Trump admin’s new campaign for unemployed Americans: “Find Something New”

Introversion · Jul 16, 2020

Silly out-of-work people, stop hoping to get your old job back, and “Find Something New”. I’m sure it’ll be easy. What, you want money for that training? Get a job to pay for it, slacker!

https://apnews.com/32959d751de0f9cc327a92ff60a49b20

AP News said:
Presidential adviser Ivanka Trump on Tuesday unveiled a White House-backed national ad campaign highlighting alternative ways to start a career, an initiative targeting students, mid-career workers and the millions of people who are now unemployed because of the coronavirus.

Called “Find Something New,” the campaign is backed by Apple Inc. and IBM Corp. It was quickly bashed on social media as being tone deaf and inadequate for the times.

The Trump administration has long emphasized skills-based job and vocational training as an alternative to two- or four-year college degree programs for high school graduates, arguing that college isn’t for everyone and that a degree isn’t required for many jobs.

The campaign had been in the works for some time, but gained new urgency after efforts to slow the coronavirus outbreak left millions of people unemployed.

Ivanka Trump said President Donald Trump has been talking about alternate career paths since the beginning of the administration, in part because of growing automation.

“Now as a result of COVID, people need to, unfortunately, in some cases, learn a completely new skill,” Ivanka Trump said, referring to COVID-19, the disease the virus causes.

She cast it as an opportunity for people to get on a “new trajectory” and said, “We want to facilitate that connection back to the workforce and make it as smooth as possible.”

...

waylander · Jul 16, 2020

Perhaps they can all become social media influencers

MaeZe · Jul 16, 2020

The campaign had been in the works for some time,

Clinton's plan for the out-of-work coal miners was to pay for retraining. That was left out of the infamous clip where she said she wanted to put the coal industry out of business. (Sadly her campaign didn't counter the clip with what followed, but I digress.)

Trump never did bring back coal jobs. I wonder if this 'new campaign' was planned for countering that inconvenient fact? Hey Trump, financing retraining is supposed to be part of the plan.

ChaseJxyz · Jul 16, 2020

The Trump administration has long emphasized skills-based job and vocational training as an alternative to two- or four-year college degree programs for high school graduates, arguing that college isn’t for everyone and that a degree isn’t required for many jobs.

Ivanka Trump said President Donald Trump has been talking about alternate career paths since the beginning of the administration, in part because of growing automation.

While both of these are true, there's multiple problems applying this to the current situation. You don't need a degree for a lot of entry-level office jobs, but stating that fact isn't going to change employers requiring a degree still. And here's the thing about automation: it erodes the "middle class" of jobs, where you need to know some things and use your brain, but you're not super specialized. The people who were skilled at weaving were put out of work by mechanical looms, and the jobs it created were the engineers to design those machines, mechanics to keep those machines running, and low-paid workers to do upkeep things that machines can't do yet (and get to risk getting their fingers crushed or scalps ripped off in the process). As we create automation that can design machines on its own or even write programs, it will take even more specialized and educated individuals to create these complex systems while keeping minimum-wage earners who haven't been phased out yet (such as the "living cogs" of the Eternal Engine in Snowpiercer). If you've ever read Dougal Dixon's Man After Man it illustrates this really well.

There's always going to be physical labor/manual dexterity jobs that are too specialized to be worth the cost of automating it (such as underwater welding) until it's suddenly not. Probably easier to get a robot to do it on Europa than to make an astronaut do it. Throwing people at coding bootcamps (which, frankly, mostly make very poor programmers with few practical skills) won't fix this. And not everyone is capable (for many reasons) to get a phd in AI or advanced robotics. Either we move to a ubi/socialist model where no one has to work anymore (such as in Stross' Glasshouse) or we just let capitalism work its course and let billions starve and fight over scraps (such as Man After Man).

Introversion · Jul 16, 2020

ChaseJxyz said:
Either we move to a ubi/socialist model where no one has to work anymore (such as in Stross' Glasshouse) or we just let capitalism work its course and let billions starve and fight over scraps (such as Man After Man).

Well, it’s pretty clear which of those two is the GOP plan... :tongue

Even setting aside that at least one of our two political parties DGAF about impoverishing people, it’s just nutty to suggest “Find Something New”. If pay were even close to parity, maybe many people would leap at the chance. Hell, I’ve got a job and maybe I would Find Something New too.

