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The unexpectedly large number of American workers who piled into the Social Security Administration's disability program during the recession and its aftermath threatens to cost the economy tens of billions a year in lost wages and diminished tax revenues.
U.S. labor force participation rates fell last month to the lowest levels since 1979, the wrong direction for an economy that instead needs new legions of working men and women to drive growth and sustain a Baby Boomer generation headed to retirement.
Economists say relatively few people are likely to trade their disability checks for paychecks, in part because the program doesn't give much incentive to leave. Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke has worried that the financial crisis would lead to a permanent loss of workers, setting up what economists call hysteresis, a term borrowed from physics to describe temporary market changes that lead to permanent economic losses.
It is no longer a theoretical problem, said David Autor, a professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, who has studied the disability program. The economy has a case of hysteresis, he said, created by the permanent transfer of workers to disability rolls.
Many newcomers to the disability roster are low-wage earners with limited skills, Mr. Autor said, and they are "pretty unlikely to want to forfeit economic security for a precarious job market."
Payments, tied to a worker's wage history, average $1,130 a month, which totals $13,560 a year. That is about $2,000 a year more than the federal poverty level for a single person and about $2,000 less than full-time wages at the federal minimum of $7.25 an hour.
After two years, people on disability are eligible for Medicare health insurance—another government benefit that encourages recipients to stay put. In 2011, the latest data available, fewer than 0.5% of beneficiaries left disability rolls to work again. Most leave the program by advancing to the Social Security retirement program, or they die.
In order to rediscover our natural confidence and live a fearless life, we must examine the challenge: we must "recognize fear."
Fear, for the neurophysiologists, is a stimulus to investigate, discern and resolve. Taking a Buddhist perspective on fear, however, requires that we make a simple, yet somewhat outrageous, observation: fear does not exist. This is not to say we don't experience fear and its many forms. Of course, we are afraid of death and pain, afraid that we can't handle life. We fear new situations and the unknown. Yet, while we may want to define fear, explore fear, and possibly even resolve it, we first must acknowledge that we cannot actually find such a solid thing as "fear" at all.
In order to recognize fear, then, we need to examine our experience, right here, right now. When the elusive, uncertain nature of life shifts from background to foreground, as it always does, we struggle and panic. Falling in love with a colleague, being diagnosed with cancer, or just missing an appointment, we instinctively sense that life happens in a way that we cannot grasp, and we become bewildered. Becoming familiar with such bewilderment is how we examine and recognize fear.
We breed cowardice with story lines of all kinds: "I'm freaked out because I am going to lose my job and won't be able to handle life!" or "I think my foot has cancer--it hasn't been behaving itself lately." Yet, when we are completely honest with ourselves, we discover not only that we are primordially exposed but that panicking is optional. Being exposed to life is sharply real and unavoidable, but being a coward is not required. And by leaping in with no guarantees, we stop seeking a life free from fear, but instead discover how to live life fearlessly.
Fear of the Unknown
Conor Mayo-Wilson, a researcher of mathematical philosophy at Carnegie Mellon University, studies how people learn and solve problems by sharing information in groups. These groups, however different, take advantage of a diverse range of experiences and knowledge, so it’s reasonable to think that collective intelligence might come to a more accurate conclusion than any one individual. But research done by Mayo-Wilson and others shows that this isn’t exactly the case.
For instance, we know today that stomach ulcers are caused by bacteria, Mayo-Wilson said. Scientists were making connections between bacteria and stomach ulcers as early as 1889. But in 1954, Edward Palmer published a paper that claimed to find no bacteria whatsoever in 1,000 human stomachs. Palmer’s study was flawed, but knowledge of that paper spread faster and more widely than the earlier work. Soon everybody knew that bacteria couldn’t live in the stomach, but what they knew was completely false. Linking people into virtual groups enables the sharing of knowledge, but when that information isn’t accurate, it can lead the group consensus astray causing widespread fear of the unknown. “When information comes from a common source, that can cause problems with individual decision making, because it can eradicate minority viewpoints,” Mayo-Wilson said.
Mayo-Wilson said, “How those people receive information can influence whether or not they make a good decision.” The group itself isn’t what matters. What matters is who they are, what they know and how they interact.
At least 15 million American adults say they have had a near-death experience, according to a 1997 survey—and the number is thought to be rising with increasingly sophisticated resuscitation techniques.
