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Monday, July 17, 2023
Burned Out Boomers Part 10 - Senior Homelessness
Housing and homelessness resources
The NATIONAL COALITION FOR THE HOMELESS (NCH) is a nationwide network dedicated to ending and preventing homelessness. NCH is a nonprofit made up of currently or formerly unhoused individuals, activists, and community and faith-based service providers. The coalition works locally to help communities along with advocating for legislation at the federal level. If you need help, visit THIS DIRECTORY for resources in your community. If you would like to donate or help, click HERE.
The U.S. DEPARTMENT OF HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT offers several housing services for seniors. The government site provides links to affordable housing programs and resource locators.
CATHOLIC CHARITIES USA is a nonprofit founded over a century ago by church members committed to helping people experiencing homelessness. In 2021, Catholic Charities agencies offered 1.9 million nights of emergency shelter and created permanent housing for more than 34,000 families, seniors, veterans and others. If you are in need of local help or services, visit their AGENCY LOCATOR MAP.
The NATIONAL ALLIANCE TO END HOMELESSNESS is a nonprofit devoted to preventing and ending homelessness in the United States. The organization focuses on researching and analyzing poverty data to improve federal policies. They also offer guides and training for shelters and housing providers. If you would like to support this work, click HERE to donate or click HERE for other ways to help.
- Ryan Thomas
‘It’s so scary’: More and more seniors are becoming homeless. Here’s why.
By Anita Snow
Associated Press
April 11, 2022
Karla Finocchio’s slide into homelessness began when she split with her partner of 18 years and temporarily moved in with a cousin.
The 55-year-old planned to use her $800-a-month disability check to get an apartment after back surgery. But she soon was sleeping in her old pickup protected by her German Shepherd mix Scrappy, unable to afford housing in Phoenix, where median monthly rents soared 33% during the coronavirus pandemic to over $1,220 for a one-bedroom, according to ApartmentList.com.
Finocchio is one face of America’s graying homeless population, a rapidly expanding group of destitute and desperate people 50 and older suddenly without a permanent home after a job loss, divorce, family death or health crisis during a pandemic.
“We’re seeing a huge boom in senior homelessness,” said Kendra Hendry, a caseworker at Arizona’s largest shelter, where older people make up about 30% of those staying there. “These are not necessarily people who have mental illness or substance abuse problems. They are people being pushed into the streets by rising rents.”
Academics project their numbers will nearly triple over the next decade, challenging policymakers from Los Angeles to New York to imagine new ideas for sheltering the last of the baby boomers as they get older, sicker and less able to pay spiraling rents. Advocates say much more housing is needed, especially for extremely low-income people.
Navigating sidewalks in wheelchairs and walkers, the aging homeless have medical ages greater than their years, with mobility, cognitive and chronic problems like diabetes. Many contracted COVID-19 or couldn’t work because of pandemic restrictions.
“It’s so scary,” said Finocchio, her green eyes clouding with tears while sitting on the cushioned seat of her rolling walker. “I don’t want to be on the street in a wheelchair and living in a tent.”
It was Finocchio’s first time being homeless. She’s now at Ozanam Manor, a transitional shelter the Society of St. Vincent de Paul runs in Phoenix for people 50 and up seeking permanent housing.
At the 60-bed shelter, Finocchio sleeps in a college-style women’s dorm, with a single bed and small desk where she displays Scrappy’s photo. The dog with perky black ears is staying with Finocchio’s brother.
‘I’d always worked.. .. And then all of a sudden things went downhill’
A stroke started 67-year-old Army veteran Lovia Primous on his downward spiral, costing him his job and forcing him to sleep in his Honda Accord. He was referred to the transitional shelter after recovering from COVID-19.
“Life has been hard,” said Primous, who grew up in a once-segregated African American neighborhood of south Phoenix. “I’m just trying to stay positive.”
Cardelia Corley ended up on the streets of Los Angeles County after the hours at her telemarketing job were cut.
Now 65, Corley said she was surprised to meet so many others who were also working, including a teacher and a nurse who lost her home following an illness.
“I’d always worked, been successful, put my kid through college,” the single mother said. “And then all of a sudden things went downhill.”
Corley traveled all night aboard buses and rode commuter trains to catch a catnap.
“And then I would go to Union Station downtown and wash up in the bathroom,” said Corley. She recently moved into a small East Hollywood apartment with help from The People Concern, a Los Angeles nonprofit.
The U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development said in its 2017 Annual Homeless Assessment Report the share of homeless people 50 and over in emergency shelters or transitional housing jumped from 22.9% in 2007 to 33.8% in 2017. More precise and recent nationwide figures aren’t available because HUD has since changed the methodology in the reports and lumps older people in with all adults over 25.
A 2019 study of aging homeless people led by the University of Pennsylvania drew on 30 years of census data to project the U.S. population of people 65 and older experiencing homelessness will nearly triple from 40,000 to 106,000 by 2030, resulting in a public health crisis as their age-related medical problems multiply.
Dr. Margot Kushel, a physician who directs the Center for Vulnerable Populations at the University of California, San Francisco, said her research in Oakland on how homelessness affects health has shown nearly half of the tens of thousands of older homeless people in the U.S. are on the streets for the first time.
“We are seeing that retirement is no longer the golden dream,” said Kushel. “A lot of the working poor are destined to retire onto the streets.”
That’s especially true of younger baby boomers, now in their late 50s to late 60s, who don’t have pensions or 401(k) accounts. About half of both women and men ages 55 to 66 have no retirement savings, according to the census.
Born between 1946 and 1964, baby boomers now number over 70 million, the census shows. With the oldest boomers in their mid-70s, all will hit age 65 by 2030.
The aged homeless also tend to have smaller Social Security checks after years working off the books. A third of some 900 older homeless people in Phoenix said in a recent survey they have no income at all.
Teresa Smith, CEO of the San Diego nonprofit Dreams for Change, said she’s also noticed the homeless population is trending older. The group operates two safe parking lots for people living in cars.
Susan, who stayed at one lot, spoke only if her last name wasn’t used because of the stigma surrounding homelessness.
The 63-year-old had kidney cancer while caring for her mother, then lost their two-bedroom apartment after her mom died. The cancer is now in remission.
Susan slept in her car with her dog at one of the gated parking lots that provide a bathroom, showers and a shared refrigerator and microwave.
She was stunned to see a man in his 80s living in a car there, calling it “just wrong.”
But residents enjoyed the community, grilling meals together and even surprising one in their group with a birthday cake.
Dreams for Change recently helped Susan get a one-bedroom apartment with a housing voucher after months of waiting.
