So you're unemployed. Big fucking deal. There are 15 million in America
just like you. When you add in discouraged workers and the involuntarily
underemployed (such as yours truly), the number of schlumps pounding the
pavement or clacking the keyboard in search of enough dough to pay the
bills and still enjoy a pint of beer is more than 26 million desperate
jobseekers, or 16.8 percent of the workforce.
It's an ugly economy out there. For those harboring fantasies of a replay of the revolutionary romanticism of the 1930s, forget about it. The country is teetering on the brink of a Depression, but there is nothing Great about it.
Even before the free-fall began, about 30 million Americans were experiencing "low food security" -- bureaucratese for going hungry. Some 62 percent of personal bankruptcy filings these days are due to medical bills, which could total 900,000 cases in 2009. Home foreclosures hit a record high of 360,149 in July. More than 1 million schoolchildren were reported homeless as of last spring, an increase of 50 percent in just a few years. And tent cities are popping up from the redwood forests to the gulfstream waters. (Not that all is bleak: Wal-Mart tent sales are up 36 percent as more Americans "find their inner Thoreau.")
Meanwhile, Washington has been so busy ministering to investment banks, hedge funds, bondholders, automakers, insurance companies and other downtrodden billionaires that it has spent all the money you hoped would go toward a new Works Progress Administration that would pay you to plant trees, build parks, paint murals and compose stirring proletariat musicals.
So what to do? You can always learn to say "Would you like fries with that?" But who wants to eat made-in-a-factory E. coli burgers, much less sling them?
And forget about seeking refuge folding sweaters at the Gap or pulling shots of espresso at Starbucks. For one, they're corporate sleazebags, and $9 an hour ain't going to do much for your retirement. Moreover, these days, they are both folding up more stores than they are opening.
Maybe you should have gotten a business degree like your parents urged you to, instead of that useless liberal arts degree. Sure, it enriched your mind, but not your wallet.
It's time to take stock and think about your options. No, not grad school. Getting a Ph.D. in musicology or philosophy isn't going to do anything but leave you older and poorer, all for the privilege of having a few more letters to tack onto your name.
Of course you can just drop out. "Live a life free of work and money," as some say. Sure. But it's also a life free of health care and housing.
What you need to do is get some cash, quick. Then you can buy yourself a shack in Argentina and have enough left over to live off the savings.
You Have Five Basic Options:
Entrepreneurship
The Great Recession, as The New York Times has dubbed it, is turning many a corporate refugee into an "accidental entrepreneur." Maybe you're a good cook, have a craft or have invented the next great consumer product, like hair-in-a-can spray.
All you have to do is beg, borrow and steal every bit of cash you can from your family and friends. Then set up shop in your apartment or garage. Just be prepared to work 16 hours a day, seven days a week for years and hope some corporate giant doesn't steal your idea and dispatch an army of lawyers to tie up your claim in court until the universe goes cold.
Even then, unless you have business skills and a knack for marketing, your enterprise could falter at any time for a thousand different reasons.
Speculation
Contrary to popular belief, the financial markets are not purely random. You can make piles of cash through speculation (as opposed to investment) -- just ask George Soros. It only requires tremendous study, an understanding of group psychology, mathematics and financial instruments and nerves of steel.
The housing bubble may have popped, but there's always a new one inflating -- in currencies, gold, carbon trading -- in which money is chasing after money. Assuming you can get over the ethical qualms of being a parasite, you're swimming with sharks who will eat you like chum, if you give them half a chance. Plus, you need at least $10,000 to begin with. And, yes, you can be wiped out overnight if you're not careful.
Criminalization
Many a '70s-era millionaire was made smuggling in smoke or blow over the Mexican border. Back then, you only had to worry about some hick sheriff and his dimwitted half-brother trying to bust you. Now the DEA, FBI and Pentagon want to nab your hippie ass and lock it away forever in some Supermax.
Forget about heroin or crack, unless you're into guns, pitbulls and paranoia. Your best bet is to move to Humboldt County, where the district attorney made it legal to grow up to 99 pot plants yielding super-hybridized dank bud that is almost worth its weight gold. (Just don't smoke all of your profits.)
Primitive Capital Accumulation
Use your brawn, not your brains. Who's going to get rich becoming a day laborer, you say? I'm not suggesting you line up at Home Depot at 6 a.m. with Latino immigrants, hoping to get eight hours of work and trusting you'll actually get paid. Mainly because immigrants will work harder and longer for less than your coddled American ass ever will.
