Tumbler: with apologies to gymnasts, my personal term for skilled, educated workers primarily in or near the baby boom generation who have fallen, i.e., tumbled, out of the middle-class into the ranks of the unemployed or underemployed, now mired in inescapable poverty, no health insurance with years/decades to go before Social Security or Medicare can help, and likely soon to be homeless and/or dead in the gutter.

You’d think a Ph.D would offer some insulation against poverty. Think again, many doctored experts are tumbling out of the middle class, others cannot even get hired at a living wage even in academia teaching or researching their topics of expertise.

But fear not! University Presidents and Coaches at the nation’s top schools are doing great. Maybe the others are coming soon to a devastated social safety net near you. Scary graphic below. [Read more…]

Suppose the next time a company wanted to hire you, you came back with a standard deal in business these days. You tell them to go ahead and pay you full-time with benefits for three to six months, while you play around on the beach or golf course, and maybe, somewhere along the way — you’re not saying when or how — if you feel like it’s still a good fit, you’ll go ahead and start showing up for work. What might that company’s managers say? Now reverse the roles and you have the great intern scam. It’s all the rage, even in the White House: [Read more…]

Unless of course you are a young Republican with little experience who helped the liberty-tea-swilling governor get elected in North Carolina, which merits a big fat raise at taxpayer expense. [Read more…]

Did it work? Did you open the post and are reading this? Well, dumb question either way I suppose. I got a spam mail with that kind of subject line. When I opened it up, good on them, it didn’t have a magic diet pill or five minute workout. In fact it stated right up front, the only way to lose weight is to diet or exercise and the best way is to do both. I would add to that, you can get into ketosis with minimal risk for most people and really be able to eat more than you might otherwise be able to with the exception of lots of carbs. But it got me thinking, [Read more…]

I’m actually chucking out loud as I write this. Forbes columnist Ralph Benko knows how to unite libertarians and social conservatives and win the day. See, the way to best fight Big Brother, Benko assures us, is for libs to join social conservatives in giving Big Brother the power to decree who some people are allowed to love, date, or marry. It’s so bad it looks a lot like linkbait, so I’ll link through another site: [Read more…]

The 2012 election was an exercise in surrealism. On the heels of massive unemployment caused by a deregulated financial sector gone mad with greed, Republicans put forth an accomplished corporate raider who had thrown untold numbers of people out of work. I suppose we’re lucky he wasn’t quite Republican enough, that he had the bad judgement to be born into a prominent Mormon family, but Mitt Romney came way closer to the gold last November than he should have by all that is sane and right.

It turns out he had allies in the most surprising of places: [Read more…]

As the economy is said to improve, it’s doesn’t make any difference for a group of workers caught between the demographic borders. It’s good to see this issue getting some attention in traditional media: [Read more…]

Who knew a term as innocuous and mainstream as middle-class was divisive Marxist talk? Why that would be Rick Santorum. Let’s take a peek into the corrupt fundamentalist mind: [Read more…]