Forum Post: If you're still shouting "GET A JOB!" at us this far into the movement...

...you need to slow yourself down and realize that that's not as simple as it was before the era of speculation and deregulation. What made a middle-class lifestyle possible for so many people during the 1950s and the 1960s was the wide range of jobs (especially blue-collar manufacturing jobs) that paid a stable middle-class salary. The rush to slash costs via outsourcing meant that said blue-collar manufacturing jobs went straight to China and India. At the same time, the drive by corporations to break unions meant that even those who kept their jobs often did so at greatly reduced salaries, meaning that one income (if you still had it) no longer did the trick. Sending women out into the workforce alleviated the situation to some degree because it doubled the income of a household; however that also effectively doubled the pool of qualified, talented workers that businesses could choose from. This economy would essentially need more jobs in order to keep pace with the expansion of the workforce, but continued outsourcing meant that the opposite was actually happening.

Here's the catch: every time we have one of these recessions our standard of living adjusts downward. During a recession, layoffs mean that you have an incredible surfeit of people who are fully qualified if not overqualified for most positions, but who are so desperate for a job that they'll take 30-40% pay cuts just to hold on. Some businesses will in fact lay off employees they need so that they can get someone else to take the job at half the wage rate or less. This then ratchets up the rat race a notch each time, as the same jobs now require more qualifications, work experience, degrees, etc. and pay less than they did before. Unlike employment rates, however, the new employment standards and pay schedules do not cycle back to pre-recession levels when the economy starts growing again.

That roof-tarring job your father picked up during college to make ends meet? He'd have no chance of getting it today because he's a US citizen and thus a) he has to be paid at least the federal minimum wage and most likely will make more because he's a skilled tradesmen and b) citizens have avenues for seeking redress in cases of worker abuse. Illegals don't. The same goes for most minimum wage jobs out there that he'd have the "qualifications" to get. If you tried to get one of those "zero-education" jobs right now they'd look you in the eye and refuse you for being overqualified; I actually had a friend looking for part-time jobs at clothing stores/fast food joints/etc. in her neighborhood (zero-education jobs all, because she's still only 18) and getting turned down. Why? She went to Bronx Science and only wants to work so she can provide her own spending money and help her parents cover her tuition.

What does this have to do with Wall Street? This last round of utterly asinine speculation and outright securities fraud triggered a really nasty recession, and when it ends employment rates will probably come back up to pre-recession levels, but wages for 90+ percent of the population won't unless we begin changing how large corporations do business. I'd much prefer such change came from an organized, well-funded political movement that demanded re-regulation of Wall Street, campaign finance/lobbying reform, and bona fide attempts to bring jobs back to America than from a protests movement as disorganized as OWS. That said, I've never been one to overlook possible vehicles for opportunity no matter how unlikely they appeared, and just because OWS is scruffy and disorganized doesn't mean they can't be useful.