Here’s the idea:
Everybody says we’re headed for an economic recovery, right? The economy grew in the third quarter of this year, the Dow is hovering around 10,000, even Ford managed to make a profit. But the other thing that everybody says is that it’ll be a “jobless” recovery. The economy might grow, but unemployment will stay the same. To say nothing of underemployment – people who have taken lesser positions, started freelancing or stopped looking for new work. While the financial folks celebrate the return of the bull market – what about the rest of us?
We want to paint a picture of what’s really going on out there. As the recession comes to an end – what does the recovery really look like? What is the real recovery?
Over the next few months – until the end of the first quarter of next year – we’re going to conduct a special new experimental project to look at the state of our nation. This is where you come in.
My office is in San Francisco. I can give local perspectives from here. But in order to tell this story from every corner of the country – we need your help. What do things look like where you live? Do you have a personal story about how you’ve been affected by the recession?
How you can get involved:
- The big thing is that you can write your own posts in the group “The Real Recovery”. What are we looking for? Local perspectives and personal perspectives. Just a few paragraphs: How are you or your community affected? Every week we’ll have different questions we’re asking – and we want you to post your answers.
- Now, do you want to get really involved? You can become a part of our Current Investigation Network. That means we’ll put you on an email list where sometimes we’ll reach out digging for info or to ask you to help out with collaborative assignments. If you want to be a part of the project by doing a little real journalism – this is the way to do it.
- And as always, you can clip stories and you can weigh in on the comments of posts. We’ll be highlighting stories people post over on the Blog – and that could be yours.
This is a big new step for Current News, and I’m personally very excited about it. I worked on Collective Journalism for two years, our citizen journalism program, and I think this is an even bigger opportunity to get even more people involved in the journalism we make.
So, what’s the next step?
- Join the group: “The Real Recovery”
- Tell us your story – just a few paragraphs. Either post in the comments here – or post your own story to the group. This Friday we’ll feature some of your contributions.
- If you want to be a part of the investigation team – send me a direct message.
Stay tuned!
From the News Blog: http://blogs.current.com/news/2009/11/04/the-real-recovery-a-collaborative-inves...
Img: http://current.com/items/91375468_image.htm
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- groups:
- The Real Recovery, News, Collective Journalism, News_Featured, 1 more
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- afitzgerald
- added this
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The only people who say we are headed for economic recovery are stockbrokers and politicians. There is no recovery and there won't be for a very long time, years. We're now spending our great grandchildrens tax dollars, the rest of the world is looking for another reserve currency besides the dollar, and no one is going to invest any money in starting a company, or any expansion or R&D, in the U. S. that would create jobs with an administration in the White House that thinks "profit" is a dirty word.
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10% real unemployment + underemployed = Great Depression era unemployment. Unemployment of this magnitude by itself should constitute at the least, the title "recession."
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Recessions are based on GDP growth not on how many people are employed. You could have 50% unemployment and still not have a recession or a depression. Though this seems unlikely.
It might also be why many people have begun to state that our current conceptions of what economic growth really is seems to be skewed with outdated ideas about capitalist economy. What's interesting is that the first establishment of capitalist economy was actually a near complete merge of the state and the economy. The success of each depended on the responsiveness of the other. America ironically is formed strongly on the idea of a "free economy," by this generally meaning the state and the economy are separate entities. Yet this idea is actually against what the earliest precept of capitalism is based on.
A truly free economy is one that can respond quickly to the demands of the consumers within the market. Responding to investors is problematic because they base their spending on presuppositional thinking.
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If this is a recovery , I need about 40, 000 bucks to recover from the recovery . Will work for food .
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because of invention there will be less and less jobs for more people, as time goes on. the economy will learn to deal with most of the population not working. this is a good thing.
i don't work, i'm disabled on dialysis and just finished a long battle with cancer in the spine. i depend on the charity of the government and others to the extent of having an in home caregiver. the recession scare hit me hard, many of the programs i depend on gave notice of closing or did close, due to lack of funds. frantic pleas for donations were apparently met because they are all back. well except for dental, but one can hope.
our society will adapt to a new economy, one not based on consumerism. the future seers (scifi authors) predict many possibilities where man and woman are free from the burden of labor.
economies existed in ancient egypt and meso-america where vast wealthy nations ran flawlessly with no money ( discounting chocolate). -
The stock market went up because of cutting expenses, and the number one expense of any company is labor. The GDP went up because of Cash for Clunkers, totally contrived, totally government funded, totally unsustainable. No one is going to invest in a company in the United States that will create jobs as long as there is an administration that wants to raise taxes, regulate wages, and limit resources. They already fixed it where they can take over a company as soon as they determine it's not "fiscally sound", according their rules, who would invest into an enviroment like that? You'd be foolish to do so. You start up a company, the government takes it over, determines your salary, and taxes what's left over. It's a losing situation, no one is going for that.
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Oregon unemployment is still on the rise. I am a builder with nothing to build because nothing is recovering. People are hanging on to their money waiting to see real regulation of wall street. New numbers today, one in eight people on food-stamps.
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- treewolf39
- 21 days ago
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I liked that SoCal had become multiple-industry rather than dependent on tech and dotcom like Silicon Valley. However, the LA area has been hit hard, particularly East of town including the San Gabriel Valley where unemployment is 12-15%. The better jobs seem to be West LA, Orange County and downtown. That means an hour in a car/bus/train each way to work, if you're lucky. I'd work for less, just let me do it within 15 miles of home, the home I bought 2 months before I got laid off. I can't rent it, can't move, and on principle won't sell at such a loss now when I put my hard-earned money into it for the past year.