With a washer and dryer, patio, dishwasher and bathtub, “I feel like I’m at the Ritz,” she said.
Donald Whitehead Jr., executive director of the Washington-based advocacy group National Coalition for the Homeless, said that seeing older people sleep in cars and abandoned buildings should worry everyone.
“We now accept these things that we would have been outraged about just 20 years ago,” said Whitehead.
Whitehead said Black, Latino and Indigenous people who came of age in the 1980s amid recession and high unemployment rates are disproportionately represented among the homeless.
Many nearing retirement never got well-paying jobs and didn’t buy homes because of discriminatory real estate practices.
“So many of us didn’t put money into retirement programs, thinking that Social Security was going to take care of us,” said Rudy Soliz, 63, operations director for Justa Center, which offers meals, showers, a mail drop and other services to the aged homeless in Phoenix.
The average monthly Social Security retirement payment as of December was $1,658. Many older homeless people have much smaller checks because they worked fewer years or earned less than others.
People 65 and over with limited resources and who didn’t work enough to earn retirement benefits may be eligible for Supplemental Security Income of $841 a month.
Finocchio said limited contributions were made for her into Social Security and Medicare because most of her jobs were off the books in telephone sales or watering office plants.
“The programs approved by Congress to prevent destitution among the elderly and the disabled are not working,” said Dennis Culhane, a University of Pennsylvania professor who led the 2019 study of the aging homeless in New York, Boston and Los Angeles County. “And the problem is only going to get worse.”
Jennifer Molinsky, project director for the Aging Society Program at Harvard University’s Joint Center for Housing Studies, agreed the federal government must do more to ensure older Americans are better housed.
“The younger boomers were hit especially hard in the Great Recession, many losing their homes close to retirement,” Molinsky said.
‘We need more dignified, safer and comfortable places for our seniors’
Longer-term shelters specifically for older people are helping get some off the streets at least temporarily.
The Arizona Department of Housing last year provided a $7.5 million block grant for the state’s largest shelter to buy an old hotel to temporarily house up to 170 older people without a place to stay. The city of Phoenix kicked in $4 million for renovations.
CEO Lisa Glow of Central Arizona Shelter Services, which runs the state’s biggest shelter in downtown Phoenix, said the hotel is expected to open by year’s end.
Residents will stay around 90 days while caseworkers help find permanent housing
“We need more dignified, safer and comfortable places for our seniors,” said Glow, noting that physical limitations make it difficult for older people at the 500-bed shelter downtown.
Nestor Castro, 67, was luckier than many who lose permanent homes.
Castro was in his late 50s living in New York when his mother died and he was hospitalized with bleeding ulcers, losing their apartment. He initially stayed with his sister in Boston, then for more than three years at a YMCA in Cambridge, Massachusetts.
Just before last Christmas, Castro got a permanent subsidized apartment through Hearth Inc., a Boston nonprofit dedicated to ending homelessness among older adults. Residents pay 30% of their income to stay in one if Hearth’s 228 units.
Castro pays with part of his Social Security check and a part-time job. He also volunteers at a food pantry and a nonprofit that assists people with housing.
“Housing is a big problem around here because they are building luxury apartments that no one can afford,” he said. “A place down the street is $3,068 a month for a studio.”
Hearth Inc. CEO Mark Hinderlie said far more housing needs to be built and made affordable for the aged, especially now as the numbers of graying homeless people surge.
“It’s cheaper to house people than leave them homeless,” Hinderlie said. “You have to rethink what housing can be.”
Janie Har in Marin County, California, and Christopher Weber in Los Angeles contributed to this report.
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More seniors are becoming homeless, and experts say the trend is likely to worsen
By Hannah Grabenstein
PBS News Hour Nation
March 3, 2023
MEMPHIS, Tenn. On a chilly January morning, Tony Thomas stopped by a small house with the hopes of picking up some breakfast and coffee.
That Thursday, dozens of people were milling around in near-freezing weather in the backyard of Manna House, a nonprofit serving the local unhoused population. They waited for showers, clothes or hygiene kits, which included toothpaste, lotion, socks and hand warmers. Others ate or sipped coffee with powdered creamer and sugar. Most tried to keep warm, including Thomas, who wasn’t wearing gloves.
At 50, Thomas and many of the other people at Manna House, are part of a growing cohort of homeless older Americans, though he is on the younger side of that trend. As baby boomers age into senior citizens, a series of recessions and the lack of a strong social safety net have pushed more and more elderly people into homelessness - a number thats only expected to rise.
Thomas said he had had a relatively normal life in Memphis. He was born in the city and moved back after getting a cooking certificate in North Carolina. He has two grown children, who live out of state, and he had a good job as a chef at a restaurant in a Memphis suburb. But after pleading guilty to aggravated assault in 2016, he served six years in prison, upending his life.
When he was released in Jan. 2022, he was 49 years old and everything had changed. A felony conviction made it nearly impossible for him to find work, and many of the people he could have stayed with had died while he was incarcerated.
A year later, Thomas is still homeless, he told the PBS NewsHour.
There is no current federal data on homelessness disaggregated by age, except for the Department of Housing and Urban Development’s YEARLY REPORTS, which differentiate between youth, considered age 25 and younger, and adults.
But experts in homelessness note that the average age of sample unhoused populations on community levels has risen over the past four decades.
Thomas’ grown daughter lives many hours south in Alabama and has suggested her father stay with her, but he doesn’t want to impose on her family. Plus, he said, he worries about unpredictable Alabama weather, like tornadoes and hurricanes.
Though Thomas carries nearly all his belongings in a small backpack and regularly sleeps on the street, hes devoted to his neatness, shaving his graying beard regularly and keeping his skin moisturized with donated lotion. The fleece he wears under a well-maintained leather jacket matches his ear warmers, and his sneakers are a bright, clean blue - his favorite color.
At Manna House, co-founder and co-director Peter Gathje serves as many people as possible during their limited hours, often seeing the same crowd Monday and Thursday mornings for breakfast, showers and warmth, and Monday evenings for takeaway dinners. The other days of the week, unhoused people rely on other nonprofits for food or supplies, guests at Manna House told the NewsHour.
Gathje said he’s seen the average age of his guests increase over the 17 years the organization has been open.
|Some of that might just be that everybody who was on the streets when they were 40 or 50 is still on the streets. But we do see new people. And of course a lot of our guests who were in their 40s and 50s are dead,” Gathje said.