But reality is that I couldn’t come close to earning the same as an entry-level employee in a different field. Ok, perhaps I’m willing (or more likely, forced) to make drastic lifestyle changes for my lower-paying Found Thing New. But if millions are doing that — selling homes, selling cars, dropping entertainment services, dining out less, all-around buying less — that’s a huge economic downdraft for everyone. (And you can’t tell those people they should just move — the majority of jobs are still around higher-cost-of-living urban areas than Middle’O’Nowhere areas.)

I suppose the Robber Baron class expects not to be disturbed from polishing their loot, but really, the whole nation loses economically if you just ket things become a race to the bottom. Including Robber Barons. Plans for guillotines aren’t that hard to find, after all.

Roxxsmom · Jul 16, 2020

It's not just less educated and semi-specialized workers being affected by automation and technology either. I have a terrified suspicion it will, with some help from this pandemic, put an end to my own profession (college teaching) as we currently know it. We're already living in a world where I spend more time interacting with technology than with my students as a teacher (and this was increasingly true, even before Covid-19 forced my classes online). How long before the error-prone, fussy, contentious human element can be reduced to almost nil, at least at the less prestigious colleges?

Oh, and medicine will also be increasingly online. We'll still need doctors, but fewer and fewer, because each one can serve more people. Doctors are already diagnosing and recommending treatments based on algorithms mandated by their HMOs or by insurance companies. As AI gets better, we will need fewer medical experts to oversee the process.

And what about patient care? For a long time, we thought professions that banked on relationships and human interaction were safe, because a machine can't replace that, can it? Except they are already experimenting with replacing human nurses in Japan.

Writing of relatively simple news stories is already being done by computer programs. How long before the entertainment industry is using computer programs to design content and to create images and art that is calculated to appeal to particular demographics? There could be a time when art and literature created by actual human beings will be a sort of novelty or niche item.

Even many aspects of scientific investigation could possibly be done by computer programs, which have already transformed labs and deleted countless secretarial and support positions from universities (gone are the days when a prof hands a sketchily written letter of recommendation to a department secretary to edit, type up, and mail out). Robots could replace lab technicians someday too, unless human wages can go low enough to stay competitive.

Sure, maybe some new professions can be created too, but they will be within increasingly narrow fields, and people who lack the inclinations or interest to be designers of computer systems and software, or who are better at working with people directly, will be increasingly SOL.

During this Covid-19 crisis, my colleagues and I are already looking at one another (remotely) and saying, this online thing sucks. Not only are online classes more work (constantly putting out technological fires and having to spend extra time recording, captioning, and designing content to be accessible to all students 24-7), interacting with everyone via computer all day isn't why I entered this profession. And if we ever do design an online class that has the perfect interface and "runs on rails" without constant intervention by ourselves, well, we've made ourselves redundant, haven't we?

I think there is a huge reckoning coming, and I have a hard time seeing how capitalism as we now know it, and our general culture where people derive their sense of identity and purpose from their profession, can survive it.

Unimportant · Jul 16, 2020

Agreed, Roxx. I'm in the same position as you. However, we have noticed that students hate online teaching; they want to be in the classroom actively interacting with their peers and the lecturers. And we lecturers have surely noticed that the quality of our teaching went to hell when we had to suddenly recreate everything and shift it online for lockdown.

(sorry, tried to insert an image but am clearly too much of a luddite to figure out even that, sigh)

MaeZe · Jul 16, 2020

Unimportant said:
Agreed, Roxx. I'm in the same position as you. However, we have noticed that students hate online teaching; they want to be in the classroom actively interacting with their peers and the lecturers. And we lecturers have surely noticed that the quality of our teaching went to hell when we had to suddenly recreate everything and shift it online for lockdown.

(sorry, tried to insert an image but am clearly too much of a luddite to figure out even that, sigh)

A link works, https://miro.medium.com/max/700/1*oSFF-fMQr21tNT65brwJNg.png.

It's funny, and sad.

Jason · Jul 16, 2020

While it's ludicrous for the current administration to expect much of anyone to buy into this tenet of "Find Something New", I also find it equally appalling that of those who are unemployed, many are of the opinion that there's no need to do anything, because frankly they're making more for not working than when they were actually working.

