More than a number.

Not to be a downer on Christmas Eve, but I just got an email that a fellow I knew, more an acquaintance than close friend, is in the hospital after trying to commit suicide. He lost his job a month ago, after the board of his large company decided they didn't like how the economy for 2013 was projected to be, and wanted to "tighten" up for their shareholders.

He moved to this company after they recruited him pretty hard a couple of years ago, leaving his previous company to join them. The relevance of that is that he only has a couple of years with this new company, and thus gets almost no severance package.

When we look at these unemployment numbers, it can become a political "game" of sorts, arguing why they are what they are, who is at fault, and so on. I'm sure many of us have been part of those numbers during this horrific economy; I was, back in the first months of 2009. But for many of those millions, this can feel like the end of your life. It did for Danny (the person who tried to commit suicide.)

He got almost no severance. Due to a previous job loss, and a long time before finding a job, they had blown through what cash reserves/savings they had, including a good bit of their 401k. Danny's wife said that he lost 30 pounds in the month since he lost his job, in a panic. They have no way to pay the January mortgage or any of their bills. They have a daughter who is a junior in college, and no way to pay her next semester bill, which is already due. They have 13 and 12 year old sons. His wife does not currently have a job and has been unable to find one (she only has an associate degree and so has been looking for a receptionist type job or anything else that she can qualify for.) Unemployment doesn't come close to paying their basic bills. They have no family to move in with. They feel they have nowhere to turn, and as a 50 years old lower level manager all the headhunters are telling him, even though they will move for a job, it is likely to be a very long time before he lands somewhere else as companies are being very cautious in their hiring due to all of the uncertainty right now. He tells them he'll take any kind of job, and they tell him so will most people on the job market right now, but no one wants to hire a 50 year old middle manager into a job that younger people can be hired into.

No income, no way to pay any bills, can't pay for his daughter's college (and they tell him he won't qualify for any scholarships, etc. until next semester, they have been there pleading,) can't pay the mortgage and nowhere to live (they can't even afford a small apartment in the area they live, and they haven't been out of work long enough to qualify for housing help, plus they were told all such housing was taken already in their area.) Danny read his life insurance and concluded that if he ran his car into a light pole at high speed it would kill him and his family would then have the money to carry on. He did not count on the airbag being able to save his life, although he is now in serious condition in the hospital with no insurance and no way to pay. (They know it was a suicide attempt because he left his wife a note and told her she couldn't tell anyone or the life insurance wouldn't pay off.)

Just 1 job loss. Hardly a number that counts when you look at the millions out of work. Yeah, I know, why doesn't he and his family do this or take advantage of that to get by with no income; from personal experience, it is much easier to figure out how to live with zero income when you are young and single than 50 and with a wife and three kids, and that is not the point. The point is that sometimes we all forget the devastation and humiliation and pain that goes with the numbers we see posted under the unemployment data. Every one of those are real people, many in what feel are hopeless situations.

FWIW.

I cant like that post but thanks for posting it Jeff.

Yeah, not up there for likes, and it may be too personal to post here. I'm just sitting here at my son and daughter in law's house in Michigan, with my daughter and son in law and my other daughter, my wife, our new granddaughter, enjoying the season and family and I got the email and for some reason it really shook me. Maybe because it could so easily be me.

This is why I'm a socialist. The low end of US-style capitalism is bullshit; the system to keep inflation under control is to randomally ruin people's lives.