A problem on the rise
In 2004, Dr. Margot Kushel, director of UCSF’s Center for Vulnerable Populations and Benioff Homelessness and Housing Initiative, and her colleagues compared the populations of homeless individuals over time using historical data from studies of people in San Francisco with HIV and AIDS. They discovered that among unhoused single adults without children, the percentage older than 50 had INCREASED FROM 11 PERCENT in 1990 to around 37 percent in 2003.
In subsequent studies, Kushe’s research group found that number has risen to about 50 percent today.
Elderly homelessness has been rare within the contemporary homeless problem. We’ve always had very few people over 60 whove been homeless historically. But of course that’s changed as this group has come in. It’s now arguably the fastest rising group,” said Dennis Culhane, professor of social policy at the University of Pennsylvania.
The vast majority of homeless adults are white, but when weighted for demographics, people of color are disproportionately represented among unhoused populations.
According to the 2022 STATE OF HOMELESSNESS REPORT by the National Alliance to End Homelessness, although 18 out of every 10,000 Americans are homeless, that number jumps to 52 for Black Americans, 45 for Native Americans and a whopping 109 for Pacific Islanders.
The ballooning population of older homeless people is composed largely of YOUNGER BABY BOOMERS, who endured the recessions of the late 1970s and early 1980s as well as the Great Recession in 2008.
In 1983, young Black men in their 20s had an unemployment rate of nearly 25 percent, Culhane noted in a 2019 report on rising elderly homelessness. The same report indicated that in New York City, Los Angeles County and Boston, the population of homeless people older than 65 will likely triple by 2030.
It’s this large group of people whose lives have been essentially thrown off track by the economy of the 80s. And there’s strong research that shows that if you don’t get into the labor market in your 20s, the odds that you will are very significantly diminished,” Culhane said.
There’s no single reason for the rise in the older homeless population. Weak social safety nets, mass incarceration policies and an insufficient supply of affordable housing are among the many factors, according to Kushel, Culhane and other experts.
Unlike many other intractable social issues, the phenomenon of people having nowhere to go is relatively new, Culhane said. Fifty years ago, indigent people often lived in low-income housing in areas like Skid Row in Los Angeles, the Bowery in New York City and the red-light district in Boston, Culhane said. While often unsafe or unclean, they were still homes, with walls and a roof.
But beginning in the 1980s, with rising unemployment, a deepening recession and a shift away from the construction of affordable housing, many low-income people often Black and Hispanic - started to drift into homelessness. Urban renewal revitalized downtowns that once housed many of the area’s poorer people, and the nation’s supply of affordable housing dwindled.
Experts the PBS NewsHour spoke with disagree on the extent to which President Ronald Reagan’s policies impacted the current crisis of elderly homelessness, but all agree his administration played at least some part. Among the contributing factors was the era’s anti-welfare rhetoric, which demonized people relying on the nation’s social safety net, Culhane said. That social perspective was political red meat for Republican politicians, who spent the next decade-plus constricting it.
Under Reagan’s policies, the nation’s affordable housing supply began to shrink. Today, 73 percent of extremely low-income renters defined as households whose incomes are at or below the poverty line or 30 percent of their area’s median income PAY MORE THAN HALF THEIR INCOME FOR HOUSING, according to the Center on Budget and Priority Policies.
According to the National Low Income Housing Coalition, across the country, there are only 36 affordable and available rental homes for every 100 extremely low-income renter households. Some states, such as Nevada and California, have fewer than 25 affordable rental homes available for every 100 extremely low-income renter households; only nine states have more than 50 available for every 100 households.
In total, more than 1.7 million extremely low-income renter households with an older adult spend more than half of their income on rent and utilities, according to a 2021 brief from Justice in Aging.
“This is a Reagan-era problem, but we haven’t fixed it since,” said Eric Tars, legal director at the National Homelessness Law Center. “It has been 40 years since Reagan was in office. He, and the Congress at that point, were the ones who cut the affordable housing budget by more than half. But then every subsequent Congress never made up that gap. And it hasn"t been made up at the state or local level.”
There are other direct and indirect reasons for homelessness. The federal government’s Supplemental Security Income, or SSI, is insufficient for many people and difficult to qualify for, Culhane said. It also has not increased commensurate with inflation, even with cost of living increases, he added.
“Many people who are low-income also have network impoverishment,” Tars said. “It’s not just that they are poor, but so are many others in their familial and social circles. People at risk of experiencing homelessness are less likely to have people who can provide personal safety nets for them.”
“Older people are also more likely to experience health issues, which can lead to medical debt,” Tars noted.
“The rise in elderly homelessness,” he said, “is not the result of individual bad choices people are making.”
“This is an injury, this is a chronic illness, because people are old, and our social safety net isn’t catching those people,” Tars said.
Lower life expectancies
Medical issues don’t just cause homelessness; they can also be the result of being unhoused. Homelessness places an enormous burden on people’s bodies, research shows, with experts often saying unhoused people are more biologically similar to housed people who are 10 to 20 years older.
In her research, Kushel has found that among the unhoused population who are 50 and older, about half had been homeless at some point before they were 50, while the other half were homeless for the first time like Thomas.
The latter group typically had worked their whole lives, she said, hovering around the poverty level but always with housing. But a combination of a few life changes forced them from their homes. These events included losing a job, getting sick, a spouse or partner getting sick, separation from a partner, or the death of a partner or parent.
And for those who first become homeless after 50, life expectancies can be even worse than the already early death rate for the general elderly homeless population.
In her research of unhoused people older than 50 in Oakland, California, Kushel found that their median age of death was 64. Compared to the general Oakland population and adjusted for age, the mortality rate for homeless people was 3.5 times higher, according to one of Kushelҗs studies.
Theres evidence that the wave of elderly homeless people will crest around 2030, Culhane said, and then it will start to recede, largely due to the deaths of people in the boomer generation.
A shortage of support
“Manna House serves around 250 people weekly,” Gathje estimated. There aren’t a lot of spaces for community for people without homes, he added.
The vast majority of people are so motivated to get out [of homelessness], they want desperately to get out, and what they need is a little help. And so we’re not talking about a population that cant be helped,” Culhane said. No, “this is a group of people who resoundingly demonstrate that they want the hell out of this hell that they’re living in. And we need to stand beside them and support them in their own self-determination and their own basic survival instinct.”
Thomas knows that feeling. He doesn’t want to be homeless, but he sees no way out. In the year he’s been homeless, he’s found that without a steady source of income, he has nowhere to turn. He wants to work, he said.
Being homeless is tough for Thomas, and scary. When he has wifi, he’ll watch the news on the cracked screen of his cell phone so he knows what areas to avoid. Hes heard of people getting harassed or attacked, he said, and he feels that because homeless people have nowhere to go, they’re easy prey for those who might harm them.
