8.1% unemployment is the highest since 1983. I don't think I can do
it justice, but I'll try to describe 1983 from my point of view.
I was fourteen, in high school. I was the blind kid who had a huge
scary birth mark on my arm. I was weired. I hung out with people who
were not popular. I was quiet. I always wore a denim jacket, had white
skin, freckles, bright red unkept hair and a stumble walk. I was a
typical teen.
The work in Houston dried up in 83. The oil industry was just plane
not doing much. I've tried asking people what was getting done, but no
one knows. It was a good year to find someone who made six digits the
previous year flipping burgers.
My father was out of work in either 83 or 84 for a while. He hooked
up with a guy called Sunny who taught him to rebuild wrecked cars and
sell them for a profit. My father fixed fences and roofs. I tried to
help with a couple of those. Mainly I picked up shingles. That's
helping.
My father never gave up. I cannot imagine how stressful all that was
for him. My dad is a hell of a guy.
"When we all pile in to our Honda Pilots, where are we going to go?"
Ken asked me this question this morning. He was using a Honda Pilot as
a cheap ass car. He was referring to the Model-T used in The Grapes of
Wrath to pack up and head to California. There is no California now.
Even if you exit the U. S., our global economy has brought the entire
planet to it's financial knees.
I listen to podcasts from people coming out of California. We may
find
the flood of Pilots heading East this time. The old saying was "Head
West young man." This was a disguised effort to get rid of all the
jobless. The only place to go now is online. No one makes money there.
Where was every one in 1983? Some of the people I work with every
day were not borne. My grandmother was a child in the Great Depression.
She was shopped around from one relative to another. She never really
had a home growing up. She remembered being hungry a lot. She ended up
working for the phone company (they only had one back then) for her
entire life.
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