I don't know the answer, Jason. I'm sitting here at my son and DIL's house, with their 8 month old daughter having her first Christmas, surrounded by them, my daughter and SIL, and my other daughter, and my wife (we're in the presents opened, granddaughter in bed for a nap, Christmas dinner being cooked, corny Christmas shows on TV lull) and life is very good. But I recall when my company went down in early 2009 and I was a higher level Technical Directer/CTO without a job, in February 2009 when NO one was hiring, the world economy was crashing around our ears, we'd lost a ton in a previous job loss and lost a fortune on our house in the crash, so we also were facing a late in life/no cash reserves/can't pay the bills after 3 months crisis. I also lost about 30 pounds due to anxiety, the conventional wisdom is that it would take about a year to find a job for someone like me. It looked like our only resort was to blow through our 401K, which would have meant facing our old age/post job life with almost nothing, after working for over 30 years. It was like looking into a black hole of "How did we end up in this situation?" despair. I stayed awake all night staring at the ceiling. When you're young you have a lot of time to make up for stuff like this, to recover; when you are 50+ with older kids you realize there are no guarantees that everything will turn out OK. No one promises that you'll be able to have any level of quality of life.

I was blessed to have a company that knew me have an unexpected opening at the CTO level (there aren't many of those in the country in fields in which I am qualified, and at the time the job hopping that usually creates the openings had stopped cold as everyone clung to their jobs as hard as they could.) I interviewed, along with several others, and my wife and I were in tears of joy when we got the job (the one I have today, which is the best job in my life.) But had it not been for this job, we'd have been wiped out financially. As it stands, we are way behind where we expected to be at this point in our life (two layoffs and losses from house sales, one in 2007, one in 2009, killed us) but better than many. But there were no other jobs to even interview for back then. I can completely understand the feeling of hopelessness Danny was/is facing.

And I don't know the answer. But I do know there are literally millions in our nation right now with no job. No income. We look at them as numbers, we keep score, use them as data for political fodder. But in those millions there are many, many like Danny. And I don't know how a nation as wealthy as we are can tolerate that.

Back to the family and blessings, with a renewed appreciation.

I hate to pee on the message, and I'm sure it will seem a bit crass to point it out, but it's precisely because we know they aren't numbers that those of us on the left fight so hard for the social safety net.

I'm truly sorry to hear about this, and these stories are becoming much too often.

Not trying to sound crass, but you gotta' learn something from "It's a wonderful Life".
Life is no happy ending feel good movie, but now your friend is much worse off, I don't claim to know a solution to their problems, sometimes there is no happy ending.
it seems like you got one, let's hope things get better for your friend.

I have an extreme fear of being poor.
My father had a very successful business when I was a kid, country club, new cadillac every two years (back when that meant something) and a nice big house in a great area.
Due to a couple unscupulous underlings, who ruined my fathers business he had to start over in his 50's working two or three manufacturing jobs, doing anything he could to keep our house until he could build up a new business.
Fortunately he was able to, but it was no fun being teased by every other kid in the neighborhood, seeing signs on the telephone polls that the family cars were up for sheriff's sale.
Those types of jobs my father was able to work to keep us afloat are just not there in these times, nothing that pays anywhere close to a living wage, and that's why when people like your friend lose their good paying job, it can be a death sentence for your whole way of life.

Sorry for rambling, but I have an extreme fear of being poor.

God damn your system sucks. I read the OP thinking of the various safety nets there to catch that person were they in NZ and it frustrates me that the US won't step up and try and offer something similar.

It's not crass. It's the ability to look and emphasise beyond your own family and social circles, knowing that no, their family/friends/community/church/whatever won't be enough so something need to be done on a national level.

Actually, I don't think that is crass nor peeing on the post at all. But we don't really have a social safety net for people like him today. SS and unemployment aren't enough. I don't know what would be.

It probably starts with a first-world healthcare system instead of what we currently have. That would have allowed their money to stretch a lot further. Plus some goddamn reform on tuition costs, which would have removed that element from play and again allowed the money to stretch further.

Guarenteed government employment or a guarenteed minimum income, free health care, free mental care, free college.

Is there a model nation where this works? I had a lot of friends from Hungary, Poland, and some other Eastern Bloc countries before the "Wall" went down (they were visiting scientists in my grad group) and had the opportunity to do some exchange time in Hungary. The problems were pretty severe (there was a reason people tried to escape one direction across the wall) so I'm pretty sure that wasn't the model to follow.