Around 10 a.m., Manna House started closing up for the day. Folks in the heated tent in the backyard grabbed their coffee and their belongings and made their way out front. They would head off to nearby churches, or parks where other food was being given away, or like Thomas, they’d ride the bus until the evening, trying to stay warm.
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Tuesday, June 20, 2023
My Pearle Vision Visit
I visited the optometrist in back of the neighborhood Pearle Vision, paid my copay, and walked to the front of the store with a prescription for eyeglasses.
Expecting to walk out with a new pair of TRANSITION bifocals WITHOUT THE LINES, Pearle Vision wanted $368 after insurance ($750 street) for one pair of those things in a cheap $100 frame.
Insurance covers up to $120 for frames, so the high out of pocket price is all lense.
I don’t have that kind of money, so got a a cheap, plastic, no tint, no fancy bifocal, pair of lenses for a reasonable $25 copay instead.
Why so expensive for the transitions or fancy POLYCARBONATE lenses?
This place EXPLAINS:
Pearle vision, along with most other well-known eyeglasses stores, is owned by a huge company that owns major brand names. This means they have a lack of competition which would usually drive prices down.
You may think that the cost of the frames and lenses is what drives up the prices of a pair of glasses. But in fact, that isnt true. Frames are usually made where many other products are made, in China. Having things made in China is much cheaper than anywhere else.
Luxottica is a giant Italian company that owns most major optical retailers and even major brand names. Now that Luxottica own the big stores, they can keep their prices high since there’s no competition to drive their prices down.
Luxottica seem to own most of the eyewear market and even owns a lot of vision insurance. They own the vision insurance plan EyeMed Vision Care and even the online store EyeBuyDirect.
Some online eyewear retailers are considerably cheaper, and the quality of their eyeglasses is just as good as those sold at major stores such as Pearle Vision.
On the way home, I stopped off at CVS and bought a THREE PACK of scratch resistant reading glasses for about $20.
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Sunday, June 11, 2023
The Kids Are Not Allright III
Mak, 31, grew up in Westchester, graduated from the University of Chicago and toiled in publishing in New York during his 20s before moving to Baltimore last year with a meager part-time blogging job and prospects for little else. About half of his friends in Baltimore have been getting food stamps since the economy toppled, so he decided to give it a try; to his delight, he qualified for $200 a month.
- Hipsters on Food Stamps, 2012
CONSERVATIVES are forever preaching about family values, but their job-destroying, anti-worker policies have made it harder and harder for young people to put down roots and reach the level of stability required for long-term relationships and children.
- Layoff, Love and Insecurity, 2012
Day-to-day, the single-most intimidating OBSTACLE I face is not the unemployment rate or another round of hapless job interviews, but ATTACHING AN IDENTITY to THE MAN I make eye contact with each morning in the vanity mirror.
- Trials of a Stay-at-Home Boyfriend, 2012
White, non-urban, non-college educated men have the slowest wage growth in every demographic category…
- Inequality 2020
· Men account for over 75 percent of suicides, and the rate of male suicide has risen in recent decades.
· The statistics suggest that existing approaches to male suicide are deficient.
· New, male-friendly suicide prevention measures must be adopted to help halt the crisis.
- The Silent Crisis of Male Suicide, Psychology Today, 2021---
The Boys Of America Are Suffering - How Can We Help Them?
By John Mac Ghlionn
The Epoch Times
June 6, 2023
Contrary to POPULAR BELIEF, the patriarchy doesn’t rule with an iron fist. Nevertheless, for some perverse reason, the myth of male privilege still persists. Today, only a fool could LOOK AROUND and honestly say that we live in a man’s world. Every 13.7 MINUTES, somewhere in the United States, a man takes his own life. For every female that commits suicide, there are four men ending their own lives. Millions of boys and men lead lives of quiet desperation, rotting away inside SELF-IMPOSED PRISON CELLS.
What should these men do? See a medical doctor, perhaps? Maybe visit a psychologist?
As I’ve noted before, the fields of MEDICINEand PSYCHOLOGY are, like the men of America, also in crisis. This isnҒt to say that all doctors and all psychologists offer nothing of value, of course. This is to say that the institutions creating the doctors and psychologists of tomorrow are, for lack of a better word, damaged.
In the field of psychology, as the science writer Rolf Degen RECENTLY NOTED, approximately 1 in every 10 citations “across leading psychology journals is completely inaccurate, misrepresenting or even contradicting the cited findings.” Still reeling from the effects of the much-discussed REPLICATION CRISIS, psychology now has a crisis of reputation to wrestle with. To compound matters, the American Psychological Association (APA), the main accreditor for professional education and training in psychology, has, for years, DEMONIZED MASCULINITY, labeling admirable qualities such as stoicism and competitiveness “psychologically harmful.”
As the psychologist Christopher J. Ferguson, a man who has been VERY CRITICAL of the APA in the past, told me, the APA’s “controversial position on men and masculinity is part of a larger problem of ideological capture for the APA, as it increasingly parrots far-left talking points, rather than educating people on the often messy and nuanced science.”
Sadly, he added, the APA “really stopped functioning as a science organization a long time ago, and its current disparagement of traditional men, in the absence of good data, should properly be viewed as prejudicial and unethical.”
Strong words. Ferguson, one of the few psychologists brave enough to stand up and speak out against the psychological establishment, knows that psychology, in its current form, isn’t fit for purpose.
If the men and boys of America can’t rely on doctors and psychologists for support, what should they do?
As Jordan Peterson’s success has shown us, many men, particularly young men, are looking to individuals rather than institutions for answers. However, as Peterson goes from being a public intellectual to a modern-day superhero intent on defeating the BAD GUYS IN DAVOS, young men are looking for new role models.
Enter Richard Reeves, an academic whose research focuses on issues pertaining to INEQUALITY AND SOCIAL MOBILITY. For years, Reeves has been held up as a “rational” voice, a strong representative for the boys and men of America. However, Reeves, who seems like a very decent man, is affiliated with the BROOKINGS INSTITUTION, a research group that The New York Times GLOWINGLY REFERS TO as “a pillar of Washington’s liberal establishment” and a “prestigious, left-leaning institution.” In other words, Reeves, like so many other researchers and commentators, is a slave to the liberal machine, the very same machine that has steamrolled over men for years.
In his latest book, OF BOYS AND MEN, Reeves goes to great lengths to praise FEMINISM and the feminist framework of intersectionality. More concerningly, Reeves appears to be rather fond of using the term “cis heterosexual,” instead of using a normal term like “straight.” Is a man who uses such terminology really capable of helping normal, everyday boys who are struggling to find meaning in their lives?
