Attack of the NINJAs - No Income, No Job, No Assets

Yesterday, I was holed up in my office when I heard a knock on the door. It was a NINJA coming to call. Not a real dressed in black, sword toting NINJA, but a NINJA never the less. This NINJA was a young attorney I'd interviewed and placed in a contract position at my old job as an attorney recruiter. I was surprised, but pleased to see her.

NINJA was interviewing for a position with my current company. In my former role I'd tried especially hard to find NINJA another position following the contract gig, but there just wasn't anything out there. NINJA had good reviews from her contract supervisor. She was well educated, bright, personable, attractive and just aggressive enough to be a go-getter without being obnoxious. But still, more than 6 months later, NINJA still hadn't found anything. Nothing. NADA.

We'd gotten to be friends, of a sort, over the last year or so. NINJA had a seat and started to tell me her troubles. "There are THOUSANDS of us out there." she recounted. "Only two of my friends (attorneys) have forgotten permanent jobs and for far less pay than they're worth." All this from a young woman who I view as EXTREMELY hireable. With a JD, no less. Desperation shone in her face.

I told her what I could. I knew she'd hate the job with my company if she was lucky enough to get it. It was basically paper shuffling for almost no pay and would not translate into the kind of experience that would further her legal career. The whole time I felt like a big fat fraud. Because she was right. No matter how smart, capable, personable, educated and attractive there are no jobs. At least not for the 20 -somethings.

Its not just the legal field, either. Its everywhere. Almost every industry is facing the same crisis. And sister, let me tell you its a crisis. According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the national unemployment rate on 3/4/11 was 8.9%, but for teenagers, the rate was more than double that at 23.9%. This figure includes only teens who were actively in the job market, not full time students etc. www.bls.gov/news.release/empsit.nr0.htm.

This particular NINJA was ahead of the game too. At least she'd had a job. She could provide some sort of references. Many can't even get out of the gate. Finding your first job has never been easy, but now its practically impossible.

NINJA recounted that she'd pursued every ad. She'd attended multiple networking events. No luck.

I thought about her all the way home. Her raw need had influenced me when I first spoke to her about a year ago. She had the initiative to pick up the phone and call me from a neighboring city practically begging (demanding?) her first job. I had a rare opening and took a chance. It paid off. For a contract position, NINJA had moved on 2 or 3 days notice, found housing near her assignment, and completely relocated. Our difficult-to-please client was very happy with her work. NINJA put in long hours with no complaint. She made money, but not nearly what she was worth in a better economy. Still no permanent offer. She went from project to project until she landed up on my doorstep.

There is a generation of NINJA's out there. Many are polite, well educated and respectful. How long is that going to last though, if they see that no matter what they do, their shot of getting even just a DECENT job is practically nil?

This really scares me. Lack of employment for new graduates seems to have been the catalyst for the recent uprisings in Egypt and Tunisia. A newscast yesterday even cast doubt on Saudi Arabia's continuing prospects, likening the country to Iran five years before the Shah fell.

Lack of jobs is a threat to stability worldwide. Wonder how long til we start to see it spreading to our own back yards? Friends (teachers) attended rallies this weekend to protect their collective bargaining rights. They made signs and protested in the rain. Rallies? Really? In the rain? Its all so 1970's and not in a good way.

The current financial crisis was first publicly marked by Iceland's inability to maintain debt levels. "Poor Iceland" and "What the hell were those people thinking?" were the prevailing sentiments. But hey, it was Iceland, so no biggie? Right? Well, right, that is until the crisis started to spread. Then we heard about the PIIGS (Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain). Then BAM critical mass and we're all in the soup! The USsub came to the crisis with the subprime mortgage crisis and unemployment rates unprecedented in the X and Y generations' lifetimes.

I was wondering how long it would be before the unemployment crisis ended up on my doorstep. Maybe that was the wakeup call. It did, with the advent of NINJA, yesterday. How long before idleness turns to activism and anarchy spreads to Nashvegas? OR is it already here? In six months will there be riots in the streets when the latest round of grads wakes up and smells the coffee. They are the NINJA generation. I don't want to have my Gen X ass kicked by a NINJA. I'm just saying.

