by Alan Greenspan to fix Social Security for a while. He did what the commission recommended and got blamed for the largest tax increase in history. The new Republican Congress tried to fix Medicare in 1995, but Clinton vetoed it. George W. Bush mentioned cuts to Medicare and "privatizing" a fraction of Social Security. He was accused of trying to kill Grandma.
Every time a Republican would try to talk responsible entitlement reform, Democrats said he was stealing Grandma's Social Security and pushing her into the streets. The Democrats' solution? Half a trillion dollars in new taxes and fees and half a trillion in Medicare cuts to pay for an expansion of Medicare of about another one trillion. Oh, and we're probably going to need a VAT -- the one thing Europe has that we don't yet.
So here we are, with our government spending the largest fraction of our economy in our history, and the party in charge of the presidency, the House, and the Senate is calling those who complain about that anti-government nuts.
Well have at it. Raise tax rates on the rich. Start a VAT. Do whatever you want. You will not get the money. You've run out of other people's money. There is no more piggy bank to rob.
The American voters completed the transition of the U.S. from an entrepreneurial and freedom-loving state to a full-fledged sclerotic European welfare state, just in time to join the Europeans in their collective collapse. Congratulations.
And for your next task, make sure our downfall is blamed on "the free market," just like you did about 72 years ago.
Quote: Wouldn't you just dearly love to see a group of very well informed citizens sit behind the table and parade the congressmen and senators before them and let the citizens just unload on them for all of the crap that is wrong in this country with the politicians in a position where, if they lie, they could end up in jail..
HELL YEAH I would.. you ain't kidding about that being something that should be done..
I even had a name for it..
'THE PEOPLES COURT.......
Seriously, I'd love that..
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
Quote: Sometimes the "Blame Game" is legitimate though.
I can imagine a few scenarios where finding whose to blame for something is important. I mean take the Oil Spill,,, there WILL come a day when we'll need to find the culprit.., someone has to pay to clean this up and frankly, I'd like the ones that are responsible to do the paying.
Quote: Are employers backing off of plans until they figure out just how much each new employee will wind up costing them?
I'm in the employment field,, and I'm not hearing that from any client.. not one has said they are holding back because of any changes in medical coverages or costs associated.. not one.
Not the big clients with over 1000 employees and not the smaller ones with 10 employees..
In fact, in the last month, requests for employees has increased.. by a bunch.. companies are beginning to hire.
Now here's the really important part,, I'm in NE Ohio.. an area hit hard by unemployment, foreclosures, plant/factory closings etc. and I'm getting calls to find people and get them hired and get onboard.
that's NOT to say that others aren't wondering and maybe even waiting to see how things shake out.. But thus far, I'm not seeing it.. I'm actually seeing the opposite.
The problem for them is, if they need the person,,, then they need the person. if they are in a type of business where the employees have billable hours, no people means no billing.. no billing means no revenue... That's not good.
So, at least at this moment, I'm not seeing that...
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
Haha... I've invented my own rule - the "300 year rule"
Last of the "5 good emperors" (180 A.D.), Fall of Rome (476 A.D.) ~300 years!
Columbus discovers America (1492) - Last European control of America ends (1783) ~ 300 years!
Birth of Jesus Christ (4 B.C.), Constantine legalizes Christianity in Rome (313 A.D) ~300 years!
Cascadia Earthqauke, one of the largest earthquakes on record (1700) - San francisco earthquake (1993) or Tsunami (2006) - your choice....around 300 years!
Is this all conincidence? I think not!
So now all i gotta do is add in some other random fact - like Copyright legislation was first introduced in 1710, or the Swedes defeated the Danes that year.... and I can make foolproof conclusions - like computers will signal the end of enforceable copyright, or the danes and swedes will go to war!
Brilliant!
"When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." Leviticus 19:33-34
Quote: I can imagine a few scenarios where finding whose to blame for something is important. I mean take the Oil Spill,,, there WILL come a day when we'll need to find the culprit.., someone has to pay to clean this up and frankly, I'd like the ones that are responsible to do the paying.
