I ran across a gem in my closet the other day. It was a copy of "Life" magazine dated the day after my birth. On the front cover of the 14" by 10" tabloid, if the title doesn't give the age away the dimensions of the magazine should, was a picture of Michael V. DiSalle. At the time of publication DiSalle had just been appointed Director of Price Stabilization, a position he held until February 1952. Subsequent to that DiSalle served a term as governor of Ohio and also did time in the U.S. Senate.
Disalle was an interesting figure. He stood 5'5" tall and was well over 200 pounds. He was tasked in 1951 to monitor and hopefully control prices within the U.S. economy, a task left over from WW2. At a dinner in DiSalle's honor, President Harry S. Truman remarked "I have said to the kids that come to see me--the future farmers, the Boy Scouts-that I would give anything in the world if I were a 16-year-old boy now, because then I could live to see the next 50 years. We think we have done great things in the last 50 years, but it will be nothing compared with what will be done in the next 50 years........". Truman's words were spoken in 1951. Fifty nine years later (2010), we are a different country.
Inflation, which stood at a seasonally adjusted 7.9% in 1951, ended 2009 at nearly zero. Unemployment is at 9.7%, higher than any year since 1982, and up from 3.3% in 1951 though neither counts those who have given up looking for work or are "underemployed". A government that collected 51.6 billion dollars in revenue from its citizens in 1951, drained us of 2.57 trillion dollars in 2007, and incurred a deficit of 162,002,000,000 (page 21 of the "Budget of the United States Government"). I use 2007 because the numbers for 2008 and 2009 are still "estimates". It seems the government doesn't close the books on the same schedule it requires of major corporations filing tax returns. Although to be fair, the government is much bigger than any corporation. I don't believe Ford, General Motors, or Microsoft ever had their own defense departments, or responsibility that requires the government to have one of its own.
Life is different today to be sure. The leap from "The Lone Ranger and Tonto" and test patterns to cable TV, Twitter, and the internet brings a different set of risks and rewards. Bess Truman never had a life coach, Harry's cabinet was half the headcount of O'bama's. The task faced by the unemployed is daunting. The country does not create jobs like it did in the Truman's days due to the declne in the manufacturing sector. Job creation still occurs, but mostly in the technology area. Skill sets have been evolving, changing or disappearing.
The greatest asset available to the job seeking unemployed is the ability not to just think out of the box but to actually get out of the box. The box is first in your head, then in your daily schedule. Do the middle aged go to school? Do office workers and thinkers actually get out on the road and sell--------themselves? The great conundrum of unemployment is that the best job skill you have is the one you were using when you were severed. Skill and talent don't always coincide. For all the quantum leaps in technology and hardware in our daily lives, the current economy requires requires the kind of self reliance needed in the 50's (1850's or 1950's).
Today's economy spins off gloomy statistics, and our technology allows us to dine on them almost hour by hour via tweets, posts, and talk show calls. So we are edeucated, aware, and in some cases out of work. The same technology allows to us to reach geometrically more people that we used to. That's the nature of the job hunt. Michael V. Di Salle was handed a job that required him to get outside his box. He replaced two predecessors who were much more dynamic and forcefull than he. Yet he presided over the decline of inflation from 7.9% in 1951 to less than 1% in 1954.
