This diagram appeared in an Axios newsletter I receive each afternoon. As you can see, it compares the dates of upcoming legal events for, and related to, Donald Trump, to the GOP 2024 presidential primary calendar.
In my opinion, the key date on the timeline is March 5 - Super Tuesday. On that day, 15 states, including the two largest, California and Texas, conduct their primaries. 865 Republican delegates are at stake. It's not precisely a national primary election day, but it comes close. It requires a candidate to have a national brand, and a national organization to get out the vote.
1,234 delegates are needed to sew up the nomination. I think it's likely that Trump will have cleared the field of competitors by March 6th, and for all practical purposes, the GOP primary season will be over. Trump may not have reached 1,234 delegates by March 6, but he will be so far ahead of everyone else that they all will retire from the race.
Professional political analysts and commentators all qualify their forecasts these days with caveats: it's still early. A lot can happen between now and the primary contests. There are precedents of politicians coming from the middle or back of the pack to win the nomination; Joe Biden certainly belongs on that list.
All of that cautionary language is true. Nevertheless, I'm going to ignore it. I just don't see how Donald Trump can be denied the GOP nomination. It's abundantly clear that legal jeopardy has not dented his popularity so far.
If anti-Trump folks are pinning their hopes in his legal troubles, then the current trial calendar isn't going to deliver what they hope it will deliver. The first trial with any potential to really hurt him politically (and it may not), the classified documents trial, isn't scheduled to begin (not end, but begin) until May 20.
If I'm right in my prediction, the GOP nomination contest will have been over for over two months by then.
It's going to be up to Joe Biden and the Democrats to save the Republic.
You are right about super- Tuesday. Primaries in Maryland are in May, and it wasn’t worth the effort to get there in 2016 and 2020 for Republicans anyway.
ReplyDeleteI wish we would have a national primary day. Ours is in May, too, and by that time it's all over. The people in late ones don't really get a voice.
ReplyDeleteThe thing that maybe, possibly, might have enough fuel to move the needle would be the January 6 trials. But that timeline hasn't been decided yet and I'm sure it is DJT's dream to have it be after Super Tuesday. Or later..
The ironic part is that the non-MAGA Republicans do not want Trump to be the candidate. But none of them have the courage to go against him in a meaningful way, except for Chris Christie and maybe a few others. They're all scared spitless of his death ray, I guess. I dislike DeSantis (who might have had a chance) nearly as much as Trump, but the air is leaking out of his balloon pretty fast anyway.
People say Joe Biden is too old for a second term. Some Republicans are pushing the narrative that he has dementia, but I don't think that's true. It would be nice if he were 20 years younger. But he isn't. There is no Plan B. Marianne Williamson and RFK Jr. don't count.
Of course the scare narrative is that Biden might die in office and we would have Kamala Harris for president, oogetty boogetty! She isn't my favorite, but I think she could do a competent job in a pinch. Which is more than I can say for The Former Guy. Who is only four years younger than Biden and is in worse shape.
The MAGA cult folk would not be moved by the Jan 6 trial any more than they’ve been moved by anything else. It’s scary the hold he has on them, and on the GOP politicians. Christy apparently knows he doesn’t have a chance but is trying to be a spoiler. His loyalties are not actually to be loyal. His is a revenge candidacy it seems. Haley actually stood up to trump on a few occasions but doesn’t have the courage to openly buck him. Too bad. I don’t like some of what she pushes but she might be the best of the bunch. I’m waiting to see if Scott develops enough of a backbone to take seriously. But I don’t think any of them have a chance against TFG.