Problem is, there is no way any ONE person or group is responsible for this...
It may not have been a perfect design, or it may have been a great design but not perfectly suited to this application, it may have been installed incorrectly or improperly tested, the regulatory agency might have been negligent in enforcing the applicable codes.. who knows. And oh by the way, all of the remnants of the mistakes that were made are now at the bottom of the gulf of Mexico.. .making it just a tad difficult to reconstruct and figure out who screwed up.
In short, we won't ever find out who is responsible completely.... instead of a logical fact finding mission, we will end up with what Congress and the American people do best.. a witch hunt. Where the most "socially incorrect" group gets the bulk of the blame.. and that's likely to be the oil company and Halliburton and anybody else that already has a negative stigma attached to their name..
The one thing I guarantee you won't hear out of this.. is that it was a tragic unfortunate accident. Not a chance. That doesn't satisfy the taste for blood that some people have.
I should add in that the 72 year rule should also predict the oncoming:
Fall of the People's Republic of China (formed 1949) Fall of Israel (Formed 1948) The very recent fall of the Nazi Regime (established 1932) The end of integration and the civil rights movement (~1950)
This is of course the problem with non-causal relationships like this - they are used to predict things that you argue are already happening (for whatever reason) - while the great number of other ties (that are nonsense) are immediately ignored
"When a foreigner resides among you in your land, do not mistreat them. The foreigner residing among you must be treated as your native-born. Love them as yourself, for you were foreigners in Egypt. I am the LORD your God." Leviticus 19:33-34
Quote: Problem is, there is no way any ONE person or group is responsible for this...
I don't see the problem at all.., if there is more than one "entity" (halliburton, BP etc) found responsible, they assess blame and require they pay all costs...
Bottom line, I think one of these companies own the well and own the oil.. and I think that company is BP..
IMO, they should be held responsible..
NOW,, should they then go after the companies that worked on, designed, installed and operated the well? yeah, I think they should..
But utlimately, The owner of the well is responsible.. let them sort out how they are going to go after those they choose to blame..
This isn't a situation that should be a subject of a witch hunt however I see your point. there will be plenty of finger pointing. and plenty of entities blaming one company or the other. your point is well taken,,
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
Quote: I don't see the problem at all.., if there is more than one "entity" (halliburton, BP etc) found responsible,
What if the federal government and the DOE is partially responsible for having lax standards or being negligent in their regulatory oversight?
Quote: they assess blame and require they pay all costs...
How do you quantify "all costs"? Just curious. If I go down there and wash the oil off ducks for the next 6 months, do they have to pay me? If so, I'll go. I make $400/hour plus benes.
Quote: we aren't going to settle this here today DC.. to complex.. we don't have the facts to make deteminations..
And we never will. This is my problem with the whole thing, one area of potential blame.. the government... will be the one conducting the investigation and assigning blame... so what are the odds that any part of the finger ends up pointing back at them?
Quote: But let me ask you something.. and this is going to take this thread over..
DOE: Lax Standards..
Out of some folks I hear,, we need the government to get out of the way and let us live.. let our businessess govern themselves....
Then we get the question about DOE Lax standards.,....(fill in DOE with FEMA or IRS or Treasury or DOD or....etc)
Nobody wants total government uninvolvement.. NOBODY. Find me somebody that says they do and I can all but guarantee you that I can prove they don't.... People want them involved to varying degrees.
I'll give you an example, I want the government to have building codes. The person who wants NO codes or inspections at all would argue that if an architect/engineer/contractor is incompetent, then the market will discover that and they will be forced out of business by free market principles... while that may be true, do you want your wife and children to be in the building that collapses in order to show that they are incompetent? or do we want some government involvement in the building process? I have my issues with certain codes and the way they are enforced but I do agree that there is a place for design review and code inspection..