The once-taboo topic has gotten a lot of talk these days. In the movie "Hereafter," directed by Clint Eastwood, a French journalist is haunted by what she experienced while nearly drowning in a tsunami. A spate of books details other cases and variations on the theme.
Yet the fundamental debate rages on: Are these glimpses of an afterlife, are they hallucinations or are they the random firings of an oxygen-starved brain?
"There are always skeptics, but there are millions of 'experiencers' who know what happened to them, and they don't care what anybody else says," says Diane Corcoran, president of the International Association for Near-Death Studies, a nonprofit group in Durham, N.C. The organization publishes the Journal of Near-Death Studies.
As a 17-year-old college student, I had a near-death experience (before it was categorized as such) during an automobile accident. During this intense positive experience, I said to myself, "If this is what it is like to die, it's not all bad." For I was at peace; calmly watching my "life review" play out while time seemed to stand still. That experience forever changed how I lived the rest of my life; for I no longer feared death nor failure as I led a passionate life.
Sudden Discovery
Our ability to suddenly discover a powerful seat of fearless abundance may not be all that fantastic. In fact, rediscovering this fearless abundance is considered more likely than we think and is traditionally often referred to as "discovering the wish-fulfilling gem." Discovering the gem is said to happen abruptly, like winning a lottery, thus opening up a sudden physical and spiritual energy similar to that of riding a mighty horse. This frees the mind of impoverishment and revels the natural state of fearless abundance.
Ironically, this abundance of suddenly discovering a wish-fulfilling gem within our very state of mind is a not a "personal" experience, so to speak, but something larger and more fundamental. Just as a sparrow flies with ease or a tiger walks with confidence, so too we discover the jewel-like ease and wealth of our humanness. We relax back into our unshakable confidence that we, too, are exquisitely equipped to be on this planet under all circumstances.
By L. Gordon Crovitz, Information Age, The Wall Street Journal, December 17, 2012
The open Internet, available to people around the world without the permission of any government, was a great liberation. It was also too good to last. Authoritarian governments this month won the first battle to close off parts of the Internet.
At the just-concluded conference of the International Telecommunications Union in Dubai, the U.S. and its allies got outmaneuvered. The ITU conference was highly technical, which may be why the media outside of tech blogs paid little attention, but the result is noteworthy: A majority of the 193 United Nations member countries approved a treaty giving governments new powers to close off access to the Internet in their countries.
U.S. diplomats were shocked by the result, but they shouldn't have been surprised. Authoritarian regimes, led by Russia and China, have long schemed to use the U.N. to claim control over today's borderless Internet, whose open, decentralized architecture makes it hard for these countries to close their people off entirely. In the run-up to the conference, dozens of secret proposals by authoritarian governments were leaked online.
A vote was called late one night last week in Dubai—at first described as a nonbinding "feel of the room on who will accept"—on a draft giving countries new power over the Internet.
The result was 89 countries in favor, with 55 against. The authoritarian majority included Russia, China, Arab countries, Iran and much of Africa. Under the rules of the ITU, the treaty takes effect in 2015 for these countries. Countries that opposed it are not bound by it, but Internet users in free countries will also suffer as global networks split into two camps—one open, one closed.
One lesson is that the best defense of the Internet is a good offense against an overreaching U.N. The majority of authoritarian governments in a one-country, one-vote system will keep chipping away at the open Internet. The best way to stop them is to abolish the ITU.
A Narrow Internet Escape (The Wall Street Journal, Dec. 18, 2012)
The U.S. walks out of a U.N. conference just in time.
The Administration's mistake was in playing along with the ITU in the first place. This White House and State Department have an undying faith in multilateral diplomacy, even when the rest of the world wants to use it to harm U.S. interests. Autocrats rightly see the open Web as a threat to their political control, which is precisely why it is in the U.S. interest to keep the U.N.'s hands off.
Given the ITU's Dubai double-cross, the U.S. has good cause to quit the agency. If that's too much, then perhaps the next Secretary of State will make it a theme of his tenure to preach the virtues of an unregulated Internet.
The leadership development and implementation of comprehensive shifts in global strategies aimed at linking people toward improving and sustaining their common good is progressing---even though leaders of individual religions, countries and military powers attempt to slow down such bridging efforts.
For example, the United Nations has been ineffective in taking a stand on civil war within Syria or allowing for Palestine national recognition due to uncooperative nations blocking such moves. What is overriding such uncooperative national actions is the more powerful growth of social networks, that operate through the Internet, and do not recognize country borders.
