60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

[karim0028]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

I have been unemployed several times, and will be again in three weeks. It can be horrifically stressful.
Now that I have "street cred", I will state my reaction to the 60 minutes:

1) How is it that a financial analyst more than 50 years old does not have enough savings to last two years, even getting unemployment benefits?
I would not hire someone like that!
We had way too many "real estate firms" and if a financial analyst was unable to see that it was a bubble, they should be unemployed.

2) How does a personnel manager get $200k/ year, and they also have insufficient savings. Only the most proficient engineers get salaries at that level.
How should a "PM" get paid more than most engineers? Instead of saving from thier away thier massively overpayed salaries, they squander it on a huge lifestyle.

3) Only one of the people was an engineer "fibre optics manager". Assuming he was technical, it was still a good move to take the target job. Nobody can spend 40 hours
a week job hunting.

yeah, needless to say alot of these folks were irresponsible w/ no real savings, but lets not forget that is about 80% of the US population.... But, even if you have savings; 2 years of no income will irreversibally harm you financially.

[flintlock]

Re: 60 Minutes - The 99er's : An expose on the formerly middle class in America

What is going on in that video is one reason why I decided to start my own business 20 years ago. I don't have the corner office, or the parking space with my name on it, but I will always have a job. Depressing.

As Americans we all came to take the economy for granted. Job security was low down the list of most people's decision on what career to follow. We just assumed it wouldn't matter. We had that "golden ticket" of a degree. So much for that.