from teh youtube

There will be more children in the US this year with bankrupt parents than divorced parents. With around 120,000 people declared bankrupt each month, many of the squeezed middle-class see the American dream slipping away.

"Our national myth is changing", explains author and journalist Thomas Hartmann. Whereas hard work was once seen as the route to prosperity in the US, nowadays the best most people can hope for is a lottery win. Three generations of farmers in Vermont ring the changes of the past fifty years. Doug Lyford remembers that his parents never argued about money: "There were five of us and we all went to college. No farmer could afford that any more". Disenchanted with the mainstream politicians, who have not done enough to help them, many are turning to the traditionalist Tea Party. For others, such as bicycle shop manager Anthony Laskaris, hard times are only to be expected: "this is the effect of globalisation: our living standards go down a little, so that others' can rise".

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Thom Hartmann is the #1 progressive radio talk show host in the US

New York Times:

Lawrence Mishel, Heidi Shierholz and Kathryn Edwards, all of the left-leaning Economic Policy Institute, are three such economists, and they have laid out their arguments against structural unemployment in a report released today.


How to Identify Liberal Media Bias

So a bunch of liberals have left leaning views.

What's your point?

>> ^L0cky:

So a bunch of liberals have left leaning views.
What's your point?


I think he's trying to say only the Right is fair and unbiased...

blargh... sorry, just threw up in my mouth a little bit saying that

qm is right. This is pretty left leaning.

I think this country has gone too far to the right economically, but I still couldn't help but ask myself while watching this if this recession is so bad, why are they interviewing middle class after middle class person who isn't homeless, is not going hungry, etc. There's the one interview of a couple, where the wife is a home maker, why is she not working?

The talk shouldn't just be centered around the same left talking points of what ills the economy. What about the declining importance in middle class culture for education? In middle class culture, there's a growing distrust of public education, education institutions, of the academic elite, etc., why? What about seemingly the middle class's refusal to adjust to reshaping of demand for skills? What was deemed a large portion of middle class jobs generations ago required less education, and less ongoing enhancement of skills. The middle class now seems to insist on jobs that the US economy has diminishing demand for, and not be attracted to professions we desperately need more labor and skills in, such as IT professionals, where we issue work visas and IMPORT LABOR for to get the job done, even when the economy is so bad right now. And of course, these new jobs require more initial and ongoing investments in education.

I don't intend to suggest that this is all these people's faults, because it's not. But what is killing the US economy isn't just outsourcing, bank bailouts, union busting, and poor government policy decisions. In fact, part of the reason outsourcing occurs in some industries such as IT is there's so little supply for a skill in the US and such high demand for it, such as in IT, that it's cheaper to send that job overseas where there's more supply for it.

There's absolutely no reason for the US to be shipping IT jobs overseas. We should be figuring out ways to keep them here, and disregard political ideologies to make that happen. Maybe it involves more gov't grants to encourage people in the US to get the training they need to be able to do those jobs. Maybe it's more socially promoting the importance of math and science subjects early on in school. To me, one of the biggest problems the US economy faces right now is the jobs of the future require more skills and education than ever before, yet it's becoming increasingly difficult to get the required education.

These are the problems I wish were discussed objectively and intelligently debated instead of having to combat idiotic stuff like Santorum stating gov't bailouts have in the short run cost American jobs.

documentaries always have a certain bias.
we all do when trying to make an argument or point.this should not come as a surprise.
people have a right to their own opinions and ideologies,they just dont have a right to their own facts and to impose disinformation in order to manipulate using a contrived argument.

@heropsycho
your comment was well thought out but i do find a few statements you made a tad...disconcerting.
you question the stay at home mother as to her reasons for staying home.
they may be many but the main reason most stay-at-home moms..well..stay at home is for the children.which has been statistically proven to be beneficial for the well-being of not only the home but the children as well.
you wonder why she is not at work.
should everybody get on the hampster wheel and sacrifice the welfare of their family?
has the american dream so devolved as to be almost non-existent?
should every family become debt slaves?
and those who do not should be criticized and derided for not being one?

another part of your comment mentioned outsourcing and the possible reason was lack of education and training.
i agree with that comment but i feel it is missing some vital contextual references:
1.america was a manufacturing giant during the 50's 60's and 70's mainly due to WWII and the decimation of europes manufacturing (bombs tend to do that).
2.while the IT business is booming and i agree that we do need more training,you failed to mention that these "imported" workers tend to make far less than their american counterparts.
3."outsourcing" is a media manufactured word to fit the narrative but fails to identify what it really is:slave labor in third world countries.
4.you also failed to mention the REASON why so many american manufacturing companies "outsource" which is basically sweetheart deals and tax havens,nevermind the total lack of labor safety practices,humane working conditions,child labor laws.these companies dont go to third world countries due to lack of labor or training but rather so they can pay an 8 yr old girl 37 cents a day to make your nike sneakers.

