Healthcare Shmealthcare. It’s jobs, stupid. Health care, according to Gallup, isn’t even  No. 2 in the people’s priorities today. It’s No. 3, behind Jobs and the Economy.

However, in today’s Post-Democracy Period little things like the will of the people or the consent of the governed no longer seem to matter. Ready or not, open wide and say Ahh. Government health care, here we come.

The argument can be made–and I, for one, will make it–that No. 3 mutually excludes Nos. 1 and 2. In other words, get ready for the biggest budget-busting, job-killing entitlement program the world has ever seen. You think unemployment is bad now; just wait.

Meanwhile, behind the scenes, many state unemployment funds are quietly drawing near to the end. The U.S. Treasury Department reports that 21 state unemployment funds are officially insolvent and another 16 are approaching that point within months.

Check it out.

Do you suppose the Obamacare plan has a death benefit for those of us who end up starving to death?

The law of large numbers

Ever stop to think why the classified ads are so unproductive a medium in the job search?
There may be a reason for that: Many times they’re the jobs nobody wants or nobody qualifies for–so, they have to advertise.

Here in Colorado, for example, I keep seeing the same ad in both the Denver and Colorado Springs papers for “Dog Sled Mushers” for Aspen. Apparently, no mobs are beating a path to mush the huskies and “enjoy the outdoors.”

The good jobs–ones that don’t involve being checked for ticks–usually don’t have to be advertised. My wife, for example, is the director of nursing for a long-term care facility. The facilities and the recruiters all know who’s who, and when a vacancy occurs, they get on the phone and call the usual suspects, including Mary Jane. Or a DON looking to make a move calls them. It’s called networking.

The wags used to say it’s not what you know, but who you know–and it’s still pretty true. It might be more accurate to say it’s who you know AND what you know. You still have to be qualified. And none of this is to say don’t read classified ads. Just don’t stop there–network. Sure, it’s more challenging if you’re trying to do it from the unemployment line, but all the more reason to work harder at it.

You can’t afford not to use the power of networking for both your professional and personal goals. The Internet social networking platforms like MySpace, Facebook, Twitter and Linked-In are demonstrating this power every day.

It’s the power of the Law of Large Numbers. If the average person knows 500 people, that quickly jumps to upward of 250,000—a quarter of a million—by the second degree of separation. Think of it. You may not know the hiring manager at XYZ corporation, but you probably know somebody who does—or somebody who knows somebody else who does.

In my personal opinion, if you’re not using Linked-In, you’re missing out on a very powerful networking tool for the job search.

As I contemplate the end of my unemployment benefits in May, I, like many others, am forced to confront the growing tension between ideology and real life.

A mounting chorus 0f voices frets that our super-sized extended unemployment benefits are starting to lose the nature of “temporary” assistance and are beginning to take on the form of yet another welfare program, increasing our dependency on government. Others argue that in terms of “stimulus” and “recovery,” these are the best dollars we’re spending.

Arizona Sen. John Kyle observed last week that job seekers’ efforts tend to become a heck of a lot more serious in the waning weeks of their unemployment benefits. This isn’t necessarily laziness so much as just facing reality.

In my state (Colorado) the operative word is “suitable” work. That is, I don’t have to forfeit my benefits if somebody offers me a job out of my field or for substantially less money than I’ve been earning within my field–or somewhere requiring relocation.

So far, I’ve been holding out for suitable work–a job in my field that pays close to what I’m used to making in a reasonable distance from my home. When push comes to shove and the safety net is gone, I’ll be flexing on those three conditions. My wife and I may have to live apart, like many military families.

That’s what you might call the microenomic view. Here are two opposing macroeconomic views:

• Public policy designed to help workers who lose their jobs can lead to structural unemployment as an unintended side effect… In other countries, particularly in Europe, benefits are more generous and last longer. The drawback to this generosity is that it reduces a worker’s incentive to quickly find a new job. Generous unemployment benefits in some European countries are widely believed to be one of the main causes of Eurosclerosis, the persistent high unemployment that affects a number of European countries.

• Another important benefit of unemployment insurance is that the benefits have helped keep many households in place. If there were no extended benefits, many of the 5+ million people now receiving extended benefits would be moving out of their homes or apartments, and doubling up with friends and relatives, or living in their cars or worse. Fewer households would increase the number of excess vacant housing units in the U.S. and exacerbate the housing crisis.

Here’s the interesting part. The first quote is from a liberal economist (Paul Krugman) and the second from a more conservative blog.

I told you it was getting complicated…

My word, Michelle Malkin just this minute posted on the same thing. Check it out here.

Q: In what sense could 36,000 more Americans losing their jobs last month be a good thing?

A: Only in the warped logic of a political hack like Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, whose sole metric is a given event’s partisan political value. Like the unemployment numbers:

“Today is a big day in America. Only 36,000 people lost their jobs today, which is really good,” Reid said on the Senate floor Friday morning.

Like, you know, we should be grateful or something. Really good? Partisan wagon-circlers on the left quickly rushed in to chide us picky sorts that we all know what he really meant–i.e., at least it’s not in the hundreds of thousands anymore.

Except that’s misleading. The number is actually up from the previous month. So, whether we’re headed in the right direction is definitely subject to debate

Except your idea of affording benefit of the doubt is, shall we say, selective and strained. We could name names (George Allen and Trent Lott come to mind). Life must be so much easier when you’re unencumbered by the burdens of consistent principle.