The problems there didn't necessarily have much to do with anything Jason mentioned, given the large number of confounding variables. It'd be like suggesting that launching satellites is clearly the wrong path to go down; after all, just look at North Korea.

The Scandinavian model is probably the best, although you'll hear arguments that it's only possible when you've got a small, urbanised, ethnically homogeneous population and a stock of in-demand resources. Kuwait has similar advantages with none of the successes, but make of that what you will.

The Western European model is good but looking shaky at present because of the problems created by economic integration sans political integration. Still, your friend would be far better off if he were French or German or even British.

Australia and New Zealand also have a pretty good track record of running a "mixed" market/state economy, with their own distinctive problems but, again, someone losing their job in these countries would not be thinking of killing themselves in the hopes that it would give their children a chance to go to university.

...and finally, Japan and South Korea have their own unique take on the free-market-with-heavy-state-intervention model, and while I suspect it would be rather difficult for a Western nation to emulate it, their healthcare system would certainly be placing less strain on your friend's finances than is presently the case.

The Eastern European model is quite terrible, and that's part of the reason that you're likely to meet migrants from that part of the world who've come to America searching for something better. It's really not representative, though, of the "Social Democrat" direction of the Western/Northern European countries - it grows out of a very different historical root, something more like "Stalinism but softer".

Yeah, I don't know what Eastern Europe is a model. Scandanavian by contrast seems to be such a clear win it's not even funny. Really, just about any developed country but the US (and maybe the UK) would work.

I don't think Denmark makes that much off pot tourism.

They've got a share of the North Sea oilfields, which is usually what people use to explain away the success of the Scandinavians. Sweden doesn't, but... they've got a lot of timber? Complicated strategy games?

Yeah, but as true capitalist, er idiots, we gave that away to private enterprise... Which is how one Dane could be close to the top of the list of world's wealthiest men.

Sweden has an heavy industrial-based export economy built up in the decades following WW2 when we had a competitive advantage since we had suffered no bombings or lost any skilled workers to the war.

Your friend is a dumbass for running himself into a pole. His family sure as shit doesn't fucking want dad's corpse for a holiday present, he's added mentally unstable and physically shattered to the list of disadvantages he's got when seeking employment and to top it all off he's down a car. Speaking from personal experience you can get a university to defer collection in cases of hardship, and foreclosure is a loooong process where you're often able to live in your house for months or even years without paying one red cent to the banks (some people say you should call and alert them to your situation, idk). Pay utilities just enough to 'keep the lights on' and conserve savings at all costs. Plenty of resources out there to help you survive.

The route some people take when -- as he obviously does -- they feel they're no longer employable is SSDI. A subset of that group seek out unreported supplementary income from cash only jobs. Obviously this takes some work to obtain and is extremely permanent, but it's definitely an option among many. Other options include not completely fucking your family over with cowardly and selfish acts like committing suicide in an attempt to defraud insurance companies. After all, the only thing worse than poverty is poverty and a dead dad.

I've yammered plenty on the importance of social safety nets and the preservation of human capital. Extending our consumption smoothing efforts from the life cycle to the catastrophic would be a hugely positive innovation. Cash transfers (whether or not conditional) are infinitely superior to in kind transfers -- imo -- because the preserve dignity and choice. Might not seem super important, but allowing people to feel they're in control of their own (for lack of a better word) destiny is a huge part of getting them back on their feet. Added benefit, choice of provider tends to improve quality of service (well, so long as moving isn't required to exercise that choice, and there's no mandatory provider menu that can be gamed by unscrupulous companies).

US already has a roughly analogous system in the EITC. We already do the consumption smoothing with unemployment insurance. Both could do with some beefing up, both will probably get cut back by fucking stupid pain obsessed politician who confuse real life with a morality play. Healthcare could stand to be burned down (we'll eventually need to thanks to the emergence of regional provider monopolies) but for the moment the planned decoupling of employment from insurance is an excellent change.


OH AND MONETARY POLICY THAT ISN'T FUCKING STUPID WOULD HELP TOO, SINCE THAT'S THE REAL PROBLEM and not, you know, our 'lack' of socialist policies. Socialism is alive and well in this country, just ask the war industry.

