Everything is connected to everything else...
I’ve been thinking why we’re experiencing this economic recession. Why and how it started? When will it end? What can we do about it?
I realized that this started a few years ago. And we didn’t even realize it. That time when we were so amazed by all of the advanced technology being offered to us. When we were so thankful how it made our lives easier. Not knowing that it was going to bite us back.
I met my husband six year ago. During that time he was working as a parking attendant at Marriott Hotel in San Francisco. Previous to that he worked at a Bank first as a clearing check processor and then as cash vault representative. Why the shift of job you ask? Well, he was laid off. Bank started shutting down departments and laying off employees. The volume of inclearing checks has decreased significantly due to customers’ shift to online banking and check and debit cards instead of issuing actual checks. There are now less checks to sort and process. Moreover, checks, if actually issued are processed electronically. As cash vault custodian, he used to process bundles of bills per denomination. The bank decided to acquire machines that sort and bundle cash with very minimal human intervention. Hundreds of people lost their job at that time in the Bay Area alone. Consequently, most of these people who used to make $15 per hour eventually found themselves working for $8 per hour. Their pay reduced to almost half.
In many highly electronic banks, you only need to insert your check and cash deposits in the ATM and the machine automatically reads it and even prints a copy for you. No need to fill up a deposit slip. Unless you want some pretty young thing smiling and asking “How are you doing today?”, who needs a bank teller? Banks encourage you to go green, clutter-free and safe from indentity theft. In other words, they prefer you to do online banking rather than spend wages on employees to entertain you in their offices and mail your bank statements. These companies invested heavily in electronic equipments, so they need to see returns by way of a significant reduction in manpower expense. I’m sure installing and updating systems in banks with not only a nationwide network but a global one costs millions of dollars. What for? To beat competition, to be the prime movers in innovative and consumer-friendly fast banking. How are they going to realize returns on these investments? Don’t tell me from the $2 fees they charge for non-customers’ withdrawals from ATMs. Not from savings for not printing and sending customers’ bank statements. THey must find some other sources to derive income from operations. Maybe that is why mortgage loans were approved left and right, never mind if the loan applicants actually qualified or not. There has to be more income to offset big-time expenses! And so, we already know what happened next. Crash! Bailout! And the endless domino effect of this big mess.
My husband now works for the US Postal Service. For many years, USPS used to be one of the best companies many people aspire to get employed with. Excellent pay, competitive benefit package and very secure. Join it, do your job and rest assured you’re good till retirement day. Not so anymore. Modern technology has paved the way for the indispensible internet. Even seniors have learned to e-mail and search for their long-lost high school classmates and cousins on the internet. John need not mail the new baby’s pictures for Grandma and Grandpa to see. He just has to e-mail from his digital camera. Need to pay your bills right away? You don’t have to mail checks, just pay them online. And so who needs stamps? There have been less and less advertisement and promotion through mail. They just pop up as soon as you open your computer. Save for Disabled American Veterans and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, my mom has long seen the demise of a number of mails sent to her via USPS. The USPS has been getting less and less mail to process which means less and less work for their employees. Some of the warehouses which used to store tons of mail and parcels are getting closed. Several distribution and processing facilities are shutting down as well. Do they need the same manpower? Unsurprisingly, management has to let go thousands of men and women from their workforce. People who used to make $25 per hour land jobs which pay only $10 - if they’re lucky. As for many, they end up jobless, lining up at EDD for meager unemployment benefits.
I believe this is exactly why we are facing hard times. See, those who used to work for Bank of America as processors and those who used to work for USPS are probably the new American Dreamers who bought houses. But since they lost their well-paying jobs, they faced foreclosure and now have to rent apartments instead. Maybe they are the couples who started renovating their houses. Now they just look at Home Depot from a distance. It could be that they are the ones who used to have spare money to buy new electronics at Circuit City. Or they are the husbands who used to upgrade their Chrysler or Ford cars every few years. Most likely, they were regular customers of food chains such as Krispy Kreme and Starbucks. They are the folks who want to enjoy life so they set up savings to spend on vacations or outings, like a few days in Las Vegas or a day in Six Flags. They are the working middle-class wives who used to enjoy shopping at Linens n’ Things, Mervyn’s, Gap, Rite Aid, Macy’s and eat in restaurants such as Rainforest Cafe or Sbarro. They were the ones who used to sustain the profitable existence of these business establishments. These are the people who used to keep the economy going but are now very restrained to do so. The economic crisis has rendered their activities limited. And so, these companies either file for bankruptcy, significantly trim down operation, or apply for bailout.
