Falling

There have been some spectacular falls in the news lately, and for those into gravity impact porn, the following videos provide ample pleasure.



But another fall, just as painful, is the plummet of those formerly known as working Americans and their wages.

A seattle newspaper analyzed jobs data in Washington state (and here too) to find an unsurprising yet horrifying trend: Jobs that are being created do not pay a living wage.

If this is the case in Washington, hotbed of tech, trade, and transportation, it's probably not better in the rest of the country.

Summary of the summary:

• The fastest growing jobs categories are in retail, hospitality, agriculture and social services, which are at the lowest ends of the pay scale.

• 46% of jobs pay less then $10/hr, and less than 25% of the jobs pay above $15/hr.

• Even if some numbers classify our economy as in recovery, the highest paying sectors — telecom, electronics manufacturing, and air transportation — continue to cut jobs.

What this means is that if you lose your job to cost-cutting by the Board or CEO, you'll make less money if you find a job at all. And that job will probably be in the service sector, not in the field for which you spent the first half of your life preparing.

Don't even think about getting sick, and forget about your career in skateboarding.

Working Poor

I don't really mind Bill Clinton congratulating himself for the welfare reform of 1996 as long we recognize that Clinton's law only ended the Federal government's involvement with poverty. It didn't end poverty, as we can see from this PBS documentary, (Tuesday Night!).

ps - Here's a nice Q and A from Newsday about the current state of American workers' wages.

pps - Did you know that 1 in EIGHT Americans lives below the poverty line? (1 in FOUR African-Americans!) There's a new census report.

To See and Be Seen

It should not be a crime to be poor, and it should not be a crime to feed the poor. So it's curious that Las Vegas and Orlando have passed laws against feeding the poor in public parks.

The side in favor of these ordinances claim that 'mobile soup kitchens', render the park "impossible for others to use."

It sounds to me like some folks more fortunate than others may get the heebie-jeebies when folks of lesser means start to appear in plain sight.

It's understandable that people don't want to see things that displease them, but some things we are better for seeing. Poverty is one of these things, and so too are the fallen men and women of Bush's folly (and LATimes had the story, too).

PS - The Memory Hole.org has some of the unseeable Americans.