I've been living here in USA for the last 9 years and I consider myself pretty assimilated. One of the things which I found very pleasant and surprising is the way college grads ease into the job and life. Almost every college grad used to land in job right after college. Parents will start feeling like empty nesters and suddenly have an extra room or two to use.
But college grads these days are really struggling. they consider themselves very lucky if they've jobs. Read this blog post by yves smith in naked capitalism about fresh college grad working as a doorman. The earlier doorman was also a college grad. That kinda struck me and reminded me of India in 70s and 80s.
India used to have socialist leanings in those days, hence there're not many private enterprises creating jobs. Very few private jobs and rest of them are government jobs. And there's affirmative action in the name of 'reservations'. So an average college grad with liberal arts diploma can't really land in a job. That's why all the movie heroes used to play the roles of unemployed angry young man who couldn't land into a job cause of corrupt officers and system.
As Bob Dylan sang, the times they are a-changing. India changed so much and it's a market bases economy now. Private enterprises are booming and GDP is growing at the rate of 7%. I don't hear about chronic unemployment which was staple of our society until mid 1990s. Even though unemployment rate is at 10%, it's better than 70s and 80s. At the same time, we here in USA are afraid of our jobs every day and unemployment is 9.1% and GDP growth rate slowed down to 3.1%.
As you might see it, there's not many jobs around in this country. And boomers are postponing their retirements, which means new grads can't get into market yet. Not to state the obvious, there're not many manufacturing jobs left behind in this country. As you can see from this
picture, financial sector profits reached 41% of US Business Profits by 2009. They might've came down little bit by this year. Point I want to make is, we're not creating anything. Wall street is manipulating and minting money rather than managing and lending it. We don't have any good consumer devices from USA except the apple products. But they're all made in China and we made Foxconn a million employee company and lot richer. Facebook, twitter and other social networking innovations, yeah they're based in USA but they don't employ many people here. Facebook have development centers in India, Ireland and they use they to route profits to tax havens. All these IPOs and social networking only helps the rich and chosen few.
Lemme break down a myth perpetuated by Republicans. "Regulation is killing the jobs. Obama administration is a job killer". Well do you really think, corporations wouldn't hire, if there's enough demand. Post recession, many managers realized that they can milk the employees, as they've no place to go. Companies are sitting on record amount of Cash here and overseas. They're not hiring as they can't be sure of the demand cause of the doldrums in housing and job market.
Republicans portray themselves as strong at military and job creation. Obama proved the contrary on first point and I'll do the second one. (pun intended) Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, two presidential candidates are eager to tell how Obama failed to create jobs and how they're adept at it. Mitt Romney is partner of Bain Capital, a private equity group. Private equity group, by definition will buy a distressed company, lay off employees, optimize operations and issue an IPO and run with the profits. That's how Mitt Romney made part of his fortune. And Jon Huntsman and his family owns a billion dollar company Huntsman Corp. Out of 12,000 worldwide employees only 2,174 are inside USA. Effectively these two candidates who call themselves as job creators are job killers.
Meanwhile Obama got criticized for bailing out Detroit Auto Industry, which saved 1 million jobs. Just imagine how the situation could've be, if not for that. Every generation in this country reinvented itself. Steel industry, automotive jobs helped a generation survive and then call centre and IT jobs came along. They're all outsourced to India. These days except Healthcare and retail sector jobs, anything can be outsourced. Manufacturing sector isn't doing bad but the rate of job growth has to go up really fast to take more people off the unemployment.
Our chief competitor China is investing and prospering in all sectors. Education, Infrastructure, new jobs and investments in overseas. Remember, USA used to be that country. Not anymore. We've an effective conservative rhetoric in DC, which paints President as spendthrift even if he wants to invest in Infrastructure and education.
While the rest of world is busy in investing in kids and future, our Legislatures are busy passing bills to protect fetuses.
Peace.
Graph from Atlantic
But college grads these days are really struggling. they consider themselves very lucky if they've jobs. Read this blog post by yves smith in naked capitalism about fresh college grad working as a doorman. The earlier doorman was also a college grad. That kinda struck me and reminded me of India in 70s and 80s.
India used to have socialist leanings in those days, hence there're not many private enterprises creating jobs. Very few private jobs and rest of them are government jobs. And there's affirmative action in the name of 'reservations'. So an average college grad with liberal arts diploma can't really land in a job. That's why all the movie heroes used to play the roles of unemployed angry young man who couldn't land into a job cause of corrupt officers and system.
As Bob Dylan sang, the times they are a-changing. India changed so much and it's a market bases economy now. Private enterprises are booming and GDP is growing at the rate of 7%. I don't hear about chronic unemployment which was staple of our society until mid 1990s. Even though unemployment rate is at 10%, it's better than 70s and 80s. At the same time, we here in USA are afraid of our jobs every day and unemployment is 9.1% and GDP growth rate slowed down to 3.1%.
As you might see it, there's not many jobs around in this country. And boomers are postponing their retirements, which means new grads can't get into market yet. Not to state the obvious, there're not many manufacturing jobs left behind in this country. As you can see from this
picture, financial sector profits reached 41% of US Business Profits by 2009. They might've came down little bit by this year. Point I want to make is, we're not creating anything. Wall street is manipulating and minting money rather than managing and lending it. We don't have any good consumer devices from USA except the apple products. But they're all made in China and we made Foxconn a million employee company and lot richer. Facebook, twitter and other social networking innovations, yeah they're based in USA but they don't employ many people here. Facebook have development centers in India, Ireland and they use they to route profits to tax havens. All these IPOs and social networking only helps the rich and chosen few.Lemme break down a myth perpetuated by Republicans. "Regulation is killing the jobs. Obama administration is a job killer". Well do you really think, corporations wouldn't hire, if there's enough demand. Post recession, many managers realized that they can milk the employees, as they've no place to go. Companies are sitting on record amount of Cash here and overseas. They're not hiring as they can't be sure of the demand cause of the doldrums in housing and job market.
Republicans portray themselves as strong at military and job creation. Obama proved the contrary on first point and I'll do the second one. (pun intended) Mitt Romney and Jon Huntsman, two presidential candidates are eager to tell how Obama failed to create jobs and how they're adept at it. Mitt Romney is partner of Bain Capital, a private equity group. Private equity group, by definition will buy a distressed company, lay off employees, optimize operations and issue an IPO and run with the profits. That's how Mitt Romney made part of his fortune. And Jon Huntsman and his family owns a billion dollar company Huntsman Corp. Out of 12,000 worldwide employees only 2,174 are inside USA. Effectively these two candidates who call themselves as job creators are job killers.
Meanwhile Obama got criticized for bailing out Detroit Auto Industry, which saved 1 million jobs. Just imagine how the situation could've be, if not for that. Every generation in this country reinvented itself. Steel industry, automotive jobs helped a generation survive and then call centre and IT jobs came along. They're all outsourced to India. These days except Healthcare and retail sector jobs, anything can be outsourced. Manufacturing sector isn't doing bad but the rate of job growth has to go up really fast to take more people off the unemployment.
Our chief competitor China is investing and prospering in all sectors. Education, Infrastructure, new jobs and investments in overseas. Remember, USA used to be that country. Not anymore. We've an effective conservative rhetoric in DC, which paints President as spendthrift even if he wants to invest in Infrastructure and education.
While the rest of world is busy in investing in kids and future, our Legislatures are busy passing bills to protect fetuses.
Peace.
Graph from Atlantic
