Tag Archives: economy

Think Twice Before Saying My Job Sucks

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Personally for those of us who have any job, from a part time job to a full time job cleaning toilets we should be happy we have one at all. My sister in June ended up applying to 66 jobs and only got 3 job interviews and no hire yet in the last four months she has been unemployed.

It’s a employer’s market, compared to 2006 when people hired anyone that moved. I used to remember a Las Vegas gas station offering $200 signing bonus for people who wanted to be gas station attendants. Now people are lining up 10-20 people for 1-2 slots at most firms big and small.

My sister’s childhood friend stupidly made a tantrum saying she wanted to be paid the same higher wage as her co-workers at $14, but she was recently hired at $12 and she felt offended. This individual ended up making a tantrum to her new company’s HR department and will likely be layoff bait in the near future.

Right now, the part time job that helped me through college is all I have right now. I would love to have a full time 25-40k a year job, but there is not much right now for the asking. I just make good in an imperfect situation and am trying to get motivated where I could enter a new career and another $10k in student loans to boot where I can finally get some good use out of my degree from UC Riverside.

Even though the pay not be exceptional or the job may cause us deep stress, we should be happy that our situations may be better than others and hope that the economic climate will be better for the time we need to move on to a new company or field of work.

Are You Fed Up?

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I know the economy is screwed up, but feeding the poor fast food is an utterly bad idea. I know businesses want government aid, but feeding fatty foods to people with their EBT cards seems totally against Michelle Obama’s visions for a healthy America.

My idea would be something fiscal conservatives and health and wellness advocates would endorse. Instead of allowing people to shop at 7-11 or Taco Bell, how about we sponsor high quality cookbooks people could use to cook a variety of recipies and meal plans to stretch their benefit dollars or even for those who still have gainful employment ways they could stretch their money as well.

Since many of the Food Network stars have became cultural icons my idea is to use them to help make quarterly cookbooks on how people could feed their family of 4 on $240 a month. Paperback cookbooks could be printed in government offices, and you could buy a deluxe hardcover edition to help fund food relief organizations at places like Amazon or Barnes and Noble.

My idea would be the ultimate public/private partnership. If we just subsidize fast food we will end up having public heath issues in the long run. Let us do it right from the beginning.

Be Mindful of Parents Wallets

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The economy is rough, wages are being cut with teachers are getting fired left and right. However I have one major complaint with teachers in general even though I personally do aspire to join the field in the next few years. Stop giving parents the unfunded mandate of having your students be required to do expensive projects.

Mission projects bust parents pocketbooks when many students and their families are living paycheck to paycheck. 50-100 dollars to complete the project can be better used elsewhere.

I am not speaking only about the infamous mission project or state projects, but even book reports can cost a pretty penny.

Not everyone is from a high wage household and educators in our state should recognize this fact. If we are friendly to the parents that send their children to our schools, then maybe the parents will be more likely to advocate for more funding to prevent education cutbacks.

Crazy bookstore

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While taking my Sociology class I noticed the strange pricing at the Chaffey College bookstore.
It seems the store is soaking it hard on those who can not afford to be soaked on themselves.
The college bookstore recommended an out of print edition of the text published over five years ago.
Oddly they are asking over eighty dollars for a used copy. I could understand this for the current edition, but the out of print edition it seems silly.
I know the bookstore is operated like an auxiliary organization to help raise money for scholarships and other useful functions, but at least they could be tactful about their pricing. Sell the 2005 edition for forty dollars at least and if there is a gut of the edition after the 2005 version then get those and at least pass the savings for future classes.
If we want students to patronize the bookstore first, the bookstore and the college must adapt to the competition.

The Political Paradox

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It seems most of my positions conflict with each other, I support private sector job creation. However most of the people who are big on reducing regulations to promote private sector job creation are not really big on supporting the equality of LGBT people in our state and our nation.

While the people who support LGBT equality are not traditionally for making it easy for people to create private sector jobs in California. I hate being the official contrarian on Facebook pages or your local gathering of people. I did not vote for many Republicans in the 2010 election, but I did vote Yes on Proposition 23 because I understand that AB 32 is making it harder for California businesses to grow. I bet most right leaning and Libertarian minded folk supported that ballot measure, but I think we want to help promote job creation we should try to be more inclusive. Such as not scaring people like me who may not be socially conservative and perhaps reach out to the people of Spanish speaking heritage to state that the Democrats are not there to help you get employed when they scare off the businesses.