so i disagree with your conclusion that the biggest problem facing the US economy is training and education (a factor but not the biggest problem).
the biggest problem the US economy faces is:two full scale wars and a "police action" all funded on borrowed money.
public elections funded by private entities (corporations and financial institutions)which leads to a corrupt legislature who works for their financial backers and no longer for the people.
a bail out of financial institutions due to their being "too big to fail" and are now ironically bigger than ever.
the absolute and utter failure of the fourth estate to watchdog the powerful in order to inform the public for fear of losing access to the very power they were charged to watchdog.because if they had done their job iraq would have never happened nor would the housing and consequent financial crisis.

these are just a few of the things from a very long list but i feel they are substantial in where we are now.

It doesn't matter if the mother wants to stay at home with the children. Reality is dictating that she needs to earn additional income for the family. It's statistically proven if I spend more time with my wife, our marriage would be better, but it doesn't give me a right to not work. Reality is reality, doesn't matter if it's economic or otherwise. Look, families requiring two income earners is nothing new. Women entering the workforce has been a growing trend since WWII. One income earner staying at home is a luxury. I'd be more sympathetic if they didn't railroad their lifestyles upward on a single salary. Driving a big SUV, bought an oversized house, all on a one income salary. You're painting a picture that they're dewy eyed innocents in this, and they're being enslaved without their tacit approval to debt. If it was so darned important for the wife to stay at home, then they should have made that a priority to preserve this lifestyle instead of buying a big SUV, buying that big house, etc. I have sympathy that they got caught with their pants down, and didn't realize what they're doing, but now it's time for the pants to be pulled up. She needs a freaking job until they're in a better economic place, period! No sympathy from me about having to do this. And she should be doing that to BENEFIT her family. Don't want to leave the home? Plenty of jobs she can do from home now in the internet age. But do something, don't just sit there clipping coupons only. That's another the part that killed me, they paint coupon and bargain shopping as this horrific thing. Seriously?! That's called life!

Look, my wife doesn't work due to medical reasons. I'm completely sympathetic to a spouse needing or wanting to not work. But that means sacrifices in other material things. My wife and I rarely travel, when we do half is reimbursed by my employer. I earn a six figure salary in IT, and I'm constantly working my butt off to earn more certifications and expand my skills, because the reality is if I lose my job and don't find another good paying job quickly, we're screwed. I gave up my dream to be a teacher when my wife had medical issues that prevented her from working. That's a sacrifice by me for my family, and I don't complain about it other than to illustrate why talented people leave the teaching profession because they're grossly underpaid. We don't own a big house. We have a very large emergency fund, no credit card debt, etc. This is all in the face of the reality of our life choices.

As for my point about education, etc. You should read what I wrote more carefully. I never said that education was the biggest problem. I never disputed anything about what you're saying about outsourcing. I was pointing out that outsourcing isn't ONLY about corporations trying to pay less for labor because they're greedy. That certainly goes on (A LOT), but we also bring workers in from other countries because we simply don't have enough of those skills, too. The lack of skills we need in American workers is also a major problem, and part of that is a conscious choice made by Americans to underfund schools, to not go to college, to not seek education post-grad, to not spend some time outside of work expanding their skills, etc. Don't want to do those things? Fine, then accept less material things in your life. But don't go around complaining you can't afford an overpriced house, large SUV, all on a struggling single income salary to feed four people. For that Arizona family, where I do see society failing is there is very little help training/retraining the parents for new careers that would help them and the economy recover now that they made their mistakes. With that said, if neither is willing to do that, what would it matter?

I said that it's not just about the talking points of the political left. If you read my other posts (especially how many times I've taken qm to task for various things), I'm not a political ideologue for the right (or the left for that matter). This video is obviously slanted to the left, and that's not an accurate reflection of reality. Solutions shouldn't just come from the left or right to address a single problem. Neither has a monopoly on good ideas.

@heropsycho
i appreciate your response but i think i may not have been clear.
the points you are making...and understand i am not attempting to invalidate them, but rather attempting to point out that anecdotal evidence or a media fueled narrative meant to illicit an emotional response does not an argument make.
the actual statistics paint an entirely different picture and that is what i am referring to.in the 80's the narrative was "welfare queens" where they would take a handful of people who abused the system and painted them as being the "norm" when the reality was the exact opposite.
or that the people who bought homes during the housing bubble were somehow mentally deficient while IGNORING the predatory and out-right deceitful practices of mortgage brokers who lied to these people.
the latest narrative has been directed at unions,specifically the teachers union.now we can discuss corruption and abuse of power concerning unions but that is a wholly different subject, because historically unions have dome more for the american worker and middle class than anything else combined.