There’s also Matt Pinkett, the author of the brand new book, provocatively titled BOYS DO CRY. According to the British teacher and author, schools should provide “lessons in bromance” to address the mental health crisis among boys. However, like Reeves, Pinkett goes to great lengths to smuggle in trans-friendly jargon, even dedicating AN ENTIRE CHAPTER to the many ways in which masculinity overlaps with LGBTQ+ issues. Also, like Reeves, Pinkett places great emphasis on encouraging boys to be more vulnerable, to embrace the tears, and to cry with pride.
Although the two authors correctly identify the problems facing boys, their prescriptions leave a lot to be desired. ADAM LANE SMITH, a psychotherapist who has been commenting on the MASCULINITY CRISIS for years, told me that “the current education system is built to operate in a way counter to how most boys learn and thrive.”
“The research is clear,” he said, with “an increasing number of boys being diagnosed by teachers and school staff with attention issues.” “These teachers and staff, “added Smith, “then pressure parents to find a doctor to corroborate that diagnosis and immediately medicate the boy, or else he will be expelled.”
Even boys without violent tendencies are being pressured into medication or else they face expulsion, Smith told me. Part of this is due to the feminization of schools. In the United States, roughly 75 PERCENT of teachers are female. Many of these teachers, noted Smith, are overworked and “lack the mental energy required to deal with 30+ children for so many hours in a day; the boys will often stick out due to their higher testosterone behaviors.”
“Many of these female teachers also appear to struggle to engage with male students and consistently grade female students higher to encourage them,” said the specialist.
Smith appears to be right. Girls perform better when they’re taught by a female teacher; the same, however, isn’t true for boys.
As STUDIES SHOW, single-sex schooling and especially more hands-on school approaches prove that supposedly “problematic” boys can thrive in environments suitable to their mental functioning. Most teachers learn how to “deal” with boys through various training sessions and workshops. As Smith noted, “many of these sessions and workshops have, in recent times, shifted to encourage teachers to view natural boy behaviors and energy levels as problematic to the profession.”
“Boys," he contends, are now a liability to be managed and pushed through the system as the teachers focus their energies on uplifting and empowering the girls.”
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Monday, May 01, 2023
Assisted Suicide For Mental Suffering
In JAPAN, some people see SUICIDE as an honorable way of taking responsibility for lives gone sour.
- Turning Japanese, 2005
Losing the will to live is not always standing on a ledge. It’s not always being in crisis mode (for me anyway). It’s a dull ache in my chest that weighs me down constantly. I might laugh or appear normal, but that ache to disappear is there, underneath.
- What It Feels Like to Lose the Will to Live, The Mighty, 2023
... nonfatal suicidal behavior is associated with femininity, whereas suicide is associated with the masculine. Thus, surviving a suicide attempt is perceived as particularly inappropriate behavior for males, suggesting that suicide takes courage
- Depression and the Silent Male, Ellyroseblog, 2022
Debt is a huge mental health burden. According to research presented by The Aspen Institute 16 percent of suicides in the United States occur in response to a financial problem… The cumulative loss to global GDP over 2020 and 2021 from the pandemic crisis could be around 9 trillion dollars, greater than the economies of Japan and Germany, combined.
- The Impact Of Covid-19 On Suicide Rates, Psycom, 2021
I’ve THOUGHT about and WRITTEN about SUICIDE so many times, that it’s HARD TO DECIDE if I’m a whiner like teenagers that slit their wrists for attention, or deserve a medal for fighting the urge to kill myself year after year.
- Lost All Hope, 2018
In 2019, poverty was associated with more than 10 times as many deaths as homicide, 4.7 times as many deaths as firearms, 3.9 times as many as suicide, and 2.6 times as many as drug overdose.
- Novel Estimates of Mortality Associated With Poverty in the US, April 17. 2023---
Medical Assistance in Dying Should Not Exclude Mental Illness
By Clancy Martin
New York Times
April 21, 2023
My first attempt to kill myself was when I was a child. I tried again as a teenager; as an adult, Ive attempted suicide repeatedly and in a variety of ways. And yet, as a 55-year-old white man (a member of one of the groups at the highest risk for suicide in America) and the happily married father of five children, I am thankful that I am incompetent at killing myself.
I believe that almost every suicide can be prevented, including my own, with access to GOOD BEHAVIORAL HEALTH SYSTEMS. I have talked many, many people “off the ledge.”
I am a Canadian, where eligible adults have had the legal right to request medical assistance in dying (MAID) since June 2016. ACCEPTANCE OF MAID has been spreading, and it is now legal in almost a dozen countries and 10 U.S. states and Washington, D.C. To my mind, this is moral progress: When a person is in unbearable physical agony, suffering from a terminal disease, and death is near, surely it is compassionate to help end the pain, if the person so chooses.
But a debate has arisen in Canada because the law was written to include those living with severe, incurable mental illness. This part of the law was meant to take effect this year but was recently POSTPONED until 2024.
Many people who want to end their lives because of intense mental suffering find themselves grateful for their lives once the suicidal moment or attempt has passed. As Ken Baldwin, who survived a suicide attempt by leaping off the Golden Gate Bridge, famously REMARKED, “I instantly realized that everything in my life that I’d thought was unfixable was totally fixable - except for having just jumped.”
One might expect that as someone who has repeatedly attempted suicide and yet is happy to be alive, I am opposed to euthanasia on psychiatric grounds. But it is because of my intimacy with suicide that I believe people must have this right.
It’s true that policymakers, psychiatrists and medical ethicists must treat requests for euthanasia on psychiatric grounds with particular care, because we dont understand mental illness as well as we do physical illness. However, the difficulty of understanding extreme psychological suffering is in fact a reason to endorse a prudent policy of assisted suicide for at least some psychiatric cases. When people are desperate for relief from torment that we do not understand well enough to effectively treat, giving them the right and the expert medical assistance to end that misery is caring for them.
Canada’s MAID law recognizes that people suffering from extreme depression, for example, may find no other means to end their agony. Approximately one-third of people coping with major depressive disorder have symptoms that do not reliably respond to available treatments. If you know there is no medically sanctioned way out of your mental pain, you may be likely to take matters into your own hands. Major depression is one of the psychiatric diagnoses most common to suicidal people, and approximately two-thirds of people who die by suicide are depressed at the time of their death. Yet any of us can commit suicide - and currently it is an epidemic.
