[quote=Borat]Wow. You’re so right, Borat. What am I thinking? Hey, exactly which ACTUAL INDUSTRIES are still hiring those who produce things of value? Why don’t you post a sampling of machine shops or plumbing businesses in your local classifieds that are hiring right now.
Yeah, I’ll give you a few months or years to come up with that list.
When anyone loses a job in this depression — be it a lawyer, an equity trader, a teacher or a maid — it’s bad for everyone. Including you. But you probably won’t understand that until you lose your job.
And by the way, that’s a brilliant idea: send all the unemployed lawyers to mortuary school. They’re losing their homes – which means MORE foreclosures – and student loan funding is drying up. Just keep coming up with these gems, Borat. Maybe there’s a job for you on Obama’s economic team of clowns.
Wow there is some rich stuff here. I just did a google for “san diego machine shop jobs” and all kinds of listings came up. At least I am suggesting something positive — we have more than 20 times per capita lawyers than Japan (see my earlier post, with a reference to that stat from law.com) so all I am saying is that some of them need to be retrained. We don’t need so damn many of them. I would like to see Alberto Gonzalez retrained as a roto-rooter technician, for example. What are you suggesting? That we magically find some way to keep all of our lawyers employed? Or that we pee our pants and run down the street because “economic armageddon” is coming? Puh-leeze.
BTW I have lost my job before and while it’s not fun it ain’t the end of the world either. As long as you have some $ in the bank and you’re willing to relocate and maybe retrain yourself that is. Oh and of course you must be willing to step down a rung on the ladder from time to time and I’ve done that too.
Good luck to you man, I hope we don’t have any armageddon either but sometimes it seems like that’s what you’re hoping for! I have more faith in people I guess to do what’s right and move on to something else when they need to.[/quote]
Yeah, I just did the Google search you referred to – and I have to say, Borat: the fact that machine shops exist in San Diego does not mean that they are hiring. Is that how you usually perform a job search? 😉 I asked you to find postings in the local newspapers as proof that jobs at these shops are actually available. Anyone can do a Google search and come up with names of businesses.
I knew a tipping point had occurred in January when a friend of mine in Santa Maria applied for a part time job as a cashier at a Trader Joe’s in Santa Maria ($8/hour), and 1000 people showed up.
And where in my post did I suggest that all lawyers must continue to be employed as lawyers? My only observation was that the fallout from this kind of lay off was going to be big. This unwinding started at the lower ranks and is gaining momentum as it moves up the food chain. Do I have more empathy for a lawyer who loses their job than a cashier? No. But you seem to think I do. So let me go on the record and make it perfectly clear that I am equally empathetic for anyone who loses their job.
And I notice that you focused on lawyers while neglecting to mention the 250 support staff also got the axe (yes, that means paralegals, secretaries, word processors and all sorts of other people who I imagine you might think are more deserving of employment and more valuable to society). They’re hitting the street along with the lawyers, and that’s a tragedy.
Re-training will obviously have to happen, Borat. I never said otherwise. I simply posted an article and remarked about the fallout. I wasn’t giving career advice; I wasn’t arguing for the urgent passage of the Legal Services Full Employment Act 😉
Obviously this economy can’t continue to support the plethora of miscellaneous and over-priced professional services from legal, to accounting, to consulting to marketing and business development that have sprung up over the last 50 years. But millions and millions of people have gotten on the treadmill, gone to school, trained for these jobs and done the right thing – only to find the rug yanked from under their feet. And I might add, many lawyers have a level of student debt that would make your head spin. They accumulated this debt because they were always told that jobs would be plentiful. A colleague of mine in his 30s has a wife who is also a lawyer: together they have 5K a month in student loan debt. Were they naive? Unquestionably. But then again, the entire country was naive in expecting that a government saddled with gargantuan debt could continue to chug along for eternity.
Can my 30-something colleague be re-trained if he loses his job and still have a viable life? Probably. But his loans aren’t going anywhere, and they are not dischargeable in bankruptcy, unlike credit cards and mortgage debt. So getting him re-trained to work at that machine shop in San Diego at $12/hour isn’t going to make a dent in his monthly nut. And I might add, there is a distinct bias in this country against older workers (40s+). And a good number of lawyers fall into this category. Good luck to the millions of them hoping to get re-trained for a job that will allow them to compete with younger workers.
What you mistake for whining is an actual concern about human beings, at any level, who have bought into an American Dream that has rudely ended. I have always expected it to end, but I am not the average American. I am a lawyer who has prepared, so I am lucky.
And no, I am not hoping for economic Armageddon. But I am a consummate realist. I have faith in people, but I have little faith in their ability to continue to survive in an economic system that has imploded in their faces. I think we all need to be perfectly honest about a harsh reality that is quickly approaching: many of the people around us and around the world will simply disappear – either emotionally or physically. They simply aren’t going to survive what is coming.
It’s all well and good that you see the silver lining of job retraining in this devastation. But there are only so many rungs on the ladder, and there are way too many people to fit on them. The math is simple, dude: too many people, not enough jobs of any sort – period. It’s going to get ugly and it’s going to stay ugly for a LOOOOOONG time. Obama spoke of the lost decade in a recent speech. But what we are really talking about are lost DECADES. So I think your optimism is misplaced. That’s just my opinion.
Good luck to you, Borat. I’m glad that you have landed on your feet, and I hope your money and your upbeat attitude hold up 🙂 I suspect both are going to be seriously challenged in the coming months.
