2 July 2014
Janesville, Wisconsin, "new norm" underemployed prison city with invisible fence of steel.
I moved to Janesville, Wisconsin, back in 1992 for a year after re-settling in Wisconsin from Texas. I moved to Madison, Wisconsin, forthwith; then, just south of that capital city to rural Green County.
My mother's cancer brought me back to Janesville in 2000..., been here ever since. Life has a way of doing that to a guy.
Mom grew up in Janesville for the most part. Moved away for years; then, moved back from my dad's farm in her retirement. Her own dad worked for Janesville's infamous GM plant. She worked for the city's famous Parker Pen company. Both gone..., GM packed up in 2008-9 in the Great Recession. Parker left in the Misery Recession of the late '70s and early '80s. And gone too, all the satellite industries that helped facilitate the two cap-stone companies and their family supporting jobs. What's left..., part-time service jobs. If that.
People here work crappy jobs as best they can. Many have silently fled..., slowly but surely. Not everyone can flee. I am 60, have health issues, and own a house. Hard to pack up and leave like one is 18 again. That leads to another variable.
What is left for commerce in the once industrial city is three-fold...., and disappointing at best, disturbing at worst. The number one industry if you will, is health care (sick people). Number two industry? Public schools (Taxes). Also, number two facilitates Janesville's biggest export..., its children after graduation, to other cities, states, and countries to find jobs. And the third industry? Well of course it is taverns and fast food (drunks and fat people).
When one is forced to work part-time, non-benefit jobs to get by, they start to slowly be deconstructed. They don't get sick-time so they work sick. They don't get vacation time so they never get a rest. They are essentially slowly destroyed. They never have enough money to make even the most basic life-style really work. There by, they slowly get in a rut of not having the seed-money to escape.
With gas at nearly four dollars a gallon, even a recon trip to a more vibrant state to scope out the potential could cost 600 bucks in gasoline alone. An untenable amount, for a person only making 165 bucks a week..., a 1978ish paycheck actually. And that assumes of course..., they even have a car any more.
People are trapped in a weak service economic self-fulfilling nightmare. Janesville's newspaper of record recently lords in an OpEd piece, that these low-wage jobs are entry jobs and people don't stay in them long - there's no reason to raise the wages.
Excuse me, but people don't stay in them long because the jobs are horrid with no dignity and their bodies are wrecked. And, people may leave those jobs if they are lucky and can actually escape Janesville. Others, like people over 50, tough out these jobs to make the few bucks they can. The "older ones" are not allowed to participate in Janesville's culture unless they volunteer their efforts for free. They..., when they try to keep languishing for that inadequate wage, are often deemed losers, by the normative driven owners of the message, like the local newspaper. Yet, those same struggling workers are sung praises when they volunteer for free.
Detecting a pattern? See an inept and misguided conspiracy of taking advantage of an already unfortunate economy? Can you notice the gleeful opportunists' use of the unintended consequences wrought by outsourcing our economy to third-world countries? We have become a third world country ourselves. Hey, we even like soccer now too. A great subject for a subsequent essay.
But today, this is Janesville. A poster child if you will, for the dirty secret of America's and Governor Scott Walker's new economy. Don't let the handlers of the "official message" con the good people of Madison and the rest of the fair state into thinking everything is hunky-dory down in good ol' Janesville. The happy-talk message can get out of the invisible fence of economic decay...,
..., but, what is left of the workers are still imprisoned behind it.