A panel of experts has recommended safeguards and protocols for requests for aid in dying made by people with mental illness. Should MAID’s extension to those suffering acute mental pain follow the Canadian model, patients will be able to make their case to two health care practitioners, who must agree that their illness is “grievous and irremediable.” This is far preferable to the messy, difficult, terrifying job of trying to do it yourself. The suicidal person’s involvement in a behavioral health setting that can give a variety of kinds of help might result in rethinking the desire to die. Suicidal ideation can consume the lives of those who live with it. By interrupting or complicating the habitual patterns of chronic suicidal ideation, the prospect of relief through MAID could, paradoxically, ease the need for ending ones own life.
As Dese’Rae L. Stage, a therapist and suicide-awareness advocate, told me, “This is one time that bureaucracy might actually save lives.” While the Canadian application for physician-assisted suicide is being reviewed, treatment and reflection can take place. Also, the knowledge that there is a way out may alleviate the terrifying claustrophobia so common to suicidal people like me and to people in acute suffering more generally. Pain can make anyone panic.
When people are granted the right to end their lives with medical help, they may opt not to use it. People should be granted the right to this assistance. It does not follow they will exercise that right.
I agree entirely with Andrew Solomon when he writes, “It is up to each man to set limits on his own tortures.” That is the compassionate wisdom informing every law permitting medical assistance in dying. If we are willing to help people end their physical suffering by assisting their death, can we in good conscience deny them that help for their mental suffering? As psychiatrists like Dr. Justine Dembo of the University of Toronto have argued, “excluding mental suffering from MAID would discriminate against individuals suffering intolerably from mental illness.”
Yes, we need wise regulation; we need expert advice; we need the best medical information: This is precisely why physicians who specialize in this must be involved, and Canada has these experts. Must Canada, and other countries with similar policies permitting MAID on psychiatric grounds, like Belgium and the Netherlands, continue to proceed with the utmost care, with the advice of appropriate behavioral health and ethical experts? Of course. Should we be especially cautious when it comes to cases involving anyone about whose informed consent we have concerns, such as minors or the disabled? Of course. But this is how any enlightened health care policy must proceed.
Suicidal people suffering from psychological torture should have the right to consult a medical expert about medical assistance in taking their own lives and be given that assistance if their need is justified. Having terrified or anguished people in acute mental suffering ending their pain by the many means available to them, often resulting not in death but in terrible physical injury, is much worse, and its happening every day.
If you are having thoughts of suicide, call or text 988 to reach the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline or go to HERE for a list of additional resources.
About the author: Mr. Martin is professor of philosophy at the University of Missouri in Kansas City and Ashoka University in New Delhi, and the author of “How Not to Kill Yourself.”
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Wednesday, March 29, 2023
I Give Up
“Losing your job at 50 or 60 is not good for your health,” says William Gallo, a research scientist at Yale University’s School of Medicine in New Haven. “There is compelling evidence that no matter who you compare the older job loser to, he or she does worse physically and mentally.”
- Some Words About Stress
The pain from the pandemic will last years. For current and aspiring retirees, it may last even longer. Commonsense reforms to our nation’s retirement system will not completely heal the wounds, but we can take steps now to ease the pain.
- Boomers And The Pandemic---
It’s been about 20 years since loosing my career at AT&T.
I never financially, emotionally or spiritually recovered, and abandoned hope of a happy retirement, but I am collecting social security that covers part of my monthly expenses, and still have some money stuffed under the mattress, explaining why me and this website are still around.
It’s not like I’ve been jobless the past two decades - but none of them PAID WELL like my old AT&T tech job.
Today good jobs are replaced by the gig economy.
Across America, TEMPORARY WORK has become a MAINSTREAM of the economy, leading to the proliferation of what researchers have begun to call “temp towns.”
EMPLOYMENT IS THE ESSENTIAL ELEMENT OF SOCIAL STATUS, said the public-health researcher M. Harvey Brenner in 2002, the year he authored a major study that showed that unemployment is associated with a greater risk of death. “When that is taken away, people become susceptible to depression, cardiovascular disease, AIDS, and many other illnesses that increase mortality.” But a NEW STUDY complicates the idea that literally any job is better than no job, at least when it comes to health outcomes. Instead, some jobs might only exacerbate chronic stress - and in the long run, disease.
Last year I threw in the towel, and STOPPED LOOKING for work. It’s NOT because I’m afraid of catching COVID. It’s because I’m tired of striking out. Two years of looking.
Things are no different today then during the great recession when THIS GUY wrote ALI VELSHI at CNN:
In an interview, he says that he tells himself: “Bud, you’ve had a good life. You’ve had a good 55 years. Why not end it now? Why spend the last 15 to 20 years of my life in total poverty when I’ve already had it so good up to a certain point? Why ruin a good life by ending it so badly?”
Or THIS GUY:
I’M TIRED OF THE STRUGGLE, the MEANINGLESS attempts to find gainful employment - to sell myself to others who AREN’T INTERESTED. I feel FOOLISH FOR EVEN TRYING now. When does one finally realize that NOBODY WANTS YOU? Just like all my other complaints, my job applications were falling on deaf ears. What a terrible waste of precious time. I wish I had the last two years of my life again - I would have done things so much differently.
I wonder if either of them survived the great recession, or just disappeared?
Ever wonder what it must feel like working in a modern day sweat shop? Those were my CALL CENTER jobs after 2012. Low pay, dead-end jobs. But that’s all I could find in our SERVICE ECONOMY.
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It’s been a long road dealing with the depression, but I’ve learned a lot about the job market, people, government, and myself along the way.
One would think that posting your SUICIDE INTENTIONS on the internet would get some compassion from your friends, but sometimes what you get is THE OPPOSITE.
It’s understandable as one moves from middle-class to poor some aquaintences will drift away - like your lunch pals, or bowling league buddies after you quit the team - but I didn’t expect real close friends. Some actually yelled at me, or asked me not to TALK ABOUT IT. Those are the idiots that after I do pull the plug on myself - will probably say something like “I had no idea he was that messed up in his head. If only he would have said something.”
For awhile I tried to FAKE BEING NORMAL like this lady:
She is in your friendship circle, hidden in plain sight. She is 55, broke and tired of trying to keep up appearances. Faking normal is wearing her out. To look at her, you wouldn’t know that her electricity was cut off last week for non-payment or that she meets the eligibility requirements for food stamps. Her clothes are still impeccable, bought in the good times when she was still making money. IF YOU PAID ATTENTION, you would see the sadness in her eyes, hear that grace note of panic in her otherwise commanding voice… These days, she buys the $1.99 10-ounce “trial size” jug of Tide to make ends meet. You didn’t know laundry detergent came in that size… You invite her to the same expensive restaurants the two of you have always enjoyed, but she orders mineral water with a twist of lemon, instead of the $12 glass of Chardonnay. She is frugal in her menu choices, meticulous, counting every penny in her head. She demurs dividing the table bill evenly to cover desserts, designer coffees and the second and third glasses of wine she didn’t drink.
