A "real-world" Indicator Of The American Economy - My Observations

We have heard quite a bit lately about how college kids are graduating with mountains of student loan debt and can't find jobs. Case in point: Three days ago I was at a local retail store picking up a "lay-away" purchase. The lady at the lay-away counter was well spoken, middle aged, well-mannered, intelligent, and well educated as it turned out. She explained that she had earned her Bachelor's degree in Geology about a year and a half ago - and hadn't yet found a job in her field. "Welcome to the recession", she said with a grim laugh.

IT Work:
We have all heard about how great a source of employment the IT industry is, and what a huge and growing demand there is for IT workers. In fact, there is supposedly such a high demand for IT workers that, according to industry sources, we must outsource our IT work to India. If so, then how is it that a friend of a friend with a Master's degree in Computer Science can only wrangle a $10/hour (yes, you read correctly) job in his field? He is an intelligent, hard-working, educated, experienced guy with a good work ethic. This does NOT bode well for guys like me who are working on their graduate degrees in related fields.

Granted, these are only two data points. However, they DO conflate with what I have personally observed in my daily interactions and read about online.

Looking around I find MANY examples of industry outsourcing jobs (and 'justifying' it with half-truths and questionable statistics) while millions of qualified Americans who WANT the work go without.

Why, as a society, as we putting up with this? Where is the outrage?

Declining Quality On All Levels:
Generally, during a recession, employees are fearful for their jobs and therefore tend to be on their best behavior. Under such conditions they will tolerate all sorts of things at work they never would in normal times. But this time there is yet another unprecedented change I and others close to me have noticed: MANY people in businesses of all types with whom I come in contact are rude, surly, and don't want to even minimally do the work they are paid to do. And/or they are often just plain incompetent. I've noticed a general coarsening of the business culture in America during the last three years in particular.

We always hear, especially from the 'conservative' side of the political aisle, that recessions "weed out the dead wood", allow the best to rise to the top, provide businesses with the opportunity to make improvements in efficiency, ... If anything, I think the opposite has happened during this latest downturn. Even the IT guy I mentioned earlier has noticed the same thing. We ask ourselves "with all the GOOD employees out there who WANT to work and cannot get jobs, WHY does business continue to keep ones that mistreat paying customers or who don't really want to work?" We hear about how businesses which cater to the middle and lower classes are being hurt by the recession, yet these same businesses keep employees that could be driving away valuable clientele.

I don't get it. It flies in the face of what we are taught in business degree programs and in normal, real-world commerce.

Readers - have you noticed the same thing?? If so, why do you think it is? What is behind it?

I'd love to hear from anyone who can shed light on this!

Obtaining Parts and Supplies During The Great Recession

Most normal people are feeling some effects of the current economic mess, even if they are still employed. Given the war being actively waged upon the American middle class, many folks are having more and more trouble finding money to just pay for day to day needs - much less the parts to build or create new projects.

Plato (427 BC - 347 BC) said that "necessity is the mother of invention". During the 1930's - the Great Depression - folks built their own radios and other projects from whatever they could find around. Grandpa's "oatmeal box radio" is but one example. During WW2, prisoners of war actually built functioning crystal radios using razor blades, scrap wire and other bits and pieces they found. Here in my lab, I too have embraced some of the ways of my grandparents' generation. During the past year I have learned of a couple ways to quickly and efficiently recover components intact from used PC boards. This has already saved me considerable funds - some of which I have been able to invest in those few specialty parts that I could not find in my gleanings.

From two dead CDROM drives removed from computers I have salvaged the lasers, motor drives, and a few other semiconductor devices. I have set the laser diodes aside for future use in an experimental "free space" optical communications system. From a 56K modem card I salvaged all the parts I needed to make a telephone line interface for conference calls. Ham operators take note - the 600 ohm line transformer out of a modem works great in a phone patch circuit. Why pay $10 - $20 plus shipping for this component? Also on the modem card were the MOV surge suppressor devices, high voltage capacitors, ... needed to interface with telephone lines.

Computer power supplies yield transformers, bridge rectifiers, resistors, low and high voltage electrolytic caps, and assorted semiconductor devices. Even the metal case can be reused for certain projects - especially if looks aren't critical.

A dead computer can yield fans, heat sinks, connectors, and some surface-mount components. The case can be salvaged for the metal.

TV sets, VCRs, stereo components, home appliances and personal electronic devices yield all sorts of good, useful electronic and mechanical parts. High voltage experimenters and builders of small Tesla coils will likely want the flyback transformers and high voltage capacitors from TVs and CRT-type computer monitors. Get 'em now - these parts will become scarce in the next few years as flat screen monitors and TVs take over.

So, before you hand your old computer, TV, or any other appliances to be scrapped or recycled, check and see if there's something you could salvage off it and use before throwing it away. Those parts will either end up in a landfill or melted down anyway - so why not reuse them yourself?