As employment continues declining, newly unemployed people will have to adapt to the unwanted change in circumstance.http://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2010/07/action-list-for-newly-unemployed.htmlby charles hugh smith
I consider it highly likely that another leg down in employment is getting underway. As the Federal stimulus peters out and the Central State's ability to borrow $1.5 - 2 trillion a year to fund the status quo begins pushing up against the financial equivalent of the speed of light (as you approach c, it takes much more energy to increase velocity), then jobs which were only recently considered secure will be lost and the people who held them will be unemployed.
The top 20% are starting to "get it": it's going to get worse from here on, not better. Many of these High Caste technocrats are the very people who were confident that their position in the world was secure, and the Great Recession was for the lower 80%. But that is not necessarily the case, and this same group of highly paid workers also tend to over-estimate their ability to get a job of equal pay, perks and security. That denial of "the new normal" will be the undoing of many.
As people who reckoned their job was relatively secure discover it isn't, a new cadre of shell-shocked unemployed will have to deal with unemployment and poor prospects for permanent employment. Here is a basic, common-sense list of actions to consider should your household income fall drastically for any reason:
(DU poster has condensed this list; please see original article)
1. Cut expenses immediately. Middle-class households seem especially prone to thinking they can weather a radical drop in income without any real change in lifestyle until a new job appears.
2. Look at your biggest expenses and reduce them to your "new normal" income by whatever means are necessary.
3. Keep productive. All work has dignity. Base your pride in being productive, not on your position or title. It is very easy to fall into feeling lousy about oneself when unemployed, and the best way to counteract that natural diminishment is to stay productive. Find an organization who needs your energy and skills; yes it is "working for free" but you get value for your efforts.
4. Work to establish multiple sources of household income.
5. Think like an employer. If you think like an employer, then you realize that doing good work is the minimum baseline. You have to provide additional value that gives the employer/supervisor some hope that you will bring a much-needed spark to the enterprise.
6. Beware the illusion of incremental change. But incremental change often starts yielding diminishing returns. Are the changes being made fundamental, or are they essentially tweaks to a system heading toward collapse?
7. Preserve capital. Pulling money out of savings, IRAs and 401Ks to maintain a giant mortgage or an unsustainable lifestyle is unwise; that savings might be needed down the road for a really important emergency.
8. Become fluid and flexible. Someone to whom various kinds of work is "beneath them" is like the person who has no interest in learning new skills; their inflexibility dooms them by reducing their adaptability. The living branch bends in the wind, the dead branch snaps off.
9. Accept the new reality. If someone offers you four hours of work, take it. It might lead to something else, and if not, at least you made a few bucks. Clinging to past paradigms is a dead-end.
10. Get healthy, stay healthy. Losing status, income, security, etc. are wounds to self-worth and the soul. Increased stress and anxiety are not healthy. Exercise and productive work/learning are important ways to reduce stress and build a positive response to unwanted change. Walk a quarter mile; when that's easy, walk a half-mile. When that's easy, walk a mile, and so on. Seek respite and renewal in Nature.
11. Think entrepreneurally. The basics of entrepreneurism are simple: seek out unfilled needs.
12. Create value before asking for something in return. One of the key values in Survival+is reciprocity.
13. Add some beauty to your world. Our culture glorifies ugliness, aggressiveness, self-centeredness and psychoses of power.
14. Become politically active. There are larger forces at work behind the media facades and facsimiles. Our society focuses on self-help rather than on the darker forces of Empire, Power Elites, etc. In other words, the Powers That Be support a politics of experience in which we each blame ourselves for our inability to find paying work, etc. rather than seek out the financial and political roots of our common crisis.
The Power Elites and its Mainstream Media work tirelessly to depoliticize our understanding of the world around us. They present us with a false political choice (Republican or Democrat, as if it really makes a difference to the running of the Global Empire or the concentrated power and wealth of cartels and Financial Elites), religious rabble-rousing and plentiful "entertainment" distractions-- anything to suppress or marginalize our understanding of just how distorted our economy and society have become.
Derangement is normalized though a relentless barrage of imagery, "news" and commentary which cements a depoliticized politics of experience: if you can't find work, it's your personal failings that are the "problem." It's all the Demopublicans or Republicrats fault, these reforms have "fixed" the system, etc.
Ask cui bono--to whose benefit?--of everything.
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