What I’m trying to say is, many of us do not realize that a simple decision like paying bills online instead of mailing the check can actually affect everybodyelse. I’m thinking, if only we could go back to the simple, traditional and basic ways of doing some things, maybe, just maybe, we can turn around from the crisis. I’m pretty sure that those “geniuses” who thought of “making our lives easier” by inventing those advanced technologies are not facing foreclosure. I’m pretty sure that a lot of them are still living in their multi-million dollar houses. Still driving nice cars. Still spending vacations in luxurious resorts. Still eating in nice restaurants. The thing is, they’re only a handful. They cannot get the economy going at a scale that this working class can.
I may sound anti-modern technology. I am not. I know that technological innovations are inevitable, necessary, and one of the vital keys that pave the way towards progress. But as I look around and see more and more people suffering from this crisis, I believe, majority of us are not ready yet or have not been adequately prepared to face the fast changes that technology brought about. Somehow, the timing is not right. Eduacation, social awareness and updating of skills of the workforce shouldd have been done hand in hand with advances in technology. There should have been clear warnings like what’s being done with the switch from analog to digital TV. Now, people who avail of unemployment benefits are asked to acquire other skills in their local adult schools to give them more career options. Most of these require them to learn using the computer. These men and women in their late 50s suddenly found themselves back to school learning how to type, save and e-mail for the first time. You think they’ll find a niche in this high tech world soon enough to beat the effects of unemployment? Tell me about competition with the younger tech savvy sector of the workforce.
I know that this economic recession is too complicated for my simple mind to comprehend but this is my piece of the big pie. Give back the jobs to our people instead of giving it to machines. Stop dehumanizing businesses. Technology and man should complement each other. They should not compete with each other. After all, man made technology. It should serve him, not render him jobless.
I’ve been thinking why we’re experiencing this economic recession. Why and how it started? When will it end? What can we do about it?
I realized that this started a few years ago. And we didn’t even realize it. That time when we were so amazed by all of the advanced technology being offered to us. When we were so thankful how it made our lives easier. Not knowing that it was going to bite us back.
I met my husband six year ago. During that time he was working as a parking attendant at Marriott Hotel in San Francisco. Previous to that he worked at a Bank first as a clearing check processor and then as cash vault representative. Why the shift of job you ask? Well, he was laid off. Bank started shutting down departments and laying off employees. The volume of inclearing checks has decreased significantly due to customers’ shift to online banking and check and debit cards instead of issuing actual checks. There are now less checks to sort and process. Moreover, checks, if actually issued are processed electronically. As cash vault custodian, he used to process bundles of bills per denomination. The bank decided to acquire machines that sort and bundle cash with very minimal human intervention. Hundreds of people lost their job at that time in the Bay Area alone. Consequently, most of these people who used to make $15 per hour eventually found themselves working for $8 per hour. Their pay reduced to almost half.
In many highly electronic banks, you only need to insert your check and cash deposits in the ATM and the machine automatically reads it and even prints a copy for you. No need to fill up a deposit slip. Unless you want some pretty young thing smiling and asking “How are you doing today?”, who needs a bank teller? Banks encourage you to go green, clutter-free and safe from indentity theft. In other words, they prefer you to do online banking rather than spend wages on employees to entertain you in their offices and mail your bank statements. These companies invested heavily in electronic equipments, so they need to see returns by way of a significant reduction in manpower expense. I’m sure installing and updating systems in banks with not only a nationwide network but a global one costs millions of dollars. What for? To beat competition, to be the prime movers in innovative and consumer-friendly fast banking. How are they going to realize returns on these investments? Don’t tell me from the $2 fees they charge for non-customers’ withdrawals from ATMs. Not from savings for not printing and sending customers’ bank statements. THey must find some other sources to derive income from operations. Maybe that is why mortgage loans were approved left and right, never mind if the loan applicants actually qualified or not. There has to be more income to offset big-time expenses! And so, we already know what happened next. Crash! Bailout! And the endless domino effect of this big mess.