Also the divide between rich and poor is growing. The middle class is disappearing beneath a wave of unemployment , subprime foreclosures, and sheer hopelessness. Not to say it wasn't time for a "correction", but the harshness and desperation evident amount the very youngest of our workforce is frightening.

So let me take a time out to explain the concept of NINJA, this term that I'm just throwing around. According to Wikipedia, the term was first coined around 2008 during the subprimemortgage boom to describe a particular type of loan - No Income, No Job, No Assets. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/finance/economics/2785403/Ninja-loans-explode-on-sub-prime-frontline.html It was both an acronym and an allusion to the fact that some of these borrowers had a tendency to simply disappear like ninjas in the night. Its increasingly being applied to the X and Y generations.

It looks like the term started to take off in popular culture with the release of Wall Street 2. Gordon Gecko refers to his audience of college students as the NINJA generation. Its a sad day when Gordon Gecko, a fictional character, puts his finger on the zietgeist of a nation, a culture. Here is his speech from Wall Street 2:

"You’re all pretty much fu****. You don’t know it yet. But, you are the NINJA generation. No Income, No Job, No Assets. You got a lot to live for too. Someone reminded me the other evening that I once said greed is good. Now it seems its legal. But folks, its greed that makes my bartender buy three houses he can’t afford with no money down. And it's greed that makes your parents refinance their two hundred thousand dollar house for two fifty. Then they take that extra fifty and go down to the mall. They buy a plasma TV, cell phones, computers, a SUV, hey why not a second home while we are it, cause gee whiz we all know the prices of houses in America always go up, right?

And its greed that makes the government of this country cut interest rates down to one percent after 9/11 so we can all go shopping again. And they got all these fancy names for trillions of dollars of credits, CMOs, CDOs, SIVs, ABS . You know I honestly think that there’s maybe only seventy five people in the world who know what they are. But I’ll tell you what they are - WMDs, weapons of mass destruction! That’s what they are.

When I was away, it seems greed got greedier with a little bit of envy mixed in. Hedge funders were walking home with fifty, hundred million bucks a year. So Mister Banker, he looks around and says my life looks pretty boring. So he starts leveraging his interests up to forty, fifty to one, with your money, not his, yours, because he could. You’re supposed to be borrowing not them. And the beauty of the deal, no one is responsible. Because everyone is drinking the same Kool-aid.

Last year ladies and gentlemen, forty percent of all American corporate profits came from financial services. Not production, not anything remotely to do with the needs of the American public. The truth is we are all part of it now. Banks, consumers, we’re moving the money around in circles. We take a buck, we shoot it full of steroids. We call it leverage. I call it steroid banking.

Gecko ends his speech purporting to have all the answers. All you have to do is buy his book. So if there were a a book to buy, I would. But this is a movie, the book doesn't exist and I don't see anyone else proposing a solution.

If they (X and Y and NINJA) get pissed off enough, I fear it may be time to refer to another film, this one much much older. I just hope everyone over thirty doesn't end up as Soilent Green.

YouTube clip - http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Sp-VFBbjpE

The Unkindest Cut of All

So, if it had been Fox News, I could have understood. Or even MSNBC, well maybe... But et tu, NPR? What the?

I was driving around on my lunch hour a few weeks ago listening to "Talk of the Nation", an NPR produced radio talk show. Neal Conan, the host, came across the air waves saying, "The American family has changed...A new Pew Research poll asked Americans about these trends [unmarried couples, gay parents and people who chose not to have children at all] and found that almost 70 percent believe that single women raising children on their own is bad for society."

Link to the transcript and recording - http://www.npr.org/2011/02/24/134031175/For-Single-Mothers-Stigma-Difficult-To-Shake

Now, I've heard of the Pew Research Center before - actually the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press - and I've always just imputed legitimacy to the organization. I mean, it certainly sounds legit. And they are often quoted on NPR.

So normally I wouldn't question their findings. That is unless they'd happened to have a representative, Rich Moran, on TOTN that particular day who was making Charlie Sheen sound like Jim Cooper. According to the transcript Rich Moron (NOT a spelling error) is a "Senior Editor" for Pew. I looked on their website, though, and he's not listed as a current employee. Hopefully he was fired after his shameful performance on TOTN.

