GDP is a big fat lie

oldtobor

So russ, shawn I imagine a manager who is layed off and has to work at McDonalds for 8 hours a day in Canada or Philadelphia. Now you are both saying that he can bring home 1,500 dollars a month at that job or any similar entry level job ? Aside from age descrimination or overqualification I doubt he would even get that job. By the way could a person who is overqualified simply say he always worked at his own business and only has a high school diploma to get that kind of a job ?

Don't think it is very easy for laid off professionals to find equivalent work if they are hosed.

ShawnD

As long as you're not a dickhead, it's easy to get a job. If you went to a job interview for an entry level grunt job like the $12/h 40h warehouse job and you somehow don't get the job, it has nothing to do with being overqualified or too old; it has everything to do with how you handled yourself in the interview. If you still act like a stuck up manager who is too good for physical labour, of course you won't get the job. You don't even deserve that job. In that case, you deserve to live in poverty at McDonalds until you throw out the ego and are willing to work. I may flip flop a lot but I never held the opinion that I was too good for work.

russ_watters

Someone who has manager qualifications needs to find another job as a manager - the McDonalds job is temporary, so the scenario you describe is not relevant here. What job, a job at McDonalds? Anyone can get a job at McDonalds. It is common in my area for retired older people who need a little extra cash to work at McDonalds. And my parents' next-door neighbor is a ~50 year old mechanical engineer who worked at Home Depot for a good year, during the last bad unemployment cycle a few years ago, until he could find another job in his field. No, it isn't easy, but they do better than you are suggesting, and regardless, that has nothing to do with your previous assertion. Very, very few people lose high-paying upper-middle-class jobs and work the rest of their lives at McDonalds. And even those who never get another good job don't stay all the way at the bottom.

edit: the biggest real problem in what you are describing is people who have a lot of debts. When they lose a job like that, it can cause them to lose their house. A good friend of my family lost his job at a particularly bad time (his kids were about to go to college) an had to trade his 3000 sq ft. house for a small condo. That guy took responsibility and made his own solution - some ride their debts into bankrupcy.

Shawn's right: getting into (and then out of) McDonalds is all a matter of attitude.

nameta9

Thanks alot for your answers. As I imagined there are all kinds of cases, and alot depends on where you live etc. Just some time ago someone told me the mechanical engineers are alot better off than software people because they have a stable well defined skill set that is always valid, you don't become outdated because you don't know java etc. But as you just said, your friend was hosed anyways and had to work at home depot. Very interesting , so it really is all mixed up, there are all conceivable stories and situations. I think software today is a bad choice, better something much more stable.

jim mcnamara

If you're saying that wages have not kept up with inflation, there is some data to support a small divergence of the two in the US since 1970.
However, since 1913, US inflation has averaged about 3.25% with periods of much greater inflation and periods of deflation during the Great Depression.
This shows what 100 US dollars now (or 2003 the max year this page
http://eh.net/hmit/compare/ allows me to enter) was worth in 1970, using various means to calculate the value.
Look at the CPI value you see factor of nearly 5. In other words, $1.00 in 1970 is worth what $5.00 buys today.
According to this page:
http://www.westga.edu/~bquest/2004/prices.htm
with the exception of automobile manufacturing, prices for most durable goods (things like appliances) have gone DOWN by a factor of 5 in relative dollars. ie., an 5600 btu air conditioner in 1970 was ~150 and now is the same.
I think you are mis-remembering, maybe.