DeleteDeSantis is the most successful authoritarian politician in the country, turning Florida into a little Hungary with palm trees. So ironic that he calls himself the freedom candidate as he busily shuts down freedom in his state. (Abbot is running a close second). DeSantis could be more frightening than trump because he’s competent. However, imposing his authoritarianism at the national level would be harder than in Florida with his rubber- stamp legislature. He’s not catching on - he has no entertainment skills, which is trump’s forte. Among Republicans, it seems to be the only qualification that counts. Apparently millions of republicans value cheap insults to actual policy development or even basic competence. DeSantis also keeps firing campaign staff, so he’s obviously in trouble. The Dems shoot themselves in the foot with some of their culture war extremism. I am opposed to book bans, but I looked at a couple of the books the rather inaptly named Moms for Liberty (censorship and liberty don’t really go together) and I was a bit shocked. I don’t believe that they belong in school libraries. I didn’t disagree with DeSantis with his first sex Ed guidelines for K-3, but when he extended them to grade 12 I disagreed. Any adult who doesn’t realize that kids will get it all from the internet by 5th grade are not doing their job as parents. The problem is that the information they get from the internet and their friends is usually distorted misinformation. Better a well trained teacher of a legitimate curriculum, starting in 5th. DeSantis has made excellent headway at shutting down free speech, academic freedom at the college level, and even the rights of private corporations to free speech AND to develop their own HR policies and investment policies. Scary. TFG is now proud of Jan 6. He is also promising to destroy the federal government as we know it - totally politicize agencies from top to bottom, turning civil servants into political staff, with loyalty to him being a requirement for a job, not just in his cabinet and executive staff but in the thousands of civil servants who do the daily work and may not become political workers, which is banned by the Hatch Act. This was ignored by his staff regularly ( people like Kelly Anne Conway) but normally provides for a stable, experienced workforce that carries on through changes of administration. He too wants to adapt Hungarian style authoritarianism as a permanent feature of the US. Kamala Harris would be waaaaay better than trump. JFK was the youngest(?) president elected and he died in office. Age alone should not be a disqualification. Assassins are still out there to hunt down younger pols. Pelosi and Pence really were in danger on Jan 6. It’s a huge mess.
About the book bans, one can be against those and still think that not every book belongs in a school library. I would trust librarians to make informed decisions about that rather than politicians. And there could be a category for "parental discretion" that would require a parent signature to check out, at least in the grade school level.
DeleteI'd like to think librarians are trustworthy. I also think that general questions of book-banning (which I generally oppose) aren't always applicable to children, especially young children.
DeleteIn my community, public libraries and public schools are accountable to elected officials (library boards and school boards). This provides political accountability and indirect community oversight for what goes on in public libraries and public school libraries. That may not always lead to policies that we would prefer, but it should, over time, provide for what the community is comfortable with.
Within the last year or two, we had controversy in at least one local suburb here regarding a family-friendly drag show that the town's public library wished to host. There were various protests. The librarian basically faced down the protesters: told them that, if they didn't like the content, they didn't have to come and watch the show. In theory, the community could elect library board members who would forbid that kind of programming. Whether that happened in that particular suburb, I am not sure. FWIW, I heard a moving bit of personal testimony from an adult, a newspaper reporter, who said, as a gay person, it would have meant a lot to him, when he was a teen, if the community library would have affirmed him by having such programming.
I agree with nearly every point made here - except regarding Kamala Harris. I think she'd be in over her head. She still comes across to me as a deer in the headlights.
ReplyDeleteBut that said - a Biden/Harris administration would have magnitudes-more-competent cabinet and senior staff than a Trump administration. So even if Harris has to step into the Oval Office, she'll be far better supported than Trump would be by his team. We've learned during a couple of presidencies during my lifetime that the federal government can run on autopilot for surprisingly long periods of time.
"...the federal government can run on autopilot for surprisingly long periods of time." I think that is true. And that is what I had hoped would happen when Trump was first elected; that he would bask in the glory of being in the oval office, and play golf. And let staff do the actual work. But that's not what happened. The first thing wrong with that idea was that he picked the staff. And things went downhill from there.
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Katherine - I think he neglected many aspects of government, those that bored him. And those are the aspects that continued to function. The things he inserted himself into, such as immigration, were chaotic.
DeleteThere is also the period of time during which President Reagan's wife's astrologer apparently was running the country and the free world.
You are right. Harris may not be ideal.But she would probably listen to her advisors.trump had a few good picks early on, but the good ones were all eventually fired as he got used to having so much power. He wanted sycophants only - nobody who would contradict him.
Delete"There is also the period of time during which President Reagan's wife's astrologer apparently was running the country and the free world." LOL! That makes me think of the time when (supposedly) the nun who was Pius XII's housekeeper was running the church.
DeleteSpeaking of Harris: it's a safe bet that Trump wouldn't pick Mike Pence as his running mate this time around. The rule with Trump always has been: imagine the worst judgment he could possibly make, and then realize his actual judgment will be even worse. I've thought for some time that Kari Lake would be his running mate. So whoever he picks will be even worse.
ReplyDeleteSteven Miller?
DeleteOr maybe Candace Owens?
DeleteAs annoying as I find drag and LGBTQIA identity politics, it is amazing how much political space it takes up considering we're in the Year the World Burned Up. I suppose it makes for a nice distraction. It's easier to ban books and fight with Mickey Mouse than to figure out how to live without fossil fuels. I never thought fighting climate change was a walk in the park. It's the biggest challenge we've ever faced as a country and a species. As for the Democrats, they're in confrontation with Russia and gearing up for China. Good luck with that.