Same for this rig. I can't approve the plans and inspect it myself for obvious reasons so somebody has to do it... can't really be a "for profit" group because that would be WAAAAY too easy for a multi-billion dollar company to get around.. the government should be, and is, involved in regulating such things.. if they were negligent in their regulatory responsibilities, then should they pay?
If a building fails, you look at 4 things.. design, construction, post construction changes or damage.... and inspections. If those things are all done correctly, a building will never fail.
Quote: Nobody wants total government uninvolvement.. NOBODY
I never said people don't want TOTAL government uninvolvment.. But that aside, what I am referring to is the talking points you hear from politicians and the talking heads..
I know they don't want the govenment totally uninvolved, but some have some strange things they don't want them involved in..
Such as Wall Street.. but let's not gothere.. it's better discussed over a beer sometime
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
Quote: I never said people don't want TOTAL government uninvolvment..
It's going to take me a minute to figure out what a sentence with 3 negatives (never, not, and "un") really means.
Quote: But that aside, what I am referring to is the talking points you hear from politicians and the talking heads..
You are smart enough to see beyond the talking points I hope.... unfortunately, most interviewers aren't smart enough to make them be more clear on their talking points...
Quote: but some have some strange things they don't want them involved in..
Such as Wall Street..
Wall Street the exchange itself or Wall Street the metaphor for big business?
It's going to take me a minute to figure out what a sentence with 3 negatives (never, not, and "un") really means.
Where was "not" in that sentence Just kidding,, the word Don't shouldn't be there... I fat fingered it I guess.. LOL
Quote: You are smart enough to see beyond the talking points I hope.... unfortunately, most interviewers aren't smart enough to make them be more clear on their talking points
I am, but it's not me I'm concerned about....
Quote: Wall Street the exchange itself or Wall Street the metaphor for big business?
The financial markets.. Goldman Sachs, AIG, Leyman Bros...etc... Not big business in general.. Wall Street was perhaps a bad choice. of words.
I mean large banking and financial institutions..
You know how you were talking yesterday that there are situations where government oversight or regulation was required.. Well, this is one of those times. IMO
#GMSTRONG
“Everyone is entitled to his own opinion, but not to his own facts.” Daniel Patrick Moynahan
"Alternative facts hurt us all. Think before you blindly believe." Damanshot
Quote: But that just can't be .... remember how that Stimulus Bill was going to create or save 4 million jobs ........?
How many American jobs were saved when the Obama administration saved US Auto industry from certain death...?
Some estimate that 1 in 10 US jobs are tied to the auto industry...that is a lot of jobs.
If I remember correctly, the GOP told Detroit to drop dead.
Mac .... did the bailout of GM and Chrysler save more US jobs ..... or more foreign jobs? how many jobs jobs impacted in the US? What was the total number of jobs affected worldwide? Why is there such an enormous disparity between the 2 numbers?
How many people does GM employ?
How many did they the year prior to their bankrupcy, before they were 'saved" by the government?
What happened to the (roughly) 1/3 of GM hourly employees who lost their jobs forever between 2008 and the final bankrupcy in 2009?
How many people lost their jobs as a result of the bankrupcy? How many do you think would have if the US Government hadn't dumped $61 billion iinto GM and Chrysler?
How did the massive influx of cash change the outcome for the better? Did it really have an ipact? If so, in what specific manner?
What effect do you see dumping the retirement fund and voiding/redoing labor contracts having on the bottom line? IWill this be a bigger effect that the government bailout itself?
How much money has GM made in the past 2 quarters? How profitable are they today?
Now ... I know that you'll neveranswer these questions, because, if you did you would complete;y undermine your talking points. I just wanted to pose them anyway .....
Micah 6:8; He has shown you, O mortal, what is good. And what does the Lord require of you? To act justly and to love mercy, and to walk humbly with your God.
John 14:19 Jesus said: Because I live, you also will live.
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