Shouts and Murmurs: The Underemployed

The New Yorker uses this expression. Shout it out and passersby cower and move on. Murmur your protest and no one listens. Although my task at this time is my doctoral dissertation -- in theory I should have plenty to say about that, although i will say nothing just now --in reality my attention turns silently to a national struggle of underemployment.

This is the Great Recession's silent killer. An April 2010 Gallup poll showed that 20.3 percent of all Americans were either unemployed or underemployed (working part time but seeking full-time work) in March. The Gallup organization polled more than 20,000 Americans in March. Not only has the percentage of part timers increased, but more than 60% say they are not hopeful about finding full-time work in the near future. Gallup suggests a solution: we must reeducate an undereducated workforce. I would suggest we start by tearing down Wall Street's entire scaffolding and reeducating our government leadership. The Obama Administration has marginalized -- ignored -- the millions who struggle and do some work, but not enough to survive, much less thrive.

America is a country willing to work. But it has been sapped not only by a widening chasm between the rich and poor, but also by the now well-exposed collusion of Federal Reserve financiers and Wall Street barons, among them Alan Greenspan, Lawrence Summers, Timothy Geithner, Leonard Blankfein, Robert Rubin, and Henry Paulson, to name just a few. All have played a role in blocking financial reforms and refusing to rein in the most unsavory and dangerous mortgage lending practices from this decade and the last (see Clinton Administration). Wall Street has been allowed to profit from the pain of home foreclosures. Why didn't the President demand the resignation of every staffer involved in the derivatives debacle?

It's not enough to hold our government or Wall Street exclusively accountable, either. What about the fear and inertia of the American people? We have seemingly lost our gumption to speak out, to stage non-violent protest, to raise our voices and placards, to strike, to vote out our Congressmen and women who play insanely in the pay-to-play politics of the rich. We should be using our blogs, our websites, our letters and phone calls /interactive media to register our disgust and rejection of a pay-to-play system that no longer leads the world or generates the work and capital necessary to support its citizens.

We have become a silent, murmuring population, as if to confirm Elizabeth Noelle-Neumann's 'spiral of silence' theory that has resulted in the destruction of so many societies of the past (including Hitler's Germany).

I believe we should all be shouting now and forever. The Obama Administration, for which so many of us had such high hopes, has sunk into an abyss of tepid responses, pyrrhic military ventures, and co-opting strategies with Wall Street and hostile right-wing Republicans. All of the change promised has become a thin and pathetic lie. Economist Paul Krugman has come out strongly against the dangers of spending cuts and deflation that will result in long-term structural unemployment for millions, and I, for one, am scared about the prospects -- both for me, my family, and all Americans except the rich.

When do we recover the gumption of the 1930s and 1960s to demand leadership that will sweep out the incumbents and produce the democracy Americans crave? Why are we so afraid to muster our chutzpah and demand an alternative New Deal required for our survival? AE

Bottom Line -- from Gallup

"As unemployed Americans find part-time, temporary, and seasonal work, the official unemployment rate could decline. However, this does not necessarily mean more Americans are working at their desired capacity. It will continue to be important to track underemployment -- to shed light on the true state of the U.S. workforce, and the millions of Americans who are searching for full-time employment."