The Wall Street Journal reports in its December 4, 2012 issue that the question of who should rule the Internet is being debated at a 12-day conference in Dubai. The conference is sponsored by the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), the United Nations agency for information and communication technologies.
The bid to change the rule book has unleashed fears of a grab for centralized control of the Internet by the U.N. The process has also come under criticism for its lack of transparency, with documents unpublished and proposals up for debate kept secret. Among the most vocal critics are U.S. Internet companies like Google Inc. "Only governments have a voice at the ITU," Google wrote on its Take Action website. "This includes governments that do not support a free and open Internet."
For example, a group of 17 Arab nations, including the United Arab Emirates, is proposing greater control by governments in regulating the Internet and transfer of data. The group is calling for all Internet users to be universally identified, but critics warn of greater monitoring of Internet traffic and censorship in many countries that already block what their citizens can view online.
"Governments all over the world are seeking to reclaim grip and control that has slipped from them into the hands of empowered individuals," said Marietje Schaake, a member of the European Parliament. "Some of the proposals made are considered threats to the open Internet, to net neutrality, or to free speech if adopted," she added.
The interview below of Barbara Marx Hubbard by Michel Saloff-Coste discusses the history of her interest in integral leadership and its application to her work in future studies. She also discusses the forthcoming "Being 2012" taking place around the world on December 22, 2012.
"Taxes are what we pay for civilized society," Oliver Wendell Holmes, Jr., said, nearly a century ago.
Taxes are what we pay for civilized society, for modernity, and for prosperity. The wealthy pay more taxes because they have benefited more. Taxes, well laid and well spent, insure domestic tranquillity, provide for the common defense, and promote the general welfare.
Taxes protect property and the environment; taxes make business possible. Taxes pay for roads and schools and bridges and police and teachers. Taxes pay for doctors and nursing homes and medicine.
During an emergency, like an earthquake or a hurricane, taxes pay for rescue workers, shelters, and services. For people whose lives are devastated by other kinds of disaster, like the disaster of poverty, taxes pay, even for food.
Taxes are a pact. That pact needs renewing through constructive leadership.
Nearly six million factory jobs, almost a third of the entire manufacturing industry, have disappeared since 2000. And while many of these jobs were lost to competition with low-wage countries, even more vanished because of computer-driven machinery that can do the work of 10, or in some cases, 100 workers. Those jobs are not coming back, but many believe that the industry’s future (and, to some extent, the future of the American economy) lies in training a new generation for highly skilled manufacturing jobs — the ones that require people who know how to run the computer that runs the machine.
This is partly because advanced manufacturing is really complicated. Running these machines requires a basic understanding of metallurgy, physics, chemistry, pneumatics, electrical wiring and computer code. It also requires a worker with the ability to figure out what’s going on when the machine isn’t working properly. And aspiring workers often need to spend a considerable amount of time and money taking classes to even be considered.
And yet, even as classes are filled to capacity all over America, hundreds of thousands of U.S. factories are starving for skilled workers. Throughout this year's presidential campaign, President Obama lamented the so-called skills gap and referenced a study claiming that nearly 80 percent of manufacturers have jobs they can’t fill. Mitt Romney made similar claims. The National Association of Manufacturers estimates that there are roughly 600,000 jobs available for whoever has the right set of advanced skills.
The secret behind this skills gap is that it’s not a skills gap at all.
Several factory managers confessed that they had a hard time recruiting in-demand workers for $10-an-hour jobs. “It’s hard not to break out laughing,” says Mark Price, a labor economist at the Keystone Research Center, referring to manufacturers complaining about the shortage of skilled workers. “If there’s a skill shortage, there has to be rises in wages,” he says. “It’s basic economics.” After all, according to supply and demand, a shortage of workers with valuable skills should push wages up. Yet, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the number of skilled jobs has fallen and so have their wages.
In a recent study, the Boston Consulting Group noted that, outside a few small cities that rely on the oil industry, there weren’t many places where manufacturing wages were going up and employers still couldn’t find enough workers. “Trying to hire high-skilled workers at rock-bottom rates,” the Boston Group study asserted, “is not a skills gap.” The study’s conclusion, however, was scarier. Many skilled workers have simply chosen to apply their skills elsewhere rather than work for less, and few young people choose to invest in training for jobs that pay fast-food wages. As a result, the United States may soon have a hard time competing in the global economy. The average age of a highly skilled factory worker in the U.S. is now 56. “That’s average,” says Hal Sirkin, the lead author of the study. “That means there’s a lot who are in their 60s. They’re going to retire soon.” And there are not enough trainees in the pipeline, he said, to replace them.
