The article mainly focuses on health care jobs (don't get me started there - I should do another blog "HealthCarePanic"). But I think they should have focused more on the REIC jobs - because those are the ones going away faster than your Blockbuster Video stores... Just look at the charts...
What's Really Propping Up The Economy
Sure, housing has been a bonanza for homebuilders, real estate agents, and mortgage brokers. Together they have added more than 900,000 jobs since 2001.
But the pressures of globalization and new technology have wreaked havoc on the rest of the labor market: Factories are still closing, retailers are shrinking, and the finance and insurance sector, outside of real estate lending and health insurers, has generated few additional jobs.
September 16, 2006
Business Week cover story exposes the big lie - an American economy based on REIC (and healthcare) jobs about to go poof
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19 comments:
Jobs, now you see them.....now you don't!
think of all the unemployed home depot orange aprons to come..............
Future, post REIC collapse: Ever fewer "actually employed" people carrying the burdens of exploding health care and government bureaucracies.
The financial guys over at financialsense.com and others say that the inventory is not that big a problem and we may be in for a big stock push 1Q 2007. This kinda puts a damper on housing panic.
I'll say it, we NEED manufacturing jobs back in this country if we are to avoid jumping from bubble to bubble by people who jump into industries when the money is rolling and drive up speculation within some industry. It seems the same thing is happening in the commodity markets, especially crude.
As for health care, when we are going to have insurance companies who pay for preventative health care costs? I think that this should be done rather than nationalizing health care. I don't want to wait 6 months for cancer treatment if the technology is available to prevent it in the first place.
There's no doubt that healthcare has saved our economy from a total or early collapse. My question is; isn't it that the majority of healthcare costs are subsidize by entitlements? Where will our government get the money? Increase tax? Maybe I need some help from economics guru to explain the rationality behind all this.
On the other hand, private insurances thrive through higher employment rate. What about if the unemployment is high due to job outsourcing abroad? Need some enlightenment.
Does healthcare help an economy?
No, not really, beyond basic vaccines and public health.
Most health care money now goes to help older people who wouldn't be working anyway.
If it could help middle age pre-diabetic fatsos get healthy again, then it would be an economic benefit, but this appears to be impossible.
So realistically and economically, the health care costs are mostly a tax on the productive and drive productive industries which can move out of the nation.
"investment" in health care does not produce returns the way investment in actually profitable technology and manufacturing industries do.
In fact, it seems that 'investment' in health care actually increases costs and reduces productivity: more doctors in a speciality the more use of them.
As far as healthcare, what we're seeing is an aging baby boomer population combined with the obesity epidemic putting a strain on our hospitals and doctors, and increasing the demand for nurses etc. I'm not sure what this has to do with the housing bubble.
As a matter of fact, all these fat asses who lard around watching american idol may contribute to a healthcare bubble in the future.
What is really stressing the health care safety net is illegal immigration. The health care system has to treat these people in the emergency room, then they walk away without paying a cent. Many of the hospital in the border states are closing because of huge deficits.
What is really stressing the health care safety net is illegal immigration.
++++++++Exactly. I wish the Democrats would understand this. I'm a life-long Democrat, but the Democratic Party's stance toward illegal immigration is ridiculous!
Maybe hollyweird and all the rich liberals like george sorass should pick up the tab for all the illegals' medical bills. Put their money where their mouth is...
"What is really stressing healthcare...is illegal immigration."
AGREE! But what is the solution. Do we deport all of them which would take many, many years to do? Or, give them some kind of a path to legalization, start paying taxes and will aleviate the strain in our healthcare system.
I for one don't want to see a status quo or do nothing approach.
Did you know that within the past 30 days the healthcare sector has eliminated the following jobs
HCA, Inc, cuts 60 jobs
Johnson & Johnson, cuts 30 jobs
Pan American Hospital Corporation, unknown cuts
Columbia Memorial Hospital, unknown cuts & freezing salaries.
U.S. Physical Therapy, Inc, cuts 19 jobs
UHHS/CSAHS-Cuyahoga, Inc cuts 100 jobs
WellPoint Inc ,unknown cuts
Rehabilitation Institute of Chicago, cuts 45 jobs
Riverside Radiology Medical Group Inc, cuts 20 jobs
St. Jude Medical, Inc, cuts 30 jobs
Colorado Access, cuts 140 jobs
Dodge County Hospital, cuts 27 jobs
Galichia Heart Hospital Llc, cuts 22 jobs
PBI Regional Medical Center, cuts 120 jobs
Sisters of Charity Providence Hospitals, cuts 30 jobs
VistaCare, Inc, unknown cuts
Health care is a business like all other business it has cycle, and Cycles seems to repeat with history.
Insurance companies left the health insurance market during the hard market of 1986 to 1988.
Tracing the Cycle of Health Insurance
Beginning in 1992, governments throughout Canada began reducing expenditures in an effort to eliminate fiscal deficits and reduce their alarmingly high debt burden. As part of this deficit-fighting era, governments reduced hospital expenditure levels quite dramatically.
The Impact of Deficit Reduction on the Nursing Labour Market in Canada: Unintended Consequences of Fiscal Reform
Then in the early 1990, Insurance Companies forced the Health care industry to consolidate.
BACKGROUND
Observers of the health care industry note the dramatic changes in that industry in recent years, including an increase in the number of mergers.