Fuck you. Where do you get off judging someone in his situation? Where do you fucking get the nerve? You've listed various resources & tactics, but they don't always work. It's entirely possible that this guy did his due diligence, saw they wouldn't have relieved his family in time. Our social safety net is pretty weak in this country, and it really isn't hard to fall through the cracks.

But more to the point, you have no fucking right to judge how someone else deals with despair. Look, I understand that this is D&D, and acknowledging that someone is young & stupid is kinda gauche. But your youth & stupidity are showing here. Talk less. Listen more. If you're not aware of what a situation feels like, don't opine. I know that's hard for you, but give it a whirl.

Aeon's choice of words and opening are unfortunate and inappropriate for discussion managed with any degree of empathy for other people, but in essence you are in agreement about the role a weak social safety net plays in the story. However, and I base this entirely on assumptions about him and a passing IRL acquaintance rather than facts, I think it's an error of passion rather than one of malice or ignorance. Perhaps we can take a step back here.

I like you Aeon, but this is the worst thing you've ever written. You haven't stared down the barrel of that gun and like most of us, you have no idea what drives someone to the brink of suicide.

I earnestly hope this isn't the approach to policy you have in mind when we talk about needing better mental health care availability in the gun control threads.

I wasn't going to say anything, but I also felt like Jethro's story was self-defeating. His goal was to put a human face on unemployment and make it easier to relate to. But he did it by telling the story of a guy who made such a ridiculously bad decision that it was impossible for me to relate to. It left me with some rather uncharitable thoughts I'm not going to share.

Granted, I'm a pretty narrow person, and roughly 60% of the things other people do don't make any sense to me. But I can see where Aeon's coming from, even though I feel he should have taken the time to express himself more thoughtfully.

Getting over the impulse to say "if only they'd made better decisions" is one the beginnings of wisdom in this area I think. You put people in horrible situations and they tend to make bad decisions, surprise fucking surprise. Maybe don't let them get into that situation in the first place.

This. People often do completely irrational things when faced with what they perceive to be impossible situations. If you can't find some empathy for a person who felt so hopeless that he did something completely desperate, OK.

I have been in his situation, albeit for a brief period of time, and with a couple more options, and I understand the depth of panic he felt. I'd never do what he did, but as someone in my 50s with almost no time to recover, with what appeared to be a hopeless situation, with a university that also refused to give us a break (in spite of whatever someone else's experience has been, my daughter's university also told us our only option was for her to withdraw and then later reapply,) trying to figure out how we would live for what was likely a long time with no income. Again, I would never do what he did, but I understand his feeling of helplessness and fear and desperation.

If all you can see is a dumb ass.... no, not gonna go there.

I don't mean to be too harsh, especially given the angry post I already made at Aeon. But you're incorrect here. The problem wasn't with Jethro's story. It wasn't self-defeating. The problem is you. Or, to use your words, you're a narrow person. At least you're self-aware to that degree. But the next step is to stop framing it as an external problem, and start realizing that the problem is within you.

Look guys, rather than turn this into some kinda judgmental thing (as is the wont to do on this forum) let's go to the common ground. There are a lot of people behind these unemployment numbers who feel lost, desperate, panicked, their lives and futures feeling destroyed beyond recovery (especially older people) and with nowhere to turn. No matter what you may think about the programs in place, they are absolutely insufficient if you aren't a young single or young couple in terms of being able to sustain yourself and your family. As someone who has had to file for the programs and seek the help when I was let go at 50+ I can tell you from first hand experience, you are really screwed if you suddenly have to live off what unemployment provides, and many of the "fall back" programs have serious limitations. Again, if you are in your 20s, OK, you may be able to weather it somehow, move in with friends or parents, etc. and then have the rest of your life to make it back up (although may younger people who are unemployed also face desperate situations.) If you are later in life it can be overwhelmingly devastating and destroy a lifetime of planning and saving for your end years.

