[Lula-biz] suicide as a career move

[Jack Denman]

On Thursday 07 August 2003 04:32 pm, Jeff Ali wrote:
> Don't lose your idealism...
>
> ...if you can't find a job....create one...AWSOME  advice!!!
>
>
>
> jeff

While I admire the spirit of the statement, the numbers of reality delivers 
another message. We now have 10 million workers unemployed and another 5 
million than are UNDER-employed. We have not seen this chronic unemployment 
in the economy since the 1930's and we do not see the end of the downturn.

If it was all that easy, as some think, we would not have 15 million people in 
chronic economic enployment trouble.

People say that it's getting better, but that's what they said after September 
2001, and what they said after September 2002, and we can't say with 
certainty that September of this year will be any better than the last two 
years.

Unemployment peaked at 10% for a very short period of time in 1983 as an acute 
period, but it didn't last long.

Whatever is is that the economy needs, it cannot be accomplished with slogans, 
cheer-leading and words of comfort. We need a lot more than that.

I don't think that "The Terminator" can end the mess of California, but he 
can't do worse than Davis.

One of the really frightening side effects of the current trend to outsourcing 
off-shore is the jeopardizing of the national sovereignty. Should a large 
scale war develop we would find ourselves in serious trouble and not able to 
stand on our own as we have in the past. One member of the house of 
Representatives wrote a white paper on Intel's foreign dependence and what 
could happen to us in the event of a major world conflict.

As a kid in World War II I remember that gasoline and food were both rationed. 
Every Saturday we had to work on our "Victory Garden", and I hated it. We had 
plenty of gasoline and food in our country. The problem was that we had no 
rubber that was imported from Brazil and the Philippines an we couldn't get 
it. Literally thousands of merchant marine ships were sunk just of of our 
coasts and the North Atlantic. The gas rationing was to save the limited 
rubber tires we had. The tires were also needed for food distribution so we 
had to ration food, even though we are the only nation on earth that can feed 
ourselves.

Our consumption is awesome. We were not oil dependent until the 1970's. I 
remember reading in the Fullerton Tribune that in the first week of July in 
1975 the US used more fuel that one week than all the fuel in the four years 
of World War II. I cannot even imagine how many times that figure has 
multiplied over since then.

In case of a world conflict breakout today, almost everything you can think of 
would be rationed. I have not run the numbers but I suspect that there is not 
enough of our own oil to allow people to drive even 100 miles a week. 
Computer parts would be impossible to get along with food we are accustomed 
to. Clothes would be scarce and price control of wages and services 
immediately would be mandatory.

All of the above happened in the last major war. It would be 100 times worse 
with the foreign dependencies we have developed over the last 50 years.

Jack Denman



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