I will concede the point that society as a whole would probably prefer two parent families to single parent households. Not that there is any logic in that particular view, because by extrapolating on that line of thinking, I probably should just move on out to Utah and get myself a couple or three Sister Wives if we go with the theory that more is better. (I, on the other hand, side with that late great Diana Vreeland, "Less is more.")

My beef with this particular segment is that the study described is not an accurate or reliable poll and its being propounded as fact by Mr. Moran who is obviously biased. No problem with being biased. I am. But let's distinguish between what you think and what you've proved and if you do claim to have proved a point, let's dig a little deeper into your methodology. What say Rich? Game on, let's go....

METHODOLOGY

The poll in question takes a sample of "almost 3000 Americans". In 2009, according to the U.S. Census Bureau, the population of the United States was 307,006,550. This means that the size of the sample used was less than .00977% of the entire population of the U.S.

Also, a statistical sample is expected to mirror the population from which it is taken. A quick look at the Pew Center's polling methods indicate that this is not the case. The standard polling method used is a telephone survey using random digit dialing. So the Pew Center is only going to reach those individuals who will answer a call from an unknown or unrecognized telephone number. Ask yourself, would I answer a call from a number I don't recognize? Would anyone I know? One can only assume that talking to shut ins, extremely lonely people, etc. NOT a randomized sample of the U.S. public at all.

My final point and most important point about this survey - the language used in framing the question and the question itself. I think that its pretty telling that Rich Moran never asked the respondents their feelings about single dads, or even single parents, just single moms, and not single "mothers", single "moms". In fact, it never even occurred to Mr. Moran to ask the question.

"CONAN: Did the same results obtain if you said: What if they're raised by a single father?

Mr. MORAN: Interesting. We did not ask - we didn't ask that. Since most single-parent households are by women, it's - the real issue is single moms."

I'm not sure whether Mr. Moran's response is visceral or intellectual, but it would seem the former, given that (according to the 2009 U.S. Census) 15% of all single parent households are headed by men. While not the majority, that would seem to be a fairly significant number, at least worthy of consideration. Also, consider that 10% of all single parent households were headed by men in 1980 (also according to the Census bureau) and it would seem to mark a growing trend.

It would seem that the question should have referred to single parent households, NOT "single moms". Mr. Moran states:

"I don't know what the answer would have been had we asked about single fathers. Something tells me that it would have been different, but in the same direction, maybe not the same magnitude or maybe greater.

The issue is the outcomes that come from a child being raised by just one parent. Everyone agrees, or most everyone, that the best possible situation is a loving mother and father raising a child."

So, shouldn't that have been the question that you asked, Rich?

I'm not splitting hairs. Semantics play a HUGE role in polling. For example, suppose you were asked, "Do you see any societal damage from a household where same sex partners are co-parenting a child?" How do you feel about that question? Its kinda warm and fuzzy. Now, how do you feel when you are asked, "Do you think its okay for two homosexual men to have unsupervised custody of a little boy?" I'd wager that you have a different reaction.

THOUGHTS

Its hard enough dealing with society's preconceptions of single parenthood without having biased opinions presented as scientific fact. The media portrays single women with children as either superstar celebrity moms living a fantasy lifestyle or the TeenMom model of motherhood filled with drama and angst. I am jaded enough that when I see a "reality" show on TV, I know its anything but. Hopefully, I'm not alone in that.

On the other hand, when I look to a trusted source, which NPR once was for me, and faulty studies being presented as fact, well, anyone could be misledt. In this particular instance, the commentator, Rich Moran, was so inaccurate that bells went off with me and I looked a little deeper, but what if I hadn't? Would I just accept his flawed study as the gospel? Frankly, maybe I would.

Fortunately, he confuses his facts and figures enough that I looked a little deeper, but that might not have been the case. I mean, when someone confuses "99%" and "69%" - now, that's a pretty big difference. Or a pollster who never even thought to ask the question about single dads. I'm not a journalist, but I would assume that there is some sort of guideline or standard that the profession must adhere to?

