Sparechange.gov
While we're waiting for the new economic stimulus plan to be unveiled on change.gov, or while we're waiting for it to kick-in, how about developing a backup plan at sparechange.gov?
Here's Tom Waits in a YouTube video singing the Depression-era "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime?", lyrics by Yip Harburg, music by Jay Gorney (1931). It's a little rougher than the traditionally smooth Bing Crosby version.
They used to tell me, I was building a dream With peace and glory ahead. Why should I be standing in line Just waiting for bread? Once I built a railroad, I made it run I made it run against time Once i built a railroad, and now it's done Brother, can you spare a dime? ... Once in khaki suits, Ah, gee we looked swell Full of that yankee-doodle dee-dum! Brother, can you spare a dime?
There are more and more people all around us needing our help.
the latest
latest episodes
There's a great episode of Democracy Now! about the history of this song, and about Yip Harburg (why the hell don't people name their kids Yip anymore? Now all we get is crap like Track and Trig) located roughly here.
any organizing to help people where government has failed should be designed from the verfy get-go to be something the politicians can't co-opt and take credit for and especially not use for votes. It must have a spiky club built in for hitting those in elected office.
Brother can you spare twenty five billion?
F*** that!
Who's that random guy with cool shoes and a tattoo?
h b h! prsm y blggd ths n yr blckbrry whl stndng n n f ths sp lns. Nearly all of the perceived misery is imaginary so far. Unemployment has gone from about 5 percent to about six percent. It never goes much below five percent no matter how good the economy is. Six percent is still better than what it has been for most of the last five decades.
i wrote a semi-earnest guide to surviving this. if anyone wants to read it, it's here: http://lunchtimeforbears.blogspot.com/2008/11/stock-market-graphs-look-like-devil.html
i wrote it after an exceptionally disheartening week at work where 80 jobs got axed. i think it's going to be a hard winter and i'm pulling for the people of this country to reclaim their empathy.
some good points there, Mopwater.
trolling for rebuttal there, Bubbanuker?
NPR recently ran an amazing analysis of this song -- how the score supported the lyrics -- by a musicologist.
The group Peter, Paul, and Mary made a nice rendition of "Brother, Can You Spare a Dime". They replace "Buddy" with "Brother", but other than that they stay pretty close to the original lyrics.
We in the music business say: welcome to the club.
Oh dear! It looks like nukebubba has been drinking the Faux News kool-aid again.
Calculated Risk:
Unemployment Hits the Inland Empire Hard
Paul Krugman
Depression analogies
I didn't like this version...
Here's one I do like:
http://www.spaz.org/audio/download/330/02+Brother+can+you.._.mp3
Interestingly ironic juxtaposition of this post and, in my blog reader, an add for "New Cadillac."
Posted the image here:
http://www.tinkerx.com/cadillac.jpg
last I heard, the Army was hiring
"Nearly all the perceived misery is imaginary so far."
So far. The Great Depression took a few years to really unwind. I don't think, and I don't hope, that we'll see another one (for demographic and technological reasons, among others). Still, pretending that this is an isolated problem, or that people aren't really hurting, is
1) cruel
2) going to bite you in the ass
Be prudent, be nice. I'll try that plan.
just how many missed meals from discomfort to misery? Two? Six?
I typed in sparechange.gov to see what would happen. Here are the 'related searches':
Spare Change
Change
Magazine
Magazine Subscription
National Geographic
Magazine Rack
Pch.com
Rolling Stones
Female Libido
Entrepreneur
Cheap Magazine
People Magazine
PCH
Domino Magazine
Gq Magazine
I like this version:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=llhRGUYMcfU
How far down the curve are we, relative to how far there is to go? The de-leveraging has only just begun, certainly in NA and Europe. The froth businesses are gone (borderline real estate, Starbucks outside Bear Stearns.) The building and finance sectors have been announcing job losses for a few months now. Retailers of expensive, luxury, or "treat" goods and services are seeing severe drops in demand. However the roundabout hasn't stopped until all the people employed by the money spent by those who were employed in the industries seeing layoffs and bankruptcies now have worked through the system.
What's happening now is the coldly brutal invisible hand tearing people off the cliff-face to which they're clinging by their fingertips, one by one, until the value of the corpses at the bottom reaches equilibrium with costs of the champagne, smart bombs, and subsidised energy and food costs we've all been enjoying for the last decade and a half. It's not a purely "survival of the fittest" process; a million and one random chances find us where we happen to be on the mountain when the gale arrives. Some of us have nice warm dry caves to hand. Some are free-climbing El Capitan. Some of us are wearing tweeds, some of us have GPS and multi-tools... pure chance.
Woe unto ye, I say. Woe!!
And - cheers. *clink*
rob kapilow did an interesting piece deconstruction of "brother can you spare a dime" a couple of weeks ago on npr.
Yip and Harold Arlen did the music for Wizard of Oz. The show Finian's Rainbow was Yip all the way. Try to hear the original. When they did the movie they messed with the lyrics. Very socialist. Out of the show came "How Are Things in Gloccamora" and "That Old Devil Moon" But my favorite was "When the Idle Poor Become the Idle Rich". A few of the lines:
With a few annuities we'll hide these incongruities.
and No one will see the Irish or the Slav in you for when you're on Park Avenue, Cornelius and Mike look alike.
@1 "why the hell don't people name their kids Yip anymore?"
Because they don't want their kids to be the subject of countless jokes from future classmates, and be able to get a job or date, be productive members of society and otherwise be well adjusted??
"Because they don't want their kids to be the subject of countless jokes from future classmates, and be able to get a job or date, be productive members of society and otherwise be well adjusted??"