Manufacturers, who face increasing competition from low-wage countries, feel they can’t afford to pay higher wages. Potential workers choose more promising career paths. “It’s individually rational,” says Howard Wial, an economist at the Brookings Institution who specializes in manufacturing employment. “But it’s not socially optimal.”
In retrospect, the post-World War II industrial model did a remarkably good job of supporting a system in which an 18-year-old had access to on-the-job training that was nearly certain to pay off over a long career. That system had its flaws — especially a shared complacency that left manufacturers and laborers unprepared for global trade and technological change.
By Mark Weinstein, CEO of www.Sgrouples.com, a privacy-centric social platform.
The Internet is an amazing, fantastic, vibrant place. But there are also evil people out there who steal identities, hack credit card accounts, track personal information, violate privacy, insert malicious programs that can exploit your company or home network, destroy your hard drives and raid your social network.
Here are some important ways to protect yourself:
1. Protect Your Wi-Fi Network
Your Internet Service Provider (ISP) can track every action you make through your Internet connection. This is typically used to track illegal activity. The bad news is that most wireless networks are easily cracked, meaning someone next door or in a car outside your house can use your network for illegal activity. Even worse, it is possible for someone on your wireless network to access other devices connected to the network, which is a serious security breach.
For this reason, it’s important to learn to secure your own wireless network: Open up your router settings page, create a unique password and network SSID name, enable network encryption, filter MAC addresses, reduce the range of your wireless signal, use a secure wireless network and monitor for unauthorized users.
2. Get Good Antivirus Software
The next step is to safeguard your computer against virus and malware attacks that can target your personal information and erase your saved data. Having a good antivirus program in place can save you a lot of headache by catching threats early.
Note: Even the best antivirus can’t save you 100 percent of the time. Viruses and malware come from the “shady neighborhoods” of the Web — gambling, pop culture, pharmaceutical and adult sites in particular. Be aware of what you’re clicking on; don’t download or open something unless you know what you’re getting into. A little precaution goes a long way.
3. Protect Your Passwords
These days we have more passwords to remember than ever: Make sure your passwords are different for each account.
At the very least, create alternative passwords for your critical accounts (i.e., your bank account and email). Keep your passwords offline on your hard drive, or, if you want to be even more secure, keep them on a physical notepad you keep near your desk.
4. Practice Safe Sharing
To be realistic, many of us are not going to stop sharing online. That’s why, instead of abstinence, it is important to learn and practice safe sharing. One way to do that is to review the privacy settings on every social media site you participate in and adjust the setting to maximize your protection against unwanted intrusion.
5. Don’t Daisy Chain Your Social Media Accounts
One of the reasons hackers are able to wreak havoc on people so easily is that all their social profiles are connected to one another. This means that if one profile is compromised, the others are likely to be as well.
While connecting to your accounts is easier if all you need to do is log in once to get access to all your social networks, it’s much less secure than if you have separate passwords for each one.
Determine how often you’re likely to use certain Web apps, and ask yourself if you really need to connect yet another third-party app to your Facebook page. If you don’t really need it, cut the link.
Keep in mind, the more apps you have connected to your accounts, the more potential weak points there are in your security.
In The Price of Inequality, Noble Prize-winning economist Joseph Stiglitz points out that, at $90 billion, the combined wealth of the six Walton family heirs to the Wal-Mart fortune is equivalent to that of the entire bottom 30 percent of Americans. Stiglitz argues that even the rich will be hurt when we reach the point "when inequality spirals into economic dysfunction for the whole society."
In this presidential and congressional election year, we must all begin to take action on our stake in this country's future. For our children's future, America needs to get better by reengineering our shared values and implementing a united ethical purpose.
The squeeze on middle America promises to be long lasting without change.
There's little doubt that the American middle class—the 40% of households with annual incomes between $50,000 and $140,000 a year—is in distress. Even before the recession, incomes of American middle-class families weren't keeping up with inflation, especially with the rising costs of what are considered the essential ingredients of middle-class life—college education, health care and housing. In 2009, the income of the median family, the one smack in the middle of the middle, was lower, adjusted for inflation, than in 1998, the Census Bureau says.
