Owning up to the Mirage of the Ownership Society

The ownership society, promoted to much fanfare during the early part of the decade by the administration and specifically George Bush, has been unraveling for the past couple of years. The changes that have been made, including taxing investment money differently than wages, subsidizing owners in certain sectors of the economy, loosening regulations, and stacking the courts with justices who are anti-labor and pro-owners, are beginning to show their effects. Of course, even among the suffering, there is a segment of the populace that takes comfort in religion, prayers for relief, and votes for more of the same. Folks should be aware that a Commander in Chief should lead the country and overcome internal challenges before showing "muscle" abroad.

A few recent articles shed some light on the transformations taking place in the country.

• A WSJ article "Help Wanted: Senior-Level Job, Junior Title, Pay" describes strategies being employed by companies to reduce their salary and benefit expenses. Companies first fire people, of course calling it "right sizing" or "reducing overhead." Now, some firms are not eliminating positions entirely, but are combining a mid-level position or senior position with a more junior one -- then advertising it as a junior slot and offering a lower salary. This allows the firm to get the work done, but effectively at a much lower cost. The article adds that "In other cases, more-senior persons are being hired, only to find that they are charged with handling both their own work and the tasks that once fell to subordinates." It should be pointed that this is quite separate from outsourcing, the phenomenon that has caused much angst as a source of job loss.
• According to a report released by Rutgers School of Management and Labor Relations, "more than 10 percent of Americans are unemployed, discouraged from seeking work or underemployed. That is a nearly 25-percent increase from one year earlier.
  Professor Douglas Kruse, a labor economist who created the scorecard, said a sharp decline in the number of Americans able to find full-time jobs, along with growing consumer debt and health care costs, were causes for concern." It should be noted that the report is based on data from BLS...the inventor of the birth-death fake jobs model.
  
• In a downright depressing article,"Hard Times Hitting Students and School," NYT reports that "With mortgage foreclosures throwing hundreds of families out of their homes here each month, dismayed school officials say they are feeling the upheaval: record numbers of students turning up for classes this fall are homeless or poor enough to qualify for free meals. “We’re seeing a lot more children in poverty,” said Lauren Roberts, spokeswoman for the Jefferson County school system, a 98,000-student district that includes Louisville and its suburbs. At the same time, the district is struggling with its own financial problems. Responding to a cut of $43 million by the state in education spending and to higher energy and other costs, school officials in Jefferson County have raised lunch prices, eliminated 17 buses by reorganizing routes, ordered drivers to turn off vehicles rather than letting them idle and increased property taxes. The Jefferson County system is typical this school year. As 50 million children return to classes across the nation, crippling increases in the price of fuel and food, coupled with the economic downturn, have left schools from California to Florida to Maine cutting costs. Some are trimming bus service, others are restricting travel, and a few are shortening the school week. And as many districts are forced to cut back, the number of poor and homeless students is rising.
  
“The big national picture is that food and fuel costs are going up and school revenues are not,” said Anne L. Bryant, executive director of the National School Boards Association. “We’re in a recession, and it’s having a dramatic impact on schools.”
Louisville’s pain is minor compared with the woes of some cities. Detroit has laid off at least 700 teachers, Los Angeles 500 administrators and Miami-Dade County hundreds of school psychologists, maintenance workers and custodians.
Schools in many states have cut bus stops to save diesel. Districts in California and Ohio have gone further and eliminated bus service either completely or for high schools, leaving thousands of students to find their own way to school.
In Maine, officials worried about the cost of heating their classrooms this winter have restricted travel for field trips to save money. Districts in Louisiana, Minnesota and elsewhere have taken a more radical measure and adopted four-day school weeks. Hundreds of districts, responding to higher food prices, are charging more for cafeteria meals."