I do think that in this particular segment, Neal Conan did attempt to maintain an impartial stance. But by presenting Rich Moran as a representative of "an independent, non-partisan public opinion research organization that studies attitudes toward politics, the press and public policy issues," TOTN does its listeners a grave disservice. Mr. Moran can go on any show that will have him and say whatever he likes, and I fully support his right to do so. However, to make representations based on fact one must have some basis in fact. That's only logical, right?

Mr. Moran misrepresents the work of Princeton academic, Sara McLanahan, as well -

"CONAN: And studies also suggest that it's the educational achievements of the mom, no matter what, how many parents there are in the family, the determining factor of how well their children are likely to do.

Mr. MORAN: You know, and that is true, but Sara McLanahan of Princeton did one of the path-breaking studies in the '90s and actually controlled for the education of the parent and found that it didn't make a lot of difference."

So, I looked up Sara McLanahan. Now, I'm not saying that she NEVER did a study with the results cited above. But I couldn't find it. ANYWHERE. I did find this quote, excerpted from an article dated 10/5/10 in the Kalamazoo Opinion:

"It’s true that the strongest predictor of a child’s school success is the education level of the mother — not whether the mother is married, McLanahan said."

Ms. McLanahan is not completely ruling out marital status and family composition as a factor. But its not as bad as Mr. Moran makes it out to be. Here's a link to the whole article. Judge for yourself:

www.mlive.com/opinion/kalamazoo/index.ssf/2010/10/column_does_single_parenthood.html

So either Mr. Moran was wrong to begin with, which looks increasingly probable, or Ms. McLanahan has changed her views over the last 20 years. Either way, he makes an inaccurate representation of her views. That's just damn irresponsible.

CONCLUSION

Hey, I'm not trying to say that single parenthood is any nirvana for parents or children. I'm also not denying that having two loving, committed, stable parents is probably better than just having one. I'm also not putting my opinions out there as the Gospel truth. I'm telling you what I think and what I think is this - just because you happen to be raised by a single mother doesn't necessarily mean that you are going to hell on a Hippty Hop.

And as a single parent, I really don't need any more negative stereotypes out there than already exist. ESPECIALLY not stereotypes disguised as statistically sound research. So that's my point, for what its worth.

Oh, yeah, and the next "pledge drive" that comes around, NPR? Well, I think that you can take your Praire Home Companion CD or David Sedaris autographed novel and just use your imagination. K?

The African American Swan

OK, really, can we stop it? Now? Being PC that is. Because I think that when we, as a society can all laugh at one another without causing offense, it will be a sign that we've achieved true equality.

I was just looking at a Twitter tag #blackpeoplemovies. The title of this post comes from one of the entries. Some of the posts were funny as hell. A few were offensive, but the funniest, roll-on-the-floor-and-cry posts were from black people. (Black?) (African American?) I know this because they had their pictures next to their Twitter profiles.

I hesitated to send it around to some of my friends, though. Will they think I'm a racist? I hope I'm not. Will they be offended or will they share in the joke?

Its not just the racial issue, but the gender and sexual orientation issue as well. I think back to the early '90's gay activists. They took all the derogatory names and comments and OWNED them. They defused the negative epiteths and threw them right back in society's face, chanting, "We're here, we're queer, get used to it." It took a while, but it kinda looks like we did, at least to me.

I never met a Queen worth her size 13 slippers who wasn't wickedly witty. Humor as a defense mechanism. And sometimes as an offensive as well! Laugh at yourself and the world laughs with you. Take yourself too seriously and isolation and alienation are the inevitable results.

So I wonder, as a woman, am I missing out on part of the joke, due to misguided PC? If I'm the only woman in the company of men, are we having an entirely different conversation than we would if I weren't present? Because I think THAT'S the real danger, not letting some locker room comment slip.

So, if I've offended anyone, I apologize. That's definitely not my intent. I know I'm out on a limb here and hopefully it won't get cut off behind me.

I'm just saying that it takes a strong secure person to laugh at herself. Can we just admit that we all do some VERY funny shit? Can we take race, religion, sexual orientation, etc. out of the mix and just enjoy the joke? Only then will we have the level of inclusion necessary for real equality to exist.