I have two nieces and a nephew now making $600 a week to do nothing!!!

How can that be an answer to anything? The worst of it is that their parental units are just as guilty because they're quietly agreeing hoping that maybe they'll get canned so they can get that kind of a deal.

mccardey · Jul 16, 2020

Jason said:
While it's ludicrous for the current administration to expect much of anyone to buy into this tenet of "Find Something New", I also find it equally appalling that of those who are unemployed, many are of the opinion that there's no need to do anything, because frankly they're making more for not working than when they were actually working.

I have two nieces and a nephew now making $600 a week to do nothing!!!

How can that be an answer to anything? The worst of it is that their parental units are just as guilty because they're quietly agreeing hoping that maybe they'll get canned so they can get that kind of a deal.

Presumably your younger relatives are not "doing nothing" so much as making the place safer by staying home, though?

We have a similar thing going on down here - I'm all for it. What better use could money be put to, than to keep people safely away from spreading the plague?

be frank · Jul 16, 2020

mccardey said:
Presumably your younger relatives are not "doing nothing" so much as making the place safer by staying home, though?

We have a similar thing going on down here - I'm all for it. What better use could money be put to, than to keep people safely away from spreading the plague?

For real.

Helix · Jul 16, 2020

And they're keeping the economy moving by paying rent and buying food.

Introversion · Jul 17, 2020

Unemployed people finding it too easy to pay their rent and buy food, rendering them shame-free and utterly dependent? No worries! The GOP is on it, and soon will fix that!

'What’s going to give?': millions fret as Republicans threaten to halt $600 weekly lifesaver

The Guardian said:
If Donald Trump and Senate Republicans have their way, roughly a week from now, the US will swap an imagined economic problem for a predictably devastating one, economists have warned.

To keep people safe at home during the pandemic and to support them during the resulting jobs crisis, Congress in March instituted a $600 boost to weekly unemployment insurance benefits. Unless lawmakers step in, the money stops on 31 July.

The money is an unusually robust benefit in a country with a weak social safety net. With it, researchers estimated somewhere between 40% and 68% of US workers could make more from unemployment than they did working, because of the high concentration of job losses in low-wage positions.

Republicans, as a result, have warned of hordes of people “disincentivized” from returning to work. But economists say the real crisis is what happens when those same people have $2,400 less each month to pay for bills, rent and groceries.

Sara Gard has been furloughed since April from her hospitality job, and said without the $600, she and her two children will be entirely dependent on her husband’s pay.

“It’s not going to cover everything, so what’s going to give? The house? The food?” Gard said.

Once it is safe to return to work, Gard has a job she loves waiting at a company she admires and has been with for 15 years. But without the $600 boost, she will have to give up the furlough protections to take a new job near her home in Atlanta.

“It is such a feeling of being caged and trapped, and every decision I can make is a bad one,” Gard said.

...

Hoooooooo, boy, given the chance, who wouldn’t just quit their jobs to go on that sweet, sweet gummint teat juice?

Sure, there will be mass evictions next month, and sure, stressed foodbanks will be even more stressed. But hey, Freedom will have been preserved and Socialism forestalled, so the economic crash will be totes worth it. Party on, DJIA!

Chris P · Jul 17, 2020

What gets my blood boiling on the "Find Something New" approach is the position of privilege it comes from. It's very easy for someone with a vast network of connections and recognized skills who has never had an involuntary significant period without work to tell someone else to "find something new."

I was unemployed for the last part of 2014 and most of 2015. I had returned from my two-year contract position in Uganda, and international development world I was getting into was indeed "something new" that would build on my past accomplishments (a PhD and 15 years working experience--so it's not like I didn't have skills). All told I applied for over 250 positions, drove my car at my own expense over 20,000 miles across the entire eastern half of the US to conferences, job fairs, informational interviews, and plain old knocking on HR doors with dozens of universities, NGOs, government agencies, beltway bandits, anyone who did work in my field. I took hours and hours of online courses, attended job seeker webinars, and volunteered at a local food pantry. I'm fortunate that I had the savings account and support network to make this possible; lots of folks don't. In all, I had about 20 interviews, and the only offers I got were things I would have been overqualified for 15 years earlier, until, 15 months after returning to the US, I got one.