My husband now works for the US Postal Service. For many years, USPS used to be one of the best companies many people aspire to get employed with. Excellent pay, competitive benefit package and very secure. Join it, do your job and rest assured you’re good till retirement day. Not so anymore. Modern technology has paved the way for the indispensible internet. Even seniors have learned to e-mail and search for their long-lost high school classmates and cousins on the internet. John need not mail the new baby’s pictures for Grandma and Grandpa to see. He just has to e-mail from his digital camera. Need to pay your bills right away? You don’t have to mail checks, just pay them online. And so who needs stamps? There have been less and less advertisement and promotion through mail. They just pop up as soon as you open your computer. Save for Disabled American Veterans and the Trinity Broadcasting Network, my mom has long seen the demise of a number of mails sent to her via USPS. The USPS has been getting less and less mail to process which means less and less work for their employees. Some of the warehouses which used to store tons of mail and parcels are getting closed. Several distribution and processing facilities are shutting down as well. Do they need the same manpower? Unsurprisingly, management has to let go thousands of men and women from their workforce. People who used to make $25 per hour land jobs which pay only $10 - if they’re lucky. As for many, they end up jobless, lining up at EDD for meager unemployment benefits.
I believe this is exactly why we are facing hard times. See, those who used to work for Bank of America as processors and those who used to work for USPS are probably the new American Dreamers who bought houses. But since they lost their well-paying jobs, they faced foreclosure and now have to rent apartments instead. Maybe they are the couples who started renovating their houses. Now they just look at Home Depot from a distance. It could be that they are the ones who used to have spare money to buy new electronics at Circuit City. Or they are the husbands who used to upgrade their Chrysler or Ford cars every few years. Most likely, they were regular customers of food chains such as Krispy Kreme and Starbucks. They are the folks who want to enjoy life so they set up savings to spend on vacations or outings, like a few days in Las Vegas or a day in Six Flags. They are the working middle-class wives who used to enjoy shopping at Linens n’ Things, Mervyn’s, Gap, Rite Aid, Macy’s and eat in restaurants such as Rainforest Cafe or Sbarro. They were the ones who used to sustain the profitable existence of these business establishments. These are the people who used to keep the economy going but are now very restrained to do so. The economic crisis has rendered their activities limited. And so, these companies either file for bankruptcy, significantly trim down operation, or apply for bailout.
What I’m trying to say is, many of us do not realize that a simple decision like paying bills online instead of mailing the check can actually affect everybodyelse. I’m thinking, if only we could go back to the simple, traditional and basic ways of doing some things, maybe, just maybe, we can turn around from the crisis. I’m pretty sure that those “geniuses” who thought of “making our lives easier” by inventing those advanced technologies are not facing foreclosure. I’m pretty sure that a lot of them are still living in their multi-million dollar houses. Still driving nice cars. Still spending vacations in luxurious resorts. Still eating in nice restaurants. The thing is, they’re only a handful. They cannot get the economy going at a scale that this working class can.
I may sound anti-modern technology. I am not. I know that technological innovations are inevitable, necessary, and one of the vital keys that pave the way towards progress. But as I look around and see more and more people suffering from this crisis, I believe, majority of us are not ready yet or have not been adequately prepared to face the fast changes that technology brought about. Somehow, the timing is not right. Eduacation, social awareness and updating of skills of the workforce shouldd have been done hand in hand with advances in technology. There should have been clear warnings like what’s being done with the switch from analog to digital TV. Now, people who avail of unemployment benefits are asked to acquire other skills in their local adult schools to give them more career options. Most of these require them to learn using the computer. These men and women in their late 50s suddenly found themselves back to school learning how to type, save and e-mail for the first time. You think they’ll find a niche in this high tech world soon enough to beat the effects of unemployment? Tell me about competition with the younger tech savvy sector of the workforce.
I know that this economic recession is too complicated for my simple mind to comprehend but this is my piece of the big pie. Give back the jobs to our people instead of giving it to machines. Stop dehumanizing businesses. Technology and man should complement each other. They should not compete with each other. After all, man made technology. It should serve him, not render him jobless.
By: Bernice Novicio