How can we promote freedom and opportunity, when you close off freedom and opportunity like the environmental radicals in the Democratic Party? We need to advocate for personal as well as economic freedom. It stinks when both sides only deliver one part of the equation, but if you value both you lose on one of the issues depending on who you team with.

I may not be a pure conservative or a pure liberal, but if Howard Jarvis Taxpayers Organization can not support personal freedom for all Californians then we need to find a new advocate to reach out to Californians. We need a Gary Johnson type figure to run for Governor in 2014, Carl De Maio?

Republicans Distracted From Their Priorities

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A letter submitted to my local newspaper:

Ignorance, prejudice and fear rise hand and hand in the Republican Party. It makes me embarrassed that the establishment of the party I belong to would rather bash their fellow Americans than to do the job they were supposed to do when they got the majority in the House of Representatives.

I thought the Republican Party was supposed to be working on the budget deficit, job creation and decrease the size of government. But I guess the Republicans would rather deal with wedge issues to distract the American People such as treating LGBT people like unequal Americans with the Defense of Marriage Act.

Government sanctioned animus against a population is clearly unacceptable. Perhaps more job creation can happen when DOMA gets stricken down from the courts or repealed thru legislation than Speaker Boehner’s full employment program for lawyers to defend DOMA.

Governor Daniels of Indiana is right; we should focus on the economy first, and then worry about issues such as abortion or making LGBT people second class citizens after we fix the economy.

/s

Matthew Munson

Ontario, California

Daily Bulletin and Survival

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The economy is tough, technology is killing the newspaper and when both are placed together the situation does seem grim.

I remember when our local newspapers were comprehensive and filled with content, but it seems like today we are here to pay for a pale imitation of the newspapers of old for double the price.

It is not fun to see quality columnists like David Allen having to face a furlough, or young people realizing that there is a fat chance in hell that there will be a job for them in the journalism industry.

I know newspapers are having a hard time making money. But maybe if the Los Angeles Newspaper Group had a cost-effective solution to help generate some revenue. I was thinking of a 6 month or 1 year subscription package where if you do not subscribe to a daily subscription, you get a preferred online subscription to the website where there would be no advertisements and  longer retention of articles instead of 7 days, it would be a 30 day retention.

Perhaps for 12.00 for 6 months or 20.00 for a year, people would more likely help fund the content that we value as readers.

And to make this more valuable, you would be able to get content from all the newspapers in the chain from the Daily News to the Sun in San Bernardino. Fred Hamilton and William Singleton I hope you can read this.

Borders Store Shutdowns

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A sad tale is coming to an end for 30% of the stores of Borders, the bookseller chain facing difficulty in a tough economy and digital book selling.

The Chino and Montclair locations are being shut down, but if you like having a choice in where you buy your books can consider the Rancho Cucamonga location. Maybe the Barnes and Noble store in Montclair will get more business and will want to hire 1 or 2 more people due to the loss of the Montclair borders store.

The Borders company is calling it right-sizing, but actually it is down sizing.

Also its ironic that the people who run and manage the company have delusions of grandeur thinking they could afford to buy the Barnes and Noble chain.

And with bankruptcies you should use up your gift cards as soon as possible.

What a Lovely Dump

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messy

Due to a collapsing housing market, thousands of houses are in deep disrepair. Pools never drained filled with mosquitoes and disease, foreclosed residents treating their homes like dumps and or letting their lawns grow foot long weeds such as demonstrated by a local resident.

The irony that follows is the distressed homeowner has a house for sale, short sale sign on the front lawn. However the home is a lovely dump and does not scream the words “BUY ME” to the motorists passing along the street.

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Dialing for Couch Lint

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I understand that our public university system is suffering due to the collapsing economy and lack of support from Sacramento. Unfortunately I am not in the condition to donate money at this time and would love to be taken off the solicitation list from the school until I am able to donate. Not all of us are scientists, attorneys or other professionals that could afford to give a few hundreds to help pay it forwards. I would love to help out, but when the student callers call over and over on the same day when they are told that I have no spare money it does not help the cause.

If the school wants to help make it possible for the next generation of students to get a quality education maybe for the students who are lost after graduation provide them guidance so they would be able to donate back and feel that their education was a worthwhile investment, not a debt.

Matthew Munson ’03