‘It seems we’ve decided a middle class is a luxury we can’t afford’: Unemployed and skeptical about retirement

Jim Berrie took a buyout from his newspaper in 2008, discovering the U.S. had changed even more dramatically than he had imagined:  Retirement is stretching out of reach.

“Even after the stock market crash, I fully expected I would get another job right away,” he says from his New Jersey home.

It wasn’t a voluntary buyout, but at least Berrie kept benefits and a small pension, after almost 20 years as a copy editor-paginator.

“They kind of had the gun to our heads,” he recalls.  “They said if we stayed, we could get re-assigned, as security guards at a warehouse. Or the paper would be sold and the new buyer would fire everyone and we would have to re-apply for our jobs, at lower salaries.”

Berrie wasn’t unemployed long before he was invited to return part-time. His $1,700 weekly salary was cut by two-thirds, and the only shift offered was at night, adding a 70-mile commute that was “rough”, partly because the extra miles meant a monthly surcharge on his leased car.

It’s ironic that the newspaper section Berrie was helping produce was called Good Times.

Soon, he was promoted to arts and entertainment editor, doing all the editing, layouts and pagination for two sections, working with five freelance writers.

“I was making a fraction of the money I used to make, but then they set me up so I could work at home, and only commute one day a week. I like what I’m doing, and the hours are more flexible.”

The financial hardship, however, was tough to accept.

Berrie’s wife, a speech pathologist, was working from contract to contract, as social services were slashed. She often went without income for weeks.  Then their son graduated from college and the family had to start paying back his loans.

“It was tough,” Berrie acknowledges. “There have been times ….” His voice trails off.

“Times when we fell behind on the mortgage a month or so,” he adds, admitting the three-career family didn’t expect that. “We’re caught up now.”

At 60, Berrie is scrambling to continue applying for jobs in public relations and advertising, “just trying to get my foot in the door.” But the skills of a copy editor — “people who know language” — are diminished “when there are no standards on the Internet.”

Berrie boosts his income by proofreading and copy editing at a community newspaper one day a week, and proctoring tests for the Princeton Review.

Baby Boomer nostalgia:  ‘America’s most prosperous time’

“It’s certainly scary.  There’s a kind of disconnect in the U.S. now,” he says. “The economy doesn’t seem to be rebounding the way it should, and a lot of people are losing their homes and jobs. I’m a Baby Boomer and I grew up in America’s most prosperous time. It doesn’t look like it will ever be that way again.

“It seems we’ve decided a middle class is a luxury we can’t afford.”

Berrie, 60, figured he would be retiring at 65, and now admits he can’t plan for retirement, financially or psychologically.

“We spent all our 401Ks keeping up the mortgage,” he says. “I might be desperate enough to start collecting Social Security at 62” if family income doesn’t improve.

“I fully expected I would be at (my paper) until I retired, so we feel very threatened,” Berrie says. “That stock market crash in ’08 really killed.”

Still, he’s boosted his pessimism with exercise, losing 60 pounds with the help of a personal trainer.  Berrie was so successful in maintaining a strong workout routine, that he aims to become a certified personal trainer too.

After interviewing a contestant from his town who appeared on NBC’s The Biggest Loser, Berrie is keen to turn private weight loss success into financial gain.

It’s not about us and them, it’s about sharing — just ask Mark Zuckerberg

By Hoover Wind, Kathleen Kenna and Hadi Dadashian

It’s not about us and them.

As much as we honor the peaceful intentions of the Occupy movement, it’s not just a simple formula of 1% versus 99%.

It’s about all Americans, as Sarah Palin reminded us at the CPAC convention this weekend.

Let’s look at Mark Zuckerberg, sometimes reviled, sometimes beloved founder of Facebook.

It sounds outrageous that the social networking giant could raise $5 billion in its public stock offering.

We want all American companies to raise that kind of cash in their IPOs.

We want all American companies, all Americans — from the wealthiest to the lowest-income  — to share.

Zuckerberg, hopefully, is about to show us how this is possible.

Say Facebook raises $5 billion.

This means as much as $1 billion for the rest of California.

How? That five-letter word in the current election campaign: T-A-X-E-S.