ReplyDeleteBiden may not have dementia but I'm 74. When I'm tired, I can be pretty dumb. Trump was never intelligent to begin with.
If Trump wins, the American Empire declines as it is bound to do. If Biden wins, same thing but a different pathway.
The only good/bad news is that the other empires are doomed as well. China will ascend to primacy but for a short time. They can have all the powerful surveillance and social control they want, but when 400,000,000 Han Chinese are in a killing heat, even the Party's dominance and control is questionable. The big foot of physics is coming down on all the ant hills. I'd rather fight with Mickey Mouse.
So would DeSantis.
DeleteI'm of the opinion that, if the Repubs could pressure Biden into not running, it's the best thing that could happen if defeating Trump is the goal. The Hunter Biden affair is not looking good. But getting ancient politicians to give it up seems harder than getting a very old person to turn over their car keys.
DeleteThey keep chewing on the Hunter Biden thing. Hunter is an idiot. I'm sure he probably did some unethical, illegal, idiot things. But Joe Biden not running isn't going to get Trump defeated. Because the Dems don't have anyone to take his place. Not because there aren't good potential candidates. But they needed visibility and exposure long before this. Like about four years before this.
DeleteObviously our party and primary systems are dysfunctional if we are going to have another Biden-Trump election. I think the majority of our people really want some better choices.
ReplyDeleteOnly comfort if Trump wins is that he's still just a big mouth idiot whose only agenda is his own self-promotion. His "magic" doesn't seem to be transferable and should die with him. Of course, our civilization will be hastened in its decline by a Trump win.
DeleteI thought of the discussion between Jim and Anne regarding relating to Trumpers when I read Hedges' account of his visit to his Maine hometown. I always like Hedges' profiles of the not rich and not famous.
https://open.substack.com/pub/chrishedges/p/the-forgotten-victims-of-americas?utm_source=share&utm_medium=android&r=dug1j
I guess the difference is that Anne's and my relatives are not down and out working class but doing ok in a middle class sort of way.
I was not as moved by this article as you, apparently. The mill closed down more than 40 years ago. But there is apparently a lack of entrepreneurship in the town. Why? They are trump people but it doesn’t sound like trump did anything to help them. They are anti-government, pro- capitalism - like trump and the MAGA movement. What did they expect? Big brother government that trump opposes? I honestly don’t know what they expect.
DeleteApparently there were jobs at Bath Ironworks but the people are no longer getting a literal free ride to Bath. I came back from Maine just a couple of weeks ago. The ironworks are still there and very active. Do they not want to form carpools or drive themselves there? The whole town was bustling. Or move? There is a lot of wide open space north of Bath. If the commute is too long, why not move closer? Lots of space with small towns en route. A 90 minute commute is a lot. But people in DC, LA, Silicon Valley etc also have very long commutes, - 90 minutes is not that unusual.
After 40+ years without the mill, it seems that those who are living there, complaining, might have figured out a way to help themselves in some way. I honestly don’t get what it is they want - for a knight in shining armor to ride into town and reopen the mill? The western US is littered with ghost towns.When an industry finally died ( silver mines, for example) the town often died too. People either came up with a new economic engine or they moved. Not many ghost towns in the east, but there are no guarantees anywhere that corporations/industries will last forever.
What did I miss in reading this article? I sure don’t find a reason they adore trump!
My über education insulated me from the upheavals caused by the rapid deindustrialization of the US and concomitant explosion of the wealth of the 1%. I can't judge people who didn't have those advantages and how they reacted. The rapid disappearance of industries caused community collapse. A flower shop here and there and poorly paid sweatshop industries aren't bringing it back. The people displaced were told things would get better and to get more education. Basically, the Democratic Party gave them a Seinfeldian "That's a shame".
DeleteThe Chris Hedges article was interesting. And it sucks when your home town becomes a hollowed out shell of its former self. But at some point you have to make another plan. We didn't want to move away from our hometown. But when the job goes away you can't just sit around and wait for things to change. We moved four times for job reasons. Middle management people for manufacturers do not have job security. It was as much a passage of time and the fact that the post-war economy changed as anything else. I can't honestly blame the system. We're lucky. We have enough to live a modest post-retirement lifestyle. I feel badly for those who don't. But we all have agency, to some extent. The MAGA world view may make people feel validated. But it isn't going to do anything for them.
