Don’t “Fall Down”

From our childhood we (in English-speaking countries) learn two nursery rhymes about “falling down.” One is “London Bridge” and the other is “Ring A Round ‘o” Roses” (Google them, Tweet-search them, Facebook them as appropriate.) In childhood of course “falling down” is playground sport, a fun “plotz” amidst a culture of magic and mystery and bright colors and hope and lollipops.

As a country, we have fallen down not in the manner of Mother Goose but in a much more foreboding way. Report after report indicates the risk of long-term structural unemployment – i.e. that “malaise” is a condition to bear, not a difficult problem to be solved. The “HOPE” on which President Obama surfed into office is largely vanished. No one – no one – seems to have a solution.

Tough times can constitute the petri dish of new, exciting developments. Many companies successful today were founded in times of economic misery. It’s not all gloom, though it’s awfully gloomy in many parts of the country, particularly the industrial Midwest. But will Americans know a time of economic prosperity again? Are we set up for a decade of failure and misery?

In 1993 an under-noticed film “Falling Down” by Michael Douglas showed a squarish, methodical defense contractor at the end of his marriage, his career and his sense of meaning, careening into violence, chaos and mayhem. The film didn’t get enough recognition at the time in my view; it described how a lot of us Americans (and undoubtedly a lot people world-wide) feel in the face of our own inability to adapt.

I see small bits of this reality every so often in my unemployment practice, though most of my clients don’t come anywhere near shooting up a fast-food restaurant (happily). While no employer needs a reason to fire someone, the clients I have seen by and large just don’t “have a firing coming to them” in the sense of payback or “just desserts.” Most of the time, brutal economics push the hand of the employer and after the fact a rationalization of “misconduct” follows. This is not to understate the burdens that employers do bear in paying unemployment taxes in periods of high unemployment.

My fear is that our country may start to look like Michael Douglas. I regard the Tea Party movement as a good thing – not because I agree with Tea Party politics (standing sharply to its left on most issues) but because I view the Tea Party movement as a sane, lawful, peaceful alternative to people burning down entire Zip Codes out of anger. We in Maryland don’t feel the pain as much as our unemployment rates are not that high relatively speaking, but one can easily imagine riots where the unemployment rates are double those of Maryland (e.g. Cleveland and especially Detroit.)

America, please try hard not to fall down.