The non-partisan legislative analyst’s office in California estimates this single IPO — the largest ever for an Internet-based firm — could bring California millions, and perhaps even $1 billion, in taxes.

This has so excited California’s governor, the sometimes reviled, sometimes beloved Jerry Brown, that his staff has offered to mow Zuckerberg’s lawn in exchange.

“If it is as big as it is being billed, then on behalf of a grateful state, I will go to Mark Zuckerberg’s house and either wash his windows or mow his lawn,” says H.D. Palmer, Brown’s finance spokesman.

This is the great part:  The non-partisan legislative analyst’s office and the Democrat governor’s office have both put one of California’s richest entrepreneurs on notice.

Pundits are crowing that Zuckerberg will pay the most taxes of any American in history.  This is good news, no matter where you stand on tax reform, tax breaks for the rich, or tax hikes.

California is broke.  With a deficit of more than $9 billion, its schools are falling apart, and its streets and highways are filling with garbage.  Social services — for veterans, elders, people with disabilities, children and low-income families — have been squeezed and squeezed and squeezed.

Slashbacks across all levels of government have hit all public services, from policing to economic development, like a tsunami.

To international visitors, it appears that California’s homeless population is growing, in major cities and small towns.

Politicians will fall all over themselves with a windfall like this. Watch for national politicians to argue about how Zuckerberg’s tax contributions should be spent — more prisons/less prisons; more affordable housing/more campaign contributions.

We’ll be watching Zuckerberg and his Facebook workers, many of whom are counting on becoming millionaires as a result of this IPO.

Will they park their new profits outside the country to avoid taxes?

Or will they share, by paying full taxes — however that is defined — to help California’s most vulnerable?

Will they, as Republican minority leaders in California insist, use this newfound tax wealth to “protect our public school students … and pay down the state’s debt service.”

You know — the debt that everyone shared in accumulating during the so-called “good years”?

Layoffs, recession show ‘we’re living in a new world’

Dan Witter was confident a Bachelor’s degree would help him pursue a career.

Dan Witter

A survivor of layoffs and a recession that has crushed career hopes, the 43-year-old from Bellingham, WA, says his experiences have taught him an unsettling lesson: “I’m not convinced things will go back to the way they used to be.”

That means the days when a solid resume, good references and a B.A. meant something better than minimum wage.

Witter, working two jobs for more than 45 hours a week, just filed his taxes and concludes, “I didn’t clear $16,000.”

He says this with some amazement, as if he still can’t believe he’s back to retail after two years of unemployment, following a layoff.

“I’m disappointed that things aren’t working out the way they should,” he says. “I realize I’m living in a different world. It’s so sad to see this happen to our country.”

Witter says it’s not enough to be committed to a job, and work hard to get ahead.

“I work hard, I take pride in my work, I’m a detail-oriented person,” he says. “That doesn’t mean anything anymore. Everyone puts that on their resume.”

After applying for 300 jobs in the past two years, Witter was relieved to get a part-time job as custodian at his church, first at five hours weekly, then 10.  That was followed by a full-time job as produce assistant in a new department at Target.

“At least I have medical,” he says. “Between two jobs, I can’t afford $700-a-month rent. I pay room and board to my parents, but I have this guilt trip — I’m supposed to be out on my own. I’m supposed to be supporting myself. I should be independent, yet here I am.”

He’s quiet for a moment and adds, “There are so many people worse off than me, who have lost everything.”

Witter joined the Occupy protests in Bellingham, and removed his savings from the Bank of America to protest the bank’s role in the recession.

“We hear about all these bailouts of Wall Street … so I stood outside the Bank of America (in Bellingham), to say, ‘you got bailouts and I lost my job’,” he recalls.

“A lot of the time I was out of work, I was angry. I just didn’t show it. I was really, really angry — I had nowhere to put the blame.”

When Witter was unemployed and lost his health insurance, he got injured and was advised to get surgery at a cost of almost $20,000.

“I was livid,” he says. “I was scared.  “That would have wiped out all my savings.”

Witter sought opinions from two more doctors, who advised against surgery, so he still tries to add to his savings.

“There are so few making so much money in our country, and so many suffering,” he continues.