DeleteEducation isn't a panacea, it's not going to guarantee that you have a good life. But the lack of an education will most certainly hurt you.
“The Democratic Party gave them a “That’s a shame”.
DeleteStanley, what have the republicans done for them? In 1981, when the mill closed, the WH was republican, and it was Republican for the next almost 12 years. Since 1981, there have been two Dem administrations and four Republican, including trump. What did trump do? What did they expect him to do? There are community colleges pretty much everywhere - why didn’t they take advantage? The closest is only 8 miles from the town. The town is a bit under an hour from both Bath (not 90 minutes) and Portland? Big city suburban folk drive an hour to work all the time. There are, and were, opportunities.
Hispanics from Latin America are trying to get here, taking dangerous 1000 mile journeys to get here so that they can get the lowest level jobs - as janitors, minimum wage Nannie’s, garbage truck workers, roofers, road workers, field workers/ pickers etc. I worked on a project about 12 years ago that was supposed to help with ‘ workforce” development - retraining for those in the depressed areas. Some of the training was online.So there were complaints that they didn’t have a computer.But the program offered a computer center - free- and training in using it to get online and access the courses. They didn’t want to have to go to somewhere - to the center. Might take too much time from tv and video games maybe. A lot of the training available was for good jobs - including a lot of semi- professional in IT and healthcare - especially in the technology of healthcare. Good pay, lots and lots of opportunities. What I found was that there was little uptake - eventually we figured out that they didn’t really want to learn something new. They wanted their old job in the factory that’s been gone for 40 years. When I took a basic algebra class at the community college as a refresher, decades after last taking a math class, I discovered that about 85% of the students were Latinos - who worked all day before coming to this night class. And other night classes. But in this 97% white town, they probably whine about all the illegals coming to the US and taking the jobs. But I bet they wouldn’t be caught dead cleaning office buildings all night.
To be honest, I’m a bit tired of the poor me whining of some of these folk. Central Maine Community College is 8 miles from the town in the article. There are jobs within commuting distance as long as they are willing to commute farther than 15 minutes. There are educational facilities they could take advantage of. At some point they need to try to help themselves. Wishing and whining won’t bring back the factory.
I moved once, when the Frankford Arsenal was closed by the BRAC commission in 1977. My job moved to the Picatinny Arsenal near Dover, NJ. A friend and I shared an apartment in Hackettstown, NJ for a year and a half until we decided that PA was less oppressive (nasty NJ cops). All our moves were absolutely painless and rather fun. Being well paid made all the difference, I'm sure. We definitely have been deindustrialized. When a country isn't making stuff, I think it starts to drift from physical reality and starts becoming silly. I think of Wall Street as a very silly place. I'm sure whatever jobs are out there don't pay nearly enough. I lived in the 50's. The bus driver next to me had two kids, wife at home, owned a house and a car. Working class people sent their kids to college. The present situation is horrible overall. The economy is geared for the concentration of wealth, not its distribution. I think economists could learn something from modern physics concerning black holes. The more matter is concentrated, the more matter it absorbs until you get something to which you don't want to get close. I think of billionaires and big companies that way but it's dollars instead of kilograms.
DeleteStanley, yes, we have deindustrislized to a certain degree. For most of our history, the American economy was dominated by agriculture. Then the manufacturing sector grew - the farmers had to learn new skills, and perhaps even move. Now we have shifted to an information and service economy. People like Katherine and her husband had to move to find decent jobs. Others go back to school to learn new skills. The unemployment rate today is 3.6% - close to the lows since word war II. There are jobs and they are often well paid. X-ray techs average $75k/ year. Similar pay for sonographers and other health tech jobs. They require training, but not a college degree. Same thing with the vast array of jobs related to computer technology.
DeleteWhat has changed so that non- degrees workers can’t buy a home. (Or can’t they - the percentage of households who own their own homes has shot up dramatically since the 1950s and 60s,) In the 1950s the average home had 1000 so ft. Today it is 2450 sq ft. That home didn’t have AC, nor multiple TVs, no computers, few electronics like record players even. Yet more people own their homes than in the 1950s. They had one car - not two or more.
The jobs are there. They aren’t the old jobs, but they are there for those willing to make the effort. Many don’t require a degree in physics. They do require training - usually a certificate.
trump earns their loyalty by affirming their grievances, their sense of betrayal ( by whom?). He doesn’t do a darn thing to help them. The GOP doesn’t help them. Biden has actually brought back some of the manufacturing sector through his infrastructure policies. He is helping them. But they would rather cheer trumps anti- politically correct insults, and Blane everyone but themselves ( especially immigrants and minorities), than adapt and help themselves
Some random data points. Things are actually better for the majority of Americans than they were in tge 1950 s and 1960s.
