Friday, October 19, 2018

Simply Getting By

By many measure the economy is doing very well with profits up, unemployment low and interest rates and inflation manageable.

Of course some indicators such as the deficit and wage increase aren't as healthy as they should be in a booming economy.

Many Americans have almost no savings and are certainly unprepared for retirement.  If fact for many, a comfortable retirement is an impossibility.

This is because economic inequality has grown as high paying low skill jobs have been replaced by technology and automation but skilled employees are in great demand.

The obvious answer it to provide the needed skills to those displaced and some program were created along those lines, but they are not nearly enough.

The reason is varied but the result is that people have taken lower paying service jobs, sometime more than one, to support their families and themselves or alternately have started abusing opiates.

It was this group that influence the last election in certain states because they have a built up anger about the changes impacting them.

America is a hard country to do poorly in, you tend to be surrounded by images of the prosperous world that many live in.

If you consider places like Flint Michigan or any of the old industrial powerhouses, they have never really recovered from the closing of those factories with their high paying jobs and benefits.

Minimum wage and Medicaid, if you qualify, are no real substitute.

These are the victims of our technology revolution and we haven't found a good way to help them transition.

They are simply getting by.

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