Economist Edward Wolff of New York University estimates that the net worth—household assets minus debts—of the middle fifth of American households grew by 2.4% a year between 2001 and 2007 and plunged by 26.2% in the following two years.
A researcher for Procter & Gamble Co. (P&G), recently asked a 40-year-old single mother to describe her family, her favorite pastimes and how she feels about money. This low-income consumer is part of a long-term P&G study tracking several consumers over time to gauge how sentiment is evolving as the economic slowdown wears on.
Despite waitressing to supplement her 20-year career as a support specialist at a cable company, the woman said that her finances are strained as utility bills, gas prices and the expenses of her two daughters keep growing. Her scrupulous budgeting of household expenses hasn't alleviated the pinch. "Instead of getting in a better situation, I feel like I'm getting in a worse situation," she said
To monitor the evolving American consumer market, P&G executives study the Gini index, a widely accepted measure of income inequality that ranges from zero, when everyone earns the same amount, to one, when all income goes to only one person. In 2009, the most recent calculation available, the Gini coefficient totaled 0.468, a 20% rise in income disparity over the past 40 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.
How does the economy increase stress in American lives?
Bellevue University released these survey results on stressed out Americans:
• 55% of Americans report experiencing stress in their lives. • Income loss and increased amounts of personal debt are the biggest stressors, with 33% of Americans citing these two factors as causing them the most stress. • Job related stress comes in second with 18% of working adults citing work as the biggest stressor. • 9% of adults say working in a job that doesn’t fit their skills or aspirations stresses them out the most. • 9% say they are stressed due to the increased workload caused by staff reductions.
How do we, as leaders, develop ourselves, our communities and our world to reinstate the American Dream?
Making the dream we have for our childrens' future become a reality is up to each one of us to lead the way forward. Here in America, we have always known that positive change is up to us and not dependent upon governmental actions.
In this video clip, taken from Robert Prechter's interview with The Mind of Money, Prechter and host Douglass Lodmell discuss "real" money vs the FIAT money system, and what is backing your dollars under our current system. Enjoy this 4-minute clip and then watch Prechter's full 45-minute interview here >>
Watch the full 45-minute interview FREE
Get even more valuable insights as Mind of Money host Douglass Lodmell interviews Elliott Wave International's President, Robert Prechter, about how to keep your money safe, the deflation versus inflation debate, and many more topics that are critical to your financial future.
Charles Murray, the conservative sociologist, has written an incisive, alarming, and hugely frustrating book about the state of American society. No sense withholding the punchline: He thinks we’re in decline. The American rich are living cloistered and isolated lives, depriving the mainstream of their fraternity, their wisdom, and their skills. A growing number at the other end of the socioeconomic spectrum are dropping out in another respect—abandoning work, family, and community. At risk is what Murray affectionately terms the “American project.”
Murray simply means that America, as a nation, grew up freer and also more industrious, neighborly, and tolerant than most. The combination of freedom with responsibility produced, until mid-20th century, a more virtuous and happy society.
Coming Apartin effect consists of three books, and during the first two—on the well-educated and the underclass—only occasionally does Murray’s moralism and finger-wagging offend. As the subtitle attests, what he actually examines is white America. Murray, co-author of The Bell Curve, restricted his focus as a way of “stripping away distractions” of race to focus on class, a more salient dividing line. His troubling news is that the sociological underclass—once widely assumed to be a subset of black America—is increasingly evident in all ethnicities.
The separation occurs in two ways. Through the 1960s, America’s rich were culturally similar to other Americans. Now, the cultural habits and preferences of America’s elite would be unrecognizable to mainstream U.S.A.
As Murray documents, the well-off used to live in the same or in contiguous neighborhoods as others. Bigger homes were not much bigger; they cost twice as much—not 10 times as much.
Physically isolated from middlebrow Americans, the elite are less likely to be part of the same associations, PTAs, Kiwanis clubs. Money does not define their culture as much as education. But education enables wealth, and vice versa. Given the increasing rewards that our economy returns for brainpower, differences in wealth tend to be self-perpetuating.
Murray’s second part details the declining hold of the “founders’ values” among lower-class white Americans. Murray identifies these values as industriousness, honesty, marriage, and religiosity.
The politically correct will find his language obnoxious, or so Murray dearly hopes. Regardless, he builds a strong statistical case that among the lower socioeconomic rung, the bonds of community, work, family, and faith are fraying.
