America Will Never Recover From This Recession, The End

There's a cheery new article in theAtlanticabout how this country will never ever recover and nobody will ever have jobs again -- especially the youth and the "working class," both of whom have actually been not having jobs while living pathetic wrecked lives for a decade or sobeforethe Great Recession.

It's hard to pick a representative quote from this long, painful piece. You might want to just bring the bottle to the table next to the computer, because after every other paragraph or so, you'll be muttering "Jesus fucking christ," staring at the wall, and taking another drink. (By "you" I mean "me.") And that's one of many wounds this Decades-Long Disaster will leave on the corpse of America: Everyone who loses their job or can't get a job turns into a serious Problem Drinker and also dies long before the few people who still have jobs and houses. So, that's an upside, maybe? Less social security to pay out! Uh where were we? Right, a quote:

If it persists much longer, this era of high joblessness will likely change the life course and character of a generation of young adults—and quite possibly those of the children behind them as well. It will leave an indelible imprint on many blue-collar white men—and on white culture. It could change the nature of modern marriage, and also cripple marriage as an institution in many communities. It may already be plunging many inner cities into a kind of despair and dysfunction not seen for decades. Ultimately, it is likely to warp our politics, our culture, and the character of our society for years.

Ha ha ha, is this the "white culture" that pig-eyed poopsack Glenn Beck was talking about? Did you know more than half of the white people without college degrees have children "out of wedlock"? This produces kids who tend to be poor, dumb and emotionally unstableforever, while also guaranteeing a pretty shitty life for the (unwed) parents:

But a large body of research shows that one of the worst things for children, in the long run, is an unstable family. By the time the average out-of-wedlock child has reached the age of 5, his or her mother will have had two or three significant relationships with men other than the father, and the child will typically have at least one half sibling. This kind of churning is terrible for children—heightening the risks of mental-health problems, troubles at school, teenage delinquency, and so on—and we’re likely to see more and more of it, the longer this malaise stretches on.

Luckily, there will be no jobs for this new permanent underclass of bastard morons with tattoos on their mouths.

Oh, and something like a third of all young adults now live with their parents, part of a decade-long trend that just jumped another 10% in the two years of this Recession. That's another fun development, and the number would probably be a lot higher, but so few parents are married and have the money and the house for an adult kid to return to .... uh, and kids who grew up during the "self esteem" educational movement are delusional idiots, one in eighteen think they're going to be pop stars or Hollywood actors, the rest have no ability to do anything beyond follow simple orders, so they're completely unequipped for entrepreneurial pursuits or creative jobs. They do, however, generally expect to earn huge amounts of money, even though income is decreasing, and those lucky enough to have jobs at all are mostly earning in the $25K range.

On the other hand, the same issue has a funny article by Liz Phair about some eco-design conference and a NASCAR race. Liz Phair! We guess the record industry wasn't dead enough for her, so now she's trying print journalism. [ Atlantic article of epic sadness via Metafilter ]