Unemployment 3.6 ( 5.4 long term average).
Houses 1950s - 1000 sq ft; 1960s -1200 sq ft; now 2450
Reduction in the number of households without cars. The number of households without cars declined by about half, from 22% in 1960 to 8.5% in 2020.
Increase in multi-vehicle households. The number of households with two or more cars has increased substantially, from 22% in 1960 to 59% in 2020.
2020, about 37.9 percent of the U.S. population who were aged 25 and above had graduated from college or another higher education institution. This is a significant increase from 1960, when only 7.7 percent of the U.S. population had graduated from college.Jun 2, 2023
The percentage of adults in the U. S. between the ages of 25 to 64 with college degrees, certificates, or industry-recognized certifications, has increased from 37.9% in 2009 to 53.7% in 2021, a gain of nearly 16 percentage points.
Income growth increased the homeownership rate during the 1920s, but the Depression more than wiped out this gain so that the rate had fallen to a low of 43.6 percent by 1940. During the 1940-1960 period, the homeownership rate rose by over 18 percentage points, from 43.6 to 61.9 percent.
Now about 66%.
Travel percentage of Americans with a passport - 6% in 1990 to 42% now
Anne, I have to ask you as an economist how much of this gain is the result of incurred debt? I bought a new vehicle last year, paying cash. It dumbfounded me how a person of ordinary means could afford one. Even used cars were through the roof. Loans, I guess. Most bankruptcies result from medical bills. I wish Jean were still here to report from Michigan, devastated by the changes. She lived in a Trumpland, too.
DeleteAlso, post-industrial service economies sound nice. But service doesn't help the balance of trade, as far as I know. China doesn't need our service. They need our food but they can buy our farmland. I may still vote for Biden versus Trump, but neither party is friend to the poor American. 850B USD for military spending? Neither party is sane.
Well, it’s hard to say. I would think that a lot of the improvements in standards of living (if big houses and 3 cars are really an improvement) are due to the opening of good jobs and careers to women, along with technology advances that lowered the costs of consumer items like electronics (tvs, etc), car manufacturing costs etc. Even technological advances in construction. My iPhone has more advanced computing technology and capabilities than the huge rooms of IBM 360 computers I used as a computer programmer in the late 1960s - the computers that were used during the Viêt Nam war AND by NASA in the space program to land a man on the moon. The iPhone is far more powerful. On one of our trips to London we visited the underground bunker used by Churchill and the British military leadership to “ run” their part of WWII. Unbelievablely primitive - maps with pushpins. I once visited the HQ of the NRO (National Reconnaissance Office) here. They are in charge of putting our spy satellites into space, among other things. In the public area there are large photos on the walls- photos taken from space in the early 1960s. It was possible to see the features on individual faces of a crowd in Red Square. I can’t even imagine what they can do now. Count the hairs on the heads probably.
DeleteAs far as incurring too much debt was involved with increases in personal consumption (Consumption is 80% of our GDP), I’m not sure. Americans spend way more on consumption financed by credit card debt than most other countries. We buy a lot of junk! Consumption is 80% of our GDP - considerably higher than counties like France and Germany.
But home loans are also financing an investment. About 42% of owner- occupied homes are owned free and clear. If I could find a breakdown by age I imagine that the highest percentage of mortgage free homeowners are older - and that they originally took out a loan to buy their homes. That implies that many homeowners don’t take equity out of their homes - I presume they don’t want a mortgage after retirement. Cars - according to a quick google search, it seems that most new cars are either leased or financed. The popularity of leasing has fallen a lot since before Covid for some reason. Gen Z has the most who pay cash - probably used cars, and maybe because they haven’t established a good credit record yet. It’s common in Europe for people to buy homes with cash. Many young adults live at home longer than in the US in order to save the money they need. In cities, most live in purchased apartments.
Continued
DeleteServices do impact the trade balance - the US is the biggest exporter of services in the world ( think information processing, international finance etc). Agriculture is now less than 1% of GDP. According to the data, about 20% of our agricultural production is exported. It is about 7% of all exports and the biggest buyer of our agricultural exports is China. According to investopedia and other sources the US is the largest exporter of food in the world. However, I would like to look into that more deeply to see if the number includes the massive amounts of food that we donate as part of the PL480 (“Food for Peace”) program which has always made up a large portion of our foreign aid ( most of our “ foreign aid” is weaponry).. PL480 is not entirely altruistic as it was set up partly in order to provide price supports for American farmers, starting back in the 1950s. American farmers are heavily subsidized by the government. But I suppose you could consider these price supports and subsidies to be a form of national security also so that we are not dependent on imports for food.