Changes in Medicare hospital reimbursement and other "belt-tightening" actions by public and private payers have forced hospitals to operate more efficiently. Among the cost-cutting measures considered by hospitals are resource-sharing arrangements and consolidation. Some hospitals conclude that merger is the best course to remain viable.
The Effects of Hospital Mergers on the Availability of Services
In Chicago area Motorola closed number of factories:
Northbrook,Schaumburg Paging,Harvard,Libertyville,Lake Zurich,Elgin repair center,Rockford repair center.
Lucent closed factory,Tellabs also...
What all those people do?
Manpower temporaries,Walgreen cashiers and Real Estate agents :-)
Santa Clara Co. Faces Grim Financial Future
SAN JOSE, Calif. -- Millions of dollars in department cuts, hundreds of layoffs, slashed services and no guarantee of future economic upswings face Santa Clara County in the next fiscal year, County Executive Pete Kutras reported today.
On the table is a $201.6 million deficit projected for fiscal year 2008. That deficit, stemming from accumulated shortages built up from temporary fixes to ongoing problems in years past and reduced federal, state and local financial support, will mean at least 500 county employees will lose their jobs by January 2008. And according to Kutras, that number could rise to 1,000 or more because the budget problems are not going away any time soon.
The county plans to balance the $2.3 billion General Fund budget by cutting about $155.6 million from departments, including nearly $34 million from the Mental Health Department, one of the hardest hit divisions, and about $70 million from the county's hospital. The county is asking Santa Clara Valley Medical Center to set aside $31.5 million in additional reserves to be used each year, thereby freeing up monies in the general fund for ongoing solutions. Additionally, the hospital is being asked to slash about $35.7 million in ongoing expenditures
"We're setting a very high bar for the hospital," Kutras said.
Overall, the proposed reduction for the Health and Hospital area is about $109.9 million while the housing, land use, environment and transportation area is being asked to cut a comparatively meager $295,000. The recommended reductions in the public safety and justice area, which includes the departments of corrections, probations, district attorney, sheriff's and public defender among others, would amount to $22.2 million. In the finance and government area, which includes the departments of assessor, facilities and finance agency, among others, the recommended cut is $9.3 million.
Each department's estimated reduction is based on its share of the general fund budget, reductions made in prior years and their impact on services as well as the non-county revenue-generating capacity of each agency, according to the county report.
"I know we pride ourselves on prevention but unfortunately I think we are in a cycle where we can't afford prevention," Kutras said. And we're going to have to focus on paying for acute care at this point."
The recommendations received criticism from several county personnel, including a chairwoman for the county's Mental Health Board, who argued that the severity of the cuts to mental health services lacked "parity, equity and common sense."
"When we say prevention has to be tossed out the window, I have a serious problem with that," Santa Clara County Assistant District Attorney Rolanda Pierre-Dixon said. "I would hate to see our community become one of those communities that does not care."
District Attorney George Kennedy, whose department is being asked to slash $3.6 million from its budget, questioned the analysis behind the proposed cuts.
"The impact on jail population can't have been considered here," Kennedy said. "The fact that the DA's office has the largest span of supervision in the county can't have been considered in this recommendation."
Kennedy also doubted the accuracy of the county's general fund contribution to the district attorney's office, listed as nearly $63 million in 2007, arguing that the document incorporates half-cent sales tax revenue earmarked for public safety agencies by voters in 1994 as part of its general fund payment.
"Here in this county that half-cent sales tax is run through the county executive's office and it isn't recognized in the public safety agencies," Kennedy said. "This document shows us very large general fund contributions not offset by that public safety sales tax revenue as it should be to get a true picture of what the general fund contribution is to public safety agencies."
Supervisor Pete McHugh in turn requested a report from county staff detailing how much money it receives from the public safety tax, also known as Proposition 172, and how it is distributed.
Kutras noted that although the board today unanimously approved his recommendations in concept, the proposed reductions were far from set in stone and that the early projections were most of all an attempt to encourage talks between departments and county staff on how to deal with the dire budget situation.
In addition to the hefty department cuts and grant reductions for the hospital, the county proposes reducing retiree health care costs by half, generating $11.9 million each year. Another $2.6 million should come through dedicated revenue from the new Detention Facility Board.
The county has implemented $802.6 million in budget reductions over the past four years, and departments have absorbed approximately $312.5 million of those reductions. Most county supervisors hoped voters would pass a half-cent sales tax increase in June to alleviate some of the ongoing cutbacks, however, that measure, which would have generated an estimated $150 million per year for general county services, failed.
"We tried valiantly to elicit more support from the public and I regret ... that we didn't get that and I think we all feel some sadness that the public didn't feel sufficiently motivated to (pass Measure A)," Supervisor Liz Kniss said.
Supervisor Blanca Alvarado noted that the grave predictions meant county staff would have to be creative in finding solutions.
"It really is going to have to be a matter of more efficiency, more effectiveness and more streamlining," she said.
Alvarado added, "We have been steadily inching toward the abyss and we are now at the very edge of it and it is very frightful."
screwed coming and going, no wonder there is all the scuttlebut about gay mariage, perhaps that should be spelled correctly as marage?
if healthcare was any good, aside from accidental trauma, would not, just a few pill be able to reverse the cellular decay and ageing, and restregnthen the cells
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