In other words, boring and middle of the road?
Can we spare a little social change?
Yes we can.
If we're giving shout-outs to versions of "Brother, can you spare a dime?", a mention should go to New York band The Moonlighters, who do a great mashup of "Brother" with another Depression-era song, Al Dubin and Harry Warren's "Remember my Forgotten Man". The two songs are similar enough in a number of important ways (and not just thematically) that the blend is almost seamless.
What is the context of the second picture? It just looks like some random dude who's trying to block the sunlight out of view. As a huge Tom Waits fan, I really enjoyed watching video; good thing it's a Monday morning, and nothing could depress me further, haha.
Nice sentiment.
I find somewhat to my surprise that I have the lyrics memorized... So you might as well give the full lyrics.
They used to tell me,
I was building a dream
With peace and glory ahead.
Why should I be standing in line
Just waiting for bread?
Once I built a railroad,
Made it run,
Made it race against time.
Once I built a railroad;
Now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once I built a tower
To the Sun
Made of brick and rivet and lime.
Once I built a tower;
Now it's done.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
Once in khaki suits,
Gee we looked swell,
Full of that yankee-doodle-ee-dum!
Half a million boots
Went marching through hell
And I was the guy with the drum!
Say don't you remember
They called me Al
It was Al all the time.
Say don't you remember,
I'm your pal.
Brother, can you spare a dime?
@ #1 - You know Yip was a nickname, right?
I find people with the coolest names generally don't have them on their birth certificate.
Ladies and gents, if you do a little digging in the gov unemployment stats, you realize that the stats are made by using the following:
a survey of only 60k households applying for aid
no one who has been on the unemployment roles for more than a certain percentage of time (4 consecutive months)
only people who are eligible for unemployment
In other words, it is possible to be unemployed and never be surveyed (fast food and minimum wage jobs are infamous for not paying unemployment benfits and will schedule you under full time to avoid doing so), it is possible to be eligible and never be surveyed and it is possible to be surveyed once and no longer counted.
The actual unemployment rate is unknown. The closer to the bottom of the food chain you get, the less is known about you.
Happy Monday.
That's 60k out of several million.
Website: http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm
roughly .003% of the population which falls under the 6% unemployment rate is actually being surveyed.
Total US population: 300 million.
6% of 300 million is 18 million.
18 million people, by thier numbers, are on unemployment.
60k is .003% of 18 million.
This should bother you. Please, someone, check my math. I'm shite at it.
#5 posted by nukebubba
re: "Unemployment has gone from about 5 percent to about six percent."
Uh, that's funny, yesterday the New York times said it is 9.3 in Michigan. It also says 20% of the population in Michigan is now on some sort of public assistance.
Just cuz it's rosy by you doesn't mean things aren't bad elsewhere.
And sure, you *could* pull the plug on the auto industry - get rid of those pesky pensions and those health care benefits. I think we all know who gets to pay for all the retirees if their pensions and medical benefits go.
Dale's a Rain Dog too!
Tom Waits rocks, but not everyone can figure that out.
It would be interesting to see what job statistics are when the underemployed are taken into account as well.
As mouthyb mentioned, the lowest rung jobs generally don't provide unemployment (or health insurance, or any other benefits), and to get away with this typically employ people for only 30-35 hours a week and classify them as "part time."
35 hours a week at minimum wage is not enough to survive. Thank god I recently got out of that racket, but family members and friends are still there, and were my new job to disappear I'd be back working retail or in kitchens. It's not enough to live on, it just slows the rate at which my debt grows and delays the point at which I am unable to feed or house myself.
How many people who previously had a job that allowed them to provide for basic necessities, are now technically employed but getting $7.15/hour loading boxes for 20 hours a week?
Here's a brief piece that might introduce some of you to the concept of UNDERemployment:
Stimulus now! Underemployment at 14-year high [epi.org]
#33 tgjerusalem -- I'm flipping on the synchronicity of posting that link on underemployment stats, then reloading the page and reading your comment.
I was talking about the song to my brother about a month ago. He felt that Bing Crosby singing this song was a bit rich, and I agreed. The tune needed a new voice. And that's when I smiled at him and said: "Tom Waits should be all over this song."
So......wow. Here it is. I like it. Although in my envisioned version, there was an off-tune horn section on that final, climatic chorus. Ah well. Still very Tom Waits.
Hi. As a dotcom-er, I spent a bunch of years unemployed and severely underemployed. Not good for the finances/retirement, but I did have plenty of time to do interesting projects, meet interesting people, and go to lots of parties. No, I don't have the kinds of folks that could have bailed me out.
I worked for two months in '02, enough to qualify for the fourth and fifth rounds of unemployment insurance, which was barely enough to pay rent and food. This is after having consistently worked full-time since my late teens, about 8 years straight.
It was nice to not have to wear pants for weeks at a time. It was not so nice to still have a shot credit report (at a time when residential buildings are so damn cheap!).
I will say that I certainly learned how to stretch a dollar. Anecdotes from the folks and grandfolks still stick in my mind, only now with more emphasis because I know what it is like to wonder where my rent payment, or next grocery bill will come from. Now that I am gainfully employed, and my monthly expenses are less than some people's car payments (Junker FTW!), I still avoid buying toys, lattes, or other non-necessities -- I expect to lose my job as I had before, and will need to keep up on rent and food.
I feel for those that are unemployed. Then again, if they simply warmed a seat, they should be unemployed. It is very hard to start a business when you can't pay your rent, and how can one look good pitching to VC in an unclean and smelly suit?
Tom Waits for everyman.
http://ca.youtube.com/watch?v=Q84BezIMEdU&feature=related