At this point, I would say the Dems are far better when it comes to poor Americans than Republicans simply because they support the social safety nets needed by them. I imagine quite a few of the folk in Mechanic Falls, Maine receive food stamps and are on Medicaid, among other programs that help the poor. Biden has done more on infrastructure rebuilding, bringing some chip and other manufacturing back to the US, than trump did. trump spent billions bailing out the farmers he hurt with his trade war. A lot of our soy exports, for example, were taken over by Brazil. Our corn exports were seriously damaged and his trade war also opened opportunities for other countries on that. Most US grown corn is exported. trump essentially handed over a huge amount of exports to China by pulling out of the Trans Pacific Partnership Agreement. His trade policies were a disaster. But the average American, especially in the trump states, have zero understanding of economics, especially international economics. They still think he’s going to help them. Biden’s not my ideal candidate, but he’s actually done a pretty decent job with the economy.
I would feel better if subsidies to industries were tied to worker's empowerment. No doubt, the rich will get richer. I wish workers had more say. In Europe, workers' representatives sit on boardroom positions. The Mondragon Company of Spain is owned by the employees as is Scott-Bader in Britain. If we are going to subsidize industries with taxpayer money, then the benefits of that should be spread out as much as possible.
DeleteI don't see either party wanting to change things to that degree. As with addressing the climate crisis, one party IS better. But not enough is being done and physics doesn't negotiate.
Thinking that American corporations will adopt worker ownership is unrealistic. There are a few examples of partial ownership - I think United Airlines was one. It was the poster child of emp,oyez ownership for a while. But eventually the company was facing bankruptcy and the plan failed. Many companies have profit- sharing plans. Even more have stock purchase plans. I found a list of the 100 largest American companies with employee ownership. I’m not convinced that employee ownership would be the solution for towns like Mechanic Falls.
DeleteThe mill closed 40 years ago. The « average » age of the residents is 40 (the median? the mean?). A whole lot of the residents never knew life there when the mill was open. But they too seem stuck. Why? I don’t but Hedge’s take that they are victims.
It is often said that the only thing that is constant is change. Some adapt to change, some even thrive because of change that is forced on them. And some refuse to deal with change. That doesn’t mean that they were betrayed by anyone or that they are victims.
Then there is this My grandfather had little use for Blacks, Jews, Catholics, homosexuals, communists, foreigners or anyone from Boston. If you weren't white, Protestant and from Mechanic Falls, you were far down on the racial and social ladder. I cannot imagine him inviting the Wangs over for dinner.
I’m not convinced that this is a culture we want to perpetuate.
List of 100 largest companies with employee ownership.
https://www.nceo.org/articles/employee-ownership-100
Stanley, I know I may sound unfeeling. But I do have trouble with those who complain about things that can’t be changed and who don’t try to help themselves. Know lots of people who worked a full day and then went to school at night to earn a degree or credentials to improve their job prospects. I did that - worked during the day and then drove downtown to Georgetown at night for my Masters.I wanted to be in international economics and not computers. To do that I needed to go back to school. My sister worked all day and went to law school at night.We have several friends who got law and graduate school degrees at night while working full time. In our sons’ generation we also know young adults who did the same, except that they didn’t have to commute after work to take in- person classes. They got their degrees by taking online classes at night. The people the project I was on for a while that was aimed at unemployed or underemployed people in towns like Mechanics Falls didn’t want to make the effort to take the free retraining offered to them. It was both discouraging and disillusioning. They just wanted to complain because the uncertainties of life that everyone faces had come to them. The only people we know who really never had to worry about their employer closing down and losing a job are the federal employees. As close to 100% job security as there is. They might move office locations, or maybe even be asked to move farther away, but unemployment worries are pretty much unknown. I’ve known quite a few corporate employées who have had to move numerous times - sometimes every two or three years because the company loses a contract and transfers staff to new contracts, often in different locations. Those who don’t want to move have to look around for a new job. Long commutes are a given around here. And in Silicon Valley, and LA where my sons live. An hour to Bath ironworks is not really a big deal. I have worked with several people here who commuted from West Virginia and Pennsylvania in order to keep their jobs. Anyway…interesting topic.
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