“It leaves you with a sense of helplessness. I don’t feel like I have a whole lot of power. There’s a certain acceptance of things — but I’m not giving up.”

Witter is writing a book about his church, Bellingham Unitarian Fellowship, as a way of channeling his writing skills.

“Writing gives me a sense of contentment,” he explains. “This a real, printed book — I can’t wait to get it in my hands.”

Witter leaves with a Mark Twain quotation he finds inspiring: “Twenty years from now you will be more disappointed by the things that you didn’t do than by the ones you did do. So throw off the bowlines. Sail away from the safe harbor. Catch the trade winds in your sails. Explore. Dream. Discover.”

Second of two parts

Long-term unemployment ‘changed my whole worldview’

Dan Witter has the kind of passion that spurred him to take 2,000 photos of a construction project and produce a self-published book.

The project was an addition to his church, Bellingham Unitarian, in Washington state.

Dan Witter

Witter, a former journalist, wanted to capture history for the congregation of 300, so embarked on what he calls “my honeymoon book.”

The title, Building A New Hope, could be a sub-title for Witter’s own life.

At 43, Witter says he didn’t imagine he would be living with his parents again, after long-term unemployment.

Witter got a BA in journalism, worked as a reporter in California for almost eight years, then returned to Washington “burnt out” in 2007.

“I moved back with my parents, figuring I would stay a month or two, and find work,” he recalls.

When the job search took longer than expected, he got a retail job at Target and continued searching.

By fall, 2008, he landed a job that paid twice as much as retail, at Cargill Animal Nutrition, a feed mill near Anacortes, Washington. Witter became a production technician, stocking and sealing animal feed in bags on a production line.

“I asked myself, ‘Do you really want to get into this? Are you sure you want to do this?’ ” he says. “It was the worst job I ever had.”

Long hours, difficult working conditions and a tough work culture finally led to a layoff, and Witter acknowledges, “I was the wrong match for the job.”

Witter began another full-time job search, confident it wouldn’t take long.

“At first, I was happy because I knew that wasn’t the right job for me,” he says. “But it was getting tougher. Days turned into weeks turned into months — I told myself, ‘I won’t go six months’ (before finding work), but then a year goes by.

“I was sending out resumes and applications all the time and I was getting only rejection letters, most of the time, no response. It was like these resumes and applications were just going into a void, some black hole.”

Employers complained they were getting 200 to 300 applications for a single position, and soon, Witter started hearing about other recession victims.

“I knew other people were losing jobs and they were worse off than me because they were losing their homes — at least I had a place to stay,” he says.

As the recession deepened, so did Witter’s depression.

“I was getting depressed because I just knew it wasn’t getting better. It changed my whole worldview,” Witter says. “I didn’t know if I would ever find a job again. It just seemed so impossible and so time-consuming, so frustrating. I knew, at the back of my mind, it was useless.”

Witter said he applied faithfully for jobs while collecting unemployment insurance, starting with media-related positions, then government jobs, then back to retail.

“I did what I was supposed to do,” applying regularly for jobs while getting UI, he says. “I didn’t lie. I would apply to Costco nine times and never get a response.”

Considering Target his default, Witter finally re-applied and learned there were no positions. At least that employer offered something few bothered — a response to his application.

College degree ‘just a useless piece of paper’

After applying for 300 jobs, Witter says he investigated education options that might help.

“I couldn’t see what would lead to work in this economy,” he says. “It seemed a college degree was just a useless piece of paper.”

Witter’s church offered him a custodial job at five hours a week, then 10 hours, helping lift his confidence.

When construction began on an addition for the church, Witter says he just started shooting pictures of the work, becoming engrossed in the process.

“It was a labor of love,” Witter says, explaining that it was a volunteer project he undertook to show appreciation to the congregation.

“It was a pivotal moment,” he concludes. “It was a great accomplishment — I didn’t know I could do a book.”

Witter sold copies to church members at print-on-demand cost, estimating he earned about $40.

That seemingly minor success was followed by a phone call from Target.  The retail giant was opening new produce departments, and offered Witter a full-time job, based on his previous excellent performance.

“I finally got a job,” Witter says. “I was just elated.”

TOMORROW:  Post-recession worldview