all these tactics are taken directly from the propaganda playbook:conflate,deflect and demonize.
all to get YOU to view your fellow citizen with a questioning eye and to judge based on the parameters dictated to you based almost solely on disinformation and emotive language.i am just trying to point that out.

here is my anecdotal story for the day:
i have a dear friend,very conservative and religious and gets her news solely from FOX.
her favorite statement is :"we were taught if things get tough you pull yourself up by your boot-straps and get it done"
sounds noble yes?
but the reality is her and her husband were given 25 grand when they got married to buy a house(that BOUGHT the house in those days).she worked only 10 years until she had her first child and then stayed at home (because she could).
every 4 yrs her family would buy a new car for her husband to get to work who happened to work for GM and she collects a pretty penny from his retirement and still qualified for medicaid.

am i upset she was blessed with these things? of course not, but i do find it delicious irony that this woman rages against:unions,social programs and people getting help when they need it, when her own family benefited from the very things she is raging against.

I agree with everything you just wrote.

The only thing that I would point out is the media is biased as Jon Stewart put it to be lazy, and to generate conflict, but it will spin what is going on in society either conservative or liberal to get out of real reporting, and to be sensational. Anything they can do to get people to consume said media is fair game. That laziness falls on both sides of the political spectrum media wide. And it doesn't help when society tunes out when the story isn't something that elicits an emotional response, or doesn't have a simple lesson or solution. Nuance and complexity is something most Americans abhor.

Case in point, when is the last time you saw something on the news that showed how many IT jobs are given to people with work visas, and compare that to how many people are graduating college with computer science degrees to illustrate that portion of outsourcing? I don't think I've ever seen that presented in the news. That point is very hard to pin as conservative or liberal because solutions to remedy it could come from both parties. And there's no easily identified villian, either. So instead, let's paint the big bad evil corporations for outsourcing in general because that's easy to report on, throw some basic generalized stats up about number of jobs outsourced, show corporate profits increasing, and do people love to consume that kind of story. I see that left and right in IT. I know friends who see it left and right in other sections of the economy like bioengineering, etc. But it never gets reported on. These are the jobs and sectors that will be growing in the modern economy, and we as a nation are doing a poor job preparing the next generations to succeed in them, no question about it.

Or conversely, if you love you some Fox News, let's focus on the fact that there's this agency called Planned Parenthood, that is in part funded by federal tax dollars, and it performs abortions! OMG! This must be this huge problem! Only, if you're a sane individual, you'd normally then want to know how much of this is going on, and you quickly realize the number of abortions that are performed in these facilities is under 100 annually nationwide, and it's dubious at best if federal dollars actually paid for any of those procedures. But finding those statistics is either purposefully omitted to sensationalize and stir up conflict, or done so out of sheer laziness. But conservative Americans eat that stuff up, because it's easy for them to follow, clearly identifiable villians, and fits their ideological narrative of the US crumbling from disregarding "traditional values". The facts of course clearly show this isn't a significant problem.

Back to the housing crisis, etc, the truth is there's blame to go around with the banks, government, and consumers. I also have a friend who took on a mortgage he shouldn't have. Got an 80/20, he's a single income earner, wife is in the process of getting a degree in nursing, they have two kids. In 2006, they got this big massive house in a brand new neighborhood. It's the American dream. Now, it's not like this guy is dumb. He took out $400,000 mortgages (80/20), very high interest, etc. on a single income, knowing full well his wife was going to school, and he didn't have an emergency fund to speak of.

I don't care what he was told by the lenders and real estate agent - he had no one to blame but himself in the end. He had a perfectly good house in a good neighborhood already. He just bought a new car as well. He had credit card debt. He wasn't putting much money away for retirement either. There's nothing anyone can say but "it's your fault" when the economy tanked in 2008, we both worked for the same company, and they cut our salaries to avoid layoffs. I'd have been sympathetic if he were doing the basics right, had a good emergency fund, could put a good 20% down for the mortgage, had no credit card debt, etc., then got caught later despite his best efforts, or lacked the mental capability to know he was walking into a potential economic deathtrap. But he wasn't putting forth anywhere close to a best effort financially speaking. When the same thing happened to me, I cut back on paying my mortgage off early, and sat on a six months emergency fund if the layoff ever came, and increased my retirement contributions when the market tanked to jumpstart it when the market would inevitably rebounded. There was never a sleepless night.

He's in better shape now, we got our salaries put back, and what did he do? Took that several year "postponed" trip to Disneyworld with the wife and kids, put off contributing to the reinstituted 401k, never has started an IRA for him or his wife, no college fund for the kids, only has one month emergency fund, although he has reduced his credit card balances.

I wouldn't pretend to know which is worse in the US - predatory lending and other abuses by businesses against consumers, or a complete lack of personal responsibility. But I know this - there's plenty of both, but you certainly don't hear it's both from pretty much any media outlet.