Now just a little question out of the other corner: how does it feel to be in a large financial crisis, if not an outright depression, such as we seem to be having on our hands? There are the statistics and large events, firms crashing, politicos belaboring their points, media bringing their stories. But how does it feel like from the day-to-day level?
Let me give two examples:
people in the shops seem to be nicer. Where before it was at times a grunted “Want something?”, one meets now more often friendly, eager, but not too pushing shopkeepers. They know the times are uncertain and are more outgoing to please the customers.
one hears more often about corporations big and small getting rid of their employees in nasty ways
What are your small things, that make out the big picture?
In regards to the current one, I do not currently really feel it. I go to school, and live “with” my dad. My parents are moderate property owners; my dad owns two houses in San Diego, and my mom owns one in San Diego and two in Spain. They are pretty well off in terms of property. Both my parents have been working at their professions for a rather long time and have job stability. My dad is a public highschool teacher. His job is secure for the time being, but I’m not sure what will happen after California goes bankrupt. My mom is a nurse. They both make close or over $100,000. I work minimum wage at Kmart, but my job is pretty stable there too. I have been working for a year, and have yet to be fired (even though I think I do a lot to deserve it; I do my job, though). So, I haven’t really felt any financial strain. My dad has a lot of debt, but he has under control (most of it is to his brother, which is OK, I guess; at least it’s within the family).
I do know that it is more difficult to find a job (impossible unless you’re willing to change your schedule around, which is impossible for me, since I go full time to school). But, personally, I haven’t felt the strain.
I think the average salary in the school district I was in was pushing close to $70k to $80k. It was a wealthy school district, plus a lot of the teachers have been in the district for a long time.
He has been teaching for 20+ years, and he has two masters (Spanish and Russian). But yea, I mean total of all revenue sources, although ~$85,000 to $90,000 come from teaching. That is also gross, not net.
My own company which sells productivity improvement software is doing well as software is not as expensive as people or equipment and we try to get more with the same amount of people and equipment. But times are tough for the customers. They are closing facilities and having to cut staff all all levels. The people who are cut are having tough times finding other employment.
I was a teen-ager in Pittsburgh for the last recession and it was not fun. There were tens of thousands of people who lost jobs who could not find any work at all. This was caused by the necessary increases in the interest rates after 2 decades of easy money.
As for a comparison, the previous time was much worse. The economy is much larger and more dynamic and the US and its partners have a global division of labor to fight rising prices. The problem is that the governments and central banks are taking advantage of the global division of labor and simply creating money. At some point prices are going to rise and these same folks are going to put the breaks on. It will be worse then.