If you want to argue that it's not as big a deal as all that, then go read another thread. If you want to say the guy in this situation is stupid, yeah, maybe he was but it was temporary insanity borne of desperation, of the type I hope you never have to face first hand. Maybe there is a need for compassionate liberalism.

Are you familiar with SSDI? According to wikipedia and based on the information given in the original post, SSDI qualification seems a bit more stringent than the broad definition you imply by your response.

Ponder real quick why on earth I might know all that shit about survivig, and just why I might have such a strong opinion about suicidal fucking fathers.

I don't know man. I don't know your story, I try not to make assumptions about people's live experiences. I know you're not a 50 year old middle manager with college aged kids, so I didn't think it was likely you could understand where the guy was coming from. Few of us here can.

Now maybe you were one of the kids in that situation, and I could understand where a "FUCK THAT GUY" mentality could come from if you watched that happen to your own family. And you've got my sympathies for that.

I think it's worth pointing out that this can often be the illusion, or hope, or comfort, or whatever you want to call having a no dependents and a big time cushion. But that time cushion works the other way too, as the longer people struggle to find the work the more difficulty they're going to have establishing any sort of momentum. A majority of my friends are underemployed or back in school, and the click is ticking on us as new graduates come in and offer fresher faces. If the older crowd is stumbling when the finish line is in reach, we haven't even left the warmup track.

If I recall correctly, Aeon struggled for a while with a shitty job, terrible conditions, and low pay. I didn't say this then but I will now: there's nothing sanctifying about your struggle, Aeon. I feel for you in the way that someone who has struggled in similar ways coming out of school can, but I don't pretend to have a more qualified voice or holy knowledge about when and if the economy is allowed to drive us to despair.

This is pretty much my situation. Out of school for two years without having a "real job." I was employed (sortof) last year for a contract-type position completely unrelated to my degree but haven't found anything since. School has been off and on the table several times now, but since Mr. A has a ludicrous amount of student debt, I'm hesitant to add to it. I've worried that if I don't find something next year, I'll almost be required to go back to school and re-tool or something. I guess I'm fortunate that we don't need me to have a job in order to stay afloat at the moment, but we realize that we're hanging from a thin thread and we're pretty screwed if anything happens to him. We don't have much of a family net to fall back on either; his family is already struggling (real estate) and my dad finally ended four years of unemployment earlier this year, so all of his savings (and much of his retirement) is gone. And he just turned 60. He has no idea now how long it will be until he can retire, and he's still got several years left of paying on his house.

This thread isn't about you, Bud.

It sounds like you know something about being the son of a suicidal fucking father. But it also sounds like you don't know much about being a suicidal fucking father.

I think the underlying problem is that everyone here is in agreement with this statement. For example, everyone here agrees that a basic income program would be a net good for the country. Even I think it's inevitable, and I'm undecided on most political issues.

In the absence of any substantive policy disagreement we're reduced to this unproductive discussion about how people feel about your friend's situation, and how other people feel about how people feel about your friend's situation. For what it's worth, participating in this sort of thread derail was never my intention, and I hope he gets the help he needs.

Calling someone who attempts suicide "dumb" just kind of flies in the face of everything we know about people who end up killing themselves. I balk similarly when people call it "cowardly." Suicide requires you to override basically every single instinct you have - it takes a huge amount of willpower. It also happens to be the single most disturbing act I can think of, personally. It bothers me to know end to hear about suicide, even if it's from someone I don't know and know nothing about. It's just so fucking ugly. For that reason, I don't fault Aeon for being upset about his relationship to it, nor to do blame Mark for pouncing on him.

A friend and former co-worker committed suicide while I was a QA tester a while back. I think I vented about it on Quarter to Three, I still think about him at least a few times a month.

Guys, let's not let this go any further in terms of name calling, nor even who has it worst (e.g. young vs. old, etc.) That wasn't the point. The point is simply for us to remember the pain and the human element behind the unemployment numbers.