So I take exception to those who said "I'll bet you're enjoying the time off!" or "I wish I could have the opportunity you have right now" or "You'll look back on this period as a fun, good time." Shut up. You have no idea. Even you fellow volunteers and good friends at the food pantry who never had a day without pay in your life and have no idea what it's like to ask for a basic need. Yeah, even you: enough of your "advice." "Find something new." Do you even know what you're saying?

@Jason: I take exception to the "$600 a week to do nothing," too. It's not about the money. Yes, there are cheats and there are those who will game the system without officially cheating. We all know people in our lives who do or would. But it is too simplistic to say that everyone who gets a public benefit is doing so because it's easier than working. That's simply not been the attitude of 99% of the people I know receiving benefits of some sort. Benefits do not disincentivize employment, nobody wants to ask for basic needs, and nobody likes the disgusted looks you get (like I did) when your tooth breaks (like mine did) and you go to a dentist office and ask "Do you take Medicaid?" (like I had to). It's not just about the money.

lizmonster · Jul 17, 2020

We are a country in desperate need of UBI. $600 a week seems pretty damn slim for that.

Introversion · Jul 17, 2020

'I'm using unemployment benefits to buy insulin': US workers face hardships over pandemic

The Guardian said:
As millions of workers around the US remain out of work due to the coronavirus pandemic, employers are pushing cuts to wages, eliminating health insurance and other benefits, and terminating workers rather than furloughing them.

Rodney Watts worked at the Atlanta international airport employed by the retail and concessions contractor HMS Host for nine years as a warehouse shift supervisor before getting laid off in March.

Watts says he is using his unemployment benefits to pay for his insulin, as he lost his health insurance with his job termination.

“Without insurance I have to pay out of pocket … I take insulin shots three times a day. Now I’m using unemployment to pay for it,” said Watts. “My diabetes is a rollercoaster. If I don’t take my shots, I feel real bad. The insulin runs me almost $400 for just a small bottle and I also take metformin.”

...

C’mon, Rodney! Can’t afford your insulin after that $600 benefits kicker expires? Just Find Something New! I hear they used to make insulin by extracting it from cow pancreas? Maybe see if your butcher has some cheap bovine pancreas, and make your own! Get creative! Be best!

mrsmig · Jul 17, 2020

So incredibly tone-deaf. I'm an out-of-work, 64 year old union stage actress with 30+ years in the business and no earthly idea when I'll be able to return to my profession. So lemme just learn a new trade, find someone who'll hire my tired old ass (instead of an equally desperate 28 year old), and do that while the clock is running down on my unemployment benefits.

cbenoi1 · Jul 17, 2020

waylander said:
Perhaps they can all become social media influencers

Goya sales & marketing positions are trending. If you know the difference between a lion and a rhino and can draw a clock that indicates ten past eleven, you're good to go!

-cb

Tazlima · Jul 17, 2020

"Find something new!" Wow! What a great idea! I can't believe I didn't think of that before! - Barf.

My boyfriend lost his job when the pandemic hit and has been on the expanded unemployment. A month prior to the pandemic, I landed a temp-to-hire position in an essential industry and retained my employment.

Thanks to the expanded unemployment benefit, he makes a good bit more than I do.

For now.

Boyfriend has spent basically his entire career in the service industry. He's incredible at what he does... and there's no longer any market for it in our tourism-dependent city. Half the damned city is out of work, and unless the virus miraculously disappears, the restaurant/bar/hotel/catering/driving gigs won't be coming back for a very, very long time.

He may have a higher weekly income than I do right now, but I wouldn't trade places with him for anything, because when that unemployment runs out, he's pretty much screwed. His 20+ year resume has just been rendered worthless for the foreseeable future.

My income is small, but it's steady, and now that the "temp" portion is over and I'm actually hired, I even have health insurance, which feels like a friggin' miracle. He has neither. $600/week is poor payment for the stress and anxiety he's going through, and I'm stressed too, because without his income (whatever the source), I don't know how we'll make ends meet.

All I can do is repeat the mantra that's gotten me through countless hard times by the skin of my teeth. "We'll think of something."