Even marriages break up from financial stress, so I guess one shouldn’t be that surprised only loosing friends.
AMONG MEN WHO LOST THEIR JOBS, there was a 32 percent higher risk of divorce compared to those who were employed full-time, said the studys author, Alexandra Killewald, a professor of sociology at Harvard University.
SUICIDES ASSOCIATED WITH UNEMPLOYMENT totalled a nine-fold higher number of deaths than excess suicides attributed to the most recent economic crisis..
In 2013 I WROTE
FRIENDS rarely call, email, or show up to see how I’m doing. They know I need their support so bad. So why am I not moved to contact any of them? Because the feelings of inferiority turn to shame, and being absorbed in self-pity turns one selfish, envious and jealous at others’ good fortune.
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One thing I can tell you is the power of love can be transforming. Even for a single, broke, unemployed, suicidal, lonely, depressed senior like me.
One woman writes:
“I SURROUND MYSELF WITH PEOPLE WHO HELPED ME KEEP IT TOGETHER, so to speak, when I started to lose hope,” she said. “I have one friend, in particular, who I leaned on quite heavily. Without her, and the counseling, I’m not sure how I would have survived. My family was a great help also. My dad, especially.”
BRITTANY ERNSPERGER’S DEPRESSION and anxiety were so overwhelming she couldn’t even wash the dishes. The messy kitchen made her feel like a failure, which made finishing the dishes even more challenging.“I walked by them morning and night and all day long,” Ernsperger wrote in a Facebook post. “And just looked at them. Telling myself that I could do them. Telling myself that I would. And feeling defeated everyday that I didn’t.”
“This is what depression looks like. No. Not the clean dishes. But that there were that many dishes in the first place,” Ernsperger wrote in the post that has been shared more than 350,000 times and it has more than 17,000 comments since June 2018. “Three-days ago I sat on the kitchen floor and stared at them while I cried. I knew they needed to be done. I wanted to do them so bad. But depression pulled me under.”
As thousands of supportive reactions filtered in, Ernsperger experienced a new feeling: gratitude.
One of my two friends left came over a couple of times and helped me clean the kitchen. Even brought his own mop and bucket. He’s THE GUY I met at Sprint when we were both WORKING AS TEMPS. Like getting hit with a bolt of lightning and having a NADIR EXPERIENCE, my depression lifted temporarily for a couple of weeks from that show of compassion. I felt so grateful.
TRUE EMPATHY inspires what sociologists call instrumental aid. There are any number of tasks to be done, and they’re as personal as your thumbprint
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As INEQUALITY keeps getting worse, GOVERNMENT and mainstream news may not be reporting WHAT’S REALLY GOING ON.
Whatever they say about good jobs being plentiful is a load of crap, and the low unemployment numbers that headline the news are an insult to anyone that CAN’T FIND WORK.
EVEN IN SOME of the hottest labor markets in the country - let alone lagging rural regions and former industrial powerhouses - workers, including skilled ones like Ms. Ward, say they cannot find jobs that provide a middle-class income and don’t come with an expiration date.
It’s bad enough being discriminated for being OLD, but now I can add anti-vaccer to my resume.
I’m not planning on getting any of the COVID shots.
COMPLAINTS of [vaccine] complications were ignored and despite promises by Pfizer that all medical expenses caused by the vaccines would be paid by Pfizer, these individuals stated that none were paid. Some medical expenses exceed 100,000 dollars.
Some employers - even though they feign they CAN’T FIND WORKERS - won’t hire antivaccers.
I think we can give President Biden some credit for that.
JOE BIDEN, unhappy with how many Americans were still unvaccinated, called the continued spread of the coronavirus a “pandemic of the unvaccinated.” The narrative was simple: Get vaccinated and you won’t get sick. Don’t get vaccinated, and not only can you get sick, but you’ll be a threat to everybody else… But it was enormously divisive to the country. It was also factually incorrect.
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About 1/3 THE U.S. POPULATION IS UNVACCINATED FOR COVID.
I can only wonder what the number of people refused jobs for making the choice not to get the experimental covid drugs really is, and what BLS report they - and the the folks getting fired for not having shots - are on. The figure is nowhere to be found.
Closest I can find is THIS.
I’d be willing to bet both groups are counted in the overall NOT IN THE LABOR FORCE DOL and BLS reports - keeping headline unemployment numbers low.
Let’s not forget the aging boomers and how they fit in - working age is 16-65.
I’m sure that has something to do with the overall LABOR FORCE PARTICIPATION RATE but not convinced that explains why some of us are still looking (or gave up looking) for work.
OVERALL WORKER RATES are lower than they have been since the 1980s - and millions of workers who dropped out of the labor force during the COVID-19 lockdowns have yet to return. A peacetime labor shortage has erupted, yet vast numbers of men and women are still sitting on the sidelines of the economy.
ACROSS THE COUNTRY, employers are firing workers for refusing to comply with vaccine mandates. Some people are opting to quit their jobs rather than take the shot.WHILE PILOTS WHO REFUSED to get “vaccinated” for the Wuhan coronavirus (Covid-19) were fired by JetBlue executives, Perrys was brought on to take their place despite having broken into the home of a judge and attacking and beating his daughter as she was leaving the shower.
Government mandated proof of vaccination for work may not be far away.
In New York last week:
BOTH HOUSES of the New York State Legislature have passed bills that could pave the way for future legislation that will make it mandatory for adults to report all vaccinations and vaccination refusals to a state database… There is strong concern among health freedom advocates that the state government could use this registry to track COVID-19 vaccination compliance, with organizations like the Informed Consent Action Network warning that such a scenario is already occurring in neighboring New York.
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The biggest trick in calculating unemployment numbers is moving people ”FROM “UNEMPLOYED” TO “NOT IN THE LABOR FORCE”” on BLS reports.
THE STANDARD UNEMPLOYMENT RATE equals the number of unemployed workers, divided by the available civilian labor force, at any given point in time.
JOBLESS PEOPLE are classified into one of two categories by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) - either unemployed or not in the labor force. To be classified as unemployed in the month they are surveyed, people must be actively looking for work. If they are not actively looking, they are classified as not in the labor force.