What you can do is decamp to the Great White North, where there's an oil rush in Alberta, Canada's Athabasca tar sands. With a little training, you can soon be making $50,000 or more a year hauling a rig or fitting pipes in some of the most beautiful wilderness in the world (which, incidentally, you would be helping to destroy). Just pack plenty of thermal underwear for those days when the high temperature is minus-37.
Professionalization
Go to medical or law school. You rack up tons of debt, but your earning power is vast, as long as you're willing to slave away for 15-20 years. You can do something noble like "help the poor," but then what's the point of incurring all that debt?
You can make a fortune, but it will probably involve liposuctioning the man boobs off middle-aged wannabe Casanova, or defending sleazy telemarketing companies. Not very palatable. Your better option is to become a physician's assistant or pharmacist. Both degrees require much less time and money, but you can still command a six-figure salary. Just be warned: You'll have to listen all day to old people complaining about their ailments and no-good children as you either write their prescriptions or fill them.
Can't Lick em, join em " Written by Arun Gupta
IDEA NUMBER 6. Become a cop.About face! Former
pet shop owner makes the grade with LAPD
By Gregory J. Wilcox, LA VALLEY DAILY NEWS Staff Writer
09/10/2009
Officer Curt Logan used to own a pet store in Granada Hills, but given the state of the economy, he decided to get into law enforcement. Now, Logan is set to begin his new career as one of L.A. s finest. (John McCoy/Staff Photographer) Since embarking on his new career path in March, Curt Logan has been called "the old man" or even "grandpa." Beginning today, he'll be known as Officer Curt Logan.
At 47, the North Hills resident will be the oldest of nearly five dozen cadets graduating from the Los Angeles Police Academy. "This is probably the biggest accomplishment of my life," Logan said. "At the badge ceremony (last month) I kind of teared up. It's very emotional."
And Logan's completion of the rigorous LAPD training is not a surprise, though it might seem a big career leap for the former owner of the Pet Zone store in Granada Hills.
"Adam 12" was his favorite television show when he was growing up, and he's accompanied officers on numerous ride-alongs in the San Fernando Valley. He's also well-versed in the lingo of the station house, as illustrated by the incident that prompted his decision to finally pursue his lifelong dream.
"One day I was driving to work at the pet store and I saw some guys breaking into a house. There was also a guy in a lookout car," Logan recalled. The guy in the car took off. Logan followed and called 911. The guy sped north on Balboa Boulevard heading for Interstate 5. Officers were dispatched and they caught the driver and three others back at the house. Logan then called his friend, Sgt. Walter Hannah, at the West Valley Division.
"I just caught four 459 suspects," Logan told Hannah, invoking the three-digit
code police use to signify a burglary. Of course, a mid-career change like
this demands sacrifice and dedication. Aging, seldom-used muscles need
to be toned. During the 10-month application process, Logan took
advantage of a program that helps candidates get in shape. He worked out
for three hours, two nights a week, before entering the academy in March.
Now he's in the best shape of his life. He dropped from 217 to 180 pounds
-- what he weighed when he graduated from Birmingham High School. Push-ups
are no problem now, either. "I can whip out, like, 50," Logan said. Despite
his preparation, physical training at the academy was intense, as was the
verbal indoctrination.
"Everybody razzed me. I don't think too many people expected me to
make it," Logan said. "There were times when I definitely felt like quitting.
But I didn't have a job to go back to. I'd sold my store." Sgt. Irma Krish,
a member of the LAPD's training division, said several recruits have been
in their 50s, but she did not know the age of the oldest graduate. But
there are not that many applicants as old as Logan.
"My husband was 43 when he came through and he was the top PT (physical training) person in his class," she said. "When we do get them, they can do just as well as anybody else. Usually what stops them is an injury."
Logan's new career will officially start at 6 p.m. Monday, working patrol
on the overnight shift at the West Valley Station. After a lifetime spent
in the San Fernando Valley, that assignment suits him just time. "I wanted
to do that," he said. "I know these streets."
* * *
Back to Gupta's work:
"To be fair, there are many noble vocations that won't put you in the path
of bullets or leave you in the poor house -- becoming a schoolteacher,
a social worker, a civil servant. While you're spending 30 years trying
to make progress one kid at a time, just hope that Wall Street, and an
increasingly emboldened (and crazy) right wing, doesn't bankrupt your pension
funds or Social Security.
Or, you could just become an activist and know that despite your self-imposed penury that you fought the good fight. But it sure sucks being poor.
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