But this time it's a lie. I can't think of a way out of this one. And as stressful as it is, we're better off than 75% of our neighbors. We haven't had to hit up the food banks yet.

jennontheisland · Jul 17, 2020

Jason said:
While it's ludicrous for the current administration to expect much of anyone to buy into this tenet of "Find Something New", I also find it equally appalling that of those who are unemployed, many are of the opinion that there's no need to do anything, because frankly they're making more for not working than when they were actually working.

I have two nieces and a nephew now making $600 a week to do nothing!!!

How can that be an answer to anything? The worst of it is that their parental units are just as guilty because they're quietly agreeing hoping that maybe they'll get canned so they can get that kind of a deal.

The fact that they make more on unemployment than they did working is a bigger problem than doing nothing for $600 a week. Would you care to comment on that?

People receiving social safety net benefits are not required to do anything for them. That's why it's a social safety net.

(I'm Canadian and I'm only getting $500 a week for sitting on my ass)

CWatts · Jul 17, 2020

cbenoi1 said:
Goya sales & marketing positions are trending. If you know the difference between a lion and a rhino and can draw a clock that indicates ten past eleven, you're good to go!

-cb

I really hope some good comes out of that shitshow - like Goya products filling up food banks as folks purge it from their pantries.

Introversion · Jul 17, 2020

CWatts said:
I really hope some good comes out of that shitshow - like Goya products filling up food banks as folks purge it from their pantries.

We’ll use up what’s in our pantry, but the brand is on our Do Not Buy list now. Anyone still supporting this administration doesn’t get my dollars if I can help it.

ChaseJxyz · Jul 17, 2020

When people complain about unemployment, specifically the $600/week thing, they tend to forget that if you refuse to work, you lose unemployment. Say your job is at a restaurant or hotel and you make close to minimum wage. You've been laid off/furloughed because of covid, and now you're making more than double what you did before because of the extra $600. Sounds awesome, right? Your city starts to reopen and your boss offers you your job back. You say, heck no, I'd rather make all this money and not work at all, because I'm lazy and entitled. Your boss then reports that you were offered work and refused it, and now you lose unemployment, because now you're choosing to be unemployed.

The point of unemployment is to keep people afloat who lost their job (or had a reduction in hours) for factors outside of their control until they can find work of a similar pay. So all the airbnb and uber engineers who were laid off need to find work at a similar pay to that, not flipping burgers, while the burger flippers need to find work that pays about what flipping burgers cost. A ton of restaurant owners where I am are "terrified" that their employees will refuse to come back because of expanded unemployment, but it shows a clear misunderstanding of unemployment works. No one wants to be on unemployment, and these tens of millions of people out of work don't want to be. They also don't want to be homeless or have their kids go hungry.

Roxxsmom · Jul 17, 2020

As I understand it, Germany has been paying folks 80% of their wages (87% for people with children) if they can't work at their job during this crisis. This plan seems sensible, as it is enough for most to make ends meet, but it's not so much most wouldn't work at their jobs if they can do so remotely or if their job is critical during the crisis. Note that the workers in Germany, and in many other European countries, are furloughed, not laid off, so they have jobs to return to once the stay-at-home orders are lifted. No one is telling them to change careers or to find a new job during Covid-19, and this will actually allow companies shuttered during the pandemic to return to normal more quickly once the shutdowns are eased.

In the US, we seem to have this punitive mindset, where we are obsessed with people who might be claiming they can't work when they can. The specter of idleness (except, perhaps, among the richest people) utterly horrifies us, and consequentially we want to shame and punish poor people who are out of work. Many of us assume individual laziness (or defectiveness) is the primary reason for chronic unemployment, rather than societal problems or circumstances beyond the ability of many people to cope with on their own. If the solution to all our social ills were shame and punishment, surely we'd be the most employed and crime-free society on the planet, since we handle social welfare very differently from other post industrial countries (with less going to individuals who are in poverty and more channeled to businesses to subsidize things like private health insurance for workers), and since we incarcerate a higher percentage of our population than any other country.

mccardey · Jul 17, 2020

Roxxsmom said:
In the US, we seem to have this punitive mindset, where we are obsessed with people who might be claiming they can't work when they can.

We have it down here, too, in a cut-and-come-again kind of way, but it doesn't usually last very long. Still, it's guaranteed click-bait during elections and slow news periods.

Trump admin’s new campaign for unemployed Americans: “Find Something New”

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