Gallup’s chairman JIM CLIFTON wrote a few years ago:
THE OFFICIAL UNEMPLOYMENTE RATE, as reported by the U.S. Department of Labor, is extremely misleading… If you, a family member or anyone is unemployed and has subsequently given up on finding a job - if you are so hopelessly out of work that you’ve stopped looking over the past four weeks—the Department of Labor doesn’t count you as unemployed… That’s right. While you are as unemployed as one can possibly be, and tragically may never find work again, you are not counted in the figure we see relentlessly in the news… There’s another reason why the official rate is misleading. Say you’re an out-of-work engineer or healthcare worker or construction worker or retail manager: If you perform a minimum of one hour of work in a week and are paid at least $20—maybe someone pays you to mow their lawn—you’re not officially counted as unemployed… Yet another figure of importance that doesn’t get much press: those working part time but wanting full-time work. If you have a degree in chemistry or math and are working 10 hours part time because it is all you can find—in other words, you are severely underemployed—the government doesn’t count you [as unemployed]
There’s no other way to say this. The official unemployment rate, which cruelly overlooks the suffering of the long-term and often permanently unemployed as well as the depressingly underemployed, amounts to a Big Lie.
The other big trick is messing with the “household” and “establishment” BLS surveys. Read all about it HERE:
a gaping 1+ million job differential had opened up between the closely-watched and market-impacting, if easily gamed and manipulated, Establishment Survey and the far more accurate if volatile, Household Survey - the two core components of the monthly non-farm payrolls report
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Although medicare eligible, I can’t afford it, and even if I could, the coverage is PRETTY BAD for its $164.90/month premium.
Although the inpatient (part a) part of of medicare is free, a hospital stay is $1,600 copay. Over 60 days they add a few hundred a day to your bill.
Outpatient - doctors and things outside a hospital (part b) - the $164.90 part/month - covers 80% of whatever it is they decide to cover - but doesn’t include your head (eyes, ears, teeth) or drugs (part d).
For an extra few hundred dollars a month, you can buy SUPPLEMENTARY INSURANCE from corporate America to cover some or all of the out-of-pocket expenses. Figure $400 - $500/month total for reasonable coverage.
The absolute worst part of medicare is - if you can’t afford don’t apply for its $165/month premium when first turning 65, a 10% penalty is added for every year you wait, and it’s compounded, so wait two years means 20% penalty forever.
How cruel is that?
The government and corporate America have another thing (part c) called MEDICARE ADVANTAGE. It’s an alternative to medicare totally run and managed by the insurance companies. Some plans may give back part of the ($165/month medicare) deductable, but 99% of the ones I found costs extra.
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The great recession hurt a lot of people, and a lot of stories here spotlight their suffering.
2008
“IT WAS A REAL EYE OPENER to see the caliber of people we were in line withvery EDUCATED with vast skill sets,” Easton said in an e-mail. Afterwards, we went to the restaurant located in the same hotel and it was filled with unemployed professionals sharing their story, from engineers to graphic designers to marketing professionals"… Across the nation, people like Easton are feeling the pinch. Good jobs have EVAPORATED. Former full-time employees are now working part-time contract positions just to get by.
2014
I’M NOT SURE WHAT’S WORSE. never having a career and family or losing them both. I know that when i got the honor of handing 20 years of hard work to the chinese it plunged me in to despair and a horrible spin. 3 years later and a college degree and ive lost my home and my family over it. and all i got was, you could have, you should have. so its all my fault that someone elses greed caused all this. by the way the corporate CEO that did this makes 7 million bucks a year. she caused 2 divorces. a dozen early forced retirements, countless career losses and multiple wrecked families. Im lucky i still have my RV which is home now. i used to have a nice 4 bedroom house with all the middle class trimmings. now i consider myself lucky to have a job where i barely make the space rent and no hope of recovering my former career or my family. i had it all and lost it so i dont know whats worse having or never having it at all and pining for it. either way it hurts knowing that no one wants you after you fall apart you’re just a hot potato. all i know is that im lost with no hope with a clean 30 year work history thats now moot. in retrospect i wish i had stayed in the saddle and kept riding my motorcycle till i was no more.
2016
”UNLESS A MIRACLE HAPPENS” Joe will likely live in his 2001 Chevrolet Venture minivan by the summer. He removed the seats in the back to make space for a sleeping bag, his laptop and some clothes.
2022
APPLICANTS SAY they’re being ghosted by recruiters, having their resumes eliminated by applicant tracking systems (ATS), and struggling to find remote work opportunities. At the same time, unemployment benefits have been cut off.
By the end of September, Holz had sent out 60 applications, received 16 email responses, four follow-up phone calls, and [one] solitary interview.
This year (besides the usual crap of a hot economy from lying politicians) layoffs are ALL OVER THE PLACE.
IT APPEARS that the tsunami of layoffs that started late last year is starting to accelerate. January was a horrible month for job losses, and major layoff announcements are coming fast and furious here in February. But of course the Biden administration would have us believe that everything is just fine. Last week, the government told us that “the U.S. economy added 517,000 jobs” in January. But as I discussed in previous videos that wasn’t what actually happened. The raw, unadjusted number showed that the U.S. economy actually lost 2.5 million jobs last month. That is a terrible number, but after the bureaucrats in Washington were done with their “adjustments” it magically became a gain of 517,000 jobs.
A WAVE OF LAYOFFS that hit dozens of US companies toward the end of 2022 shows no sign of slowing down into 2023… The layoffs have primarily affected the tech sector, which is now hemorrhaging employees at a faster rate than at any point during the pandemic
Just yesterday:
DISNEY is eliminating its metaverse unit as part of its plan to lay off 7,000 workers that will save the company billions of dollars.
The ruling and capitalist class must must be LAUGHING at people like me.
I was happy in my middle-class servitude. Which is exactly what the money-hungry EXPLOITERS of human labor want. And that includes government.
At the GATE TO AUSCHWITCZ is a sign that says “work makes one free.”
Not me. Not anymore. The OLIGARCHS are TOO GREEDY, and took TOO MUCH - including my PENSION MONEY.
Remember what Churchill SAID, “Never let a good crisis go to waste” - today meaning the COVID SCARE, UKRAINE WAR, END OF AMERICAN HEDGEMONY, and WORLD WAR THREE.
Whatever they’re planning next for the NEW WORD ORDER, God help our kids.
I wish they sold suicide pills over the counter - something guaranteed to work quick and painless.
Take the pill, go to bed, and don’t wake up.
The light in my heart went out years ago. Now I’m really tired.
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