Except Harry Reid’s problem isn’t just the fluke of an occasional verbal gaffe. (Even then, might we be excused for having slightly higher expectations of Senate majority leaders?) It’s a lifestyle. Here’s a small sampling:

• The jobs bill was a women’s safety issue because everybody knows unemployed men become wife beaters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=c9wzn6j3Ep4
• The party of Lincoln’s opposition to health care reform is morally equivalent to being pro-slavery:  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=djhUPOvC0po
• Reid said Barack Obama should seek and could win the White House because Obama was a “light skinned” African-American “with no Negro dialect” (unless he wanted to have one):  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dDl6gd4y65g
• “This [Iraq] war is lost.”  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jyDOAmJYFFA
• “One of the reasons we have the fires burning in southern California is global warming.”   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8Iy3gTjNrKM

“Really good?” I’ll tell you what “really good” looks like to me: The November election for the likes of Harry Reid, who is headed for richly deserved political oblivion. But then, I thought the same thing when Tom Daschle went down–only to get Harry Reid.

This needs to stop.

With state-of-the-art information technology, virtual offices in dens and sun rooms are providing services that once would have required substantial leased space and maybe several support personnel. When two or more of these mini-organizations join forces for the purpose of a particular project, it is sometimes called an adhocracy, a strategic alliance, a virtual corporation–or just plain taking care of business.

Even stranger is the emergence of virtual products–custom-produced goods that do not even exist until customers order them and make the purchase. Increasingly, customers will be ordering them not from a store or snail-mail account, but through the vehicle of e-commerce. Already hundreds of thousands of Americans make a living buying and selling goods on EBay.

Some of these trends spell radical changes for the workforce itself. According to Mass Career Customization: “In the next five years, there will be a six million-person gap between the supply and demand for knowledge workers.” That’s good news for knowledge workers–a term coined by management guru Peter Drucker in reference to  medical professionals, teachers, engineers, scientists and growing ranks of people in the field of information technology.

Combined with other trends–a majority female workforce, the digital technology revolution, continuing changes in the traditional family structure–this projected shortage of skilled labor is giving rise to another trend, called “mass career customization.” This essentially means more flexible working arrangements such as compressed work weeks (10 on fours, for example), telework and telecommuting.

Total work hours for dual-earner couples are increasing. In 1970, couples worked a combined average of 52.5 hours per week. Couples now work a combined average of 63.1 hours per week. Expanding longevity and financial need are prompting more mature workers to stay in the workforce. By 2015, older workers will constitute 20 percent of the total workforce.

Work-at-home.org offers a thought-provoking list of hundreds of home-based business ideas–from Abstracting Service to Yard Sign Distributorship. Check it out.

If you lack natural discipline, I recommend importing some if self-employment is the direction you’re heading. Doors are wonderful things for screening things out. If people can’t take a hint, post a biohazard sign or some other toxic symbol on the outside.

If you’re the slow learner, try posting a picture of your former boss on the inside for a while. That’s always good for a reality check. If you don’t have  a picture of your former boss, hang a picture 0f Osama bin Ladin or Rosie O’Donnell or some other loathsome creature from your personal scare closet.

Set deadlines for yourself, just as you would when you worked uptown, and withhold incentives–food or work breaks–until you have reached them. But once you have met your goals and deadlines, take time to reward yourself. Now you deserve it.

If you are too driven and your family and friends  have forgotten your name, schedule some down time.  If you’re too busy to do that, you’re too busy. Go back to square one and revisit your personal mission–why you were put here on earth. It probably wasn’t to spend more time in the office.

Yes, there are downsides to the post-job lifestyle–or “de-jobbing,” as William Bridges call it–but the advantages are just as real. Ri Regina, a former technology manager, said that even though she’s an extrovert, the home office lifestyle suits her as long as she can manage to get outside several times a week.

“I love coming down here and sitting in my office,” she said, “and I have my dog sitting at my feet. I have my bayberry candle burning on my desk, I have my CD player with my collection of CDs from home and the library. I have wonderful music playing all day, the window open, looking at the soft snow falling.”

Roy Peterson, a former health insurance manager, likes the dress code and the commute:

There is a lot less wear and tear on you and your car and your clothes and everything else because yiou don’t have to do anywhere. There are two hours a day you save because you are not in a car just trying to get to the place that you are going to work. That’s a lot of time–10 hours a week.

So, basically, one advantage is you get a day a week back. And you don’t have to wear a tie.

In some ways the search for meaningful employment is a sub-set of the search for meaning in life. Consider: The average time between job situations these days is approaching nine months–time enough to create new life.

Employment experts say there are at least two essentials for making a good case to a future employer, and they also may apply to self-employment. Unfortunately, they are two qualities that the beaten-down victim of the Great Recession is least likely to possess in abundance–the ability to demonstrate competence and an enthusiastic demeanor.

Enthusiasm is a magical word. It comes from the Greek and literally means “to be filled with God” (theos/theus). It may seem a cruel irony that when an individual is most beaten down, he must somehow appear the most upbeat and confident to hope to win the favor of another employer. Truly, this would seem to require the intervention of the supernatural.

Some experts suggest clarifying your values by writing your own obituary. What do you want to be remembered for? Have you accomplished it?  David Noer wrote in Healing the Wounds, “People are always amazed at how few good years they have left.”

Another way of phrasing it is “what’s your mission in life”–and how do you know when you’ve found it? Richard Nelson Bolles (What Color Is Your Parachute?) states categorically that this search leads inevitably to God–the Caller behind the calling, the Destination behind the destiny.

The very buzz-word mission–from the Latin mittere, “to send”–implies a Sender. Similarly, vocation derives from the Latim “to cal,” as in “evoke” (to call out) and “revoke” (to call back). “If you would figure out your Mission in life, you  must also be willing to think about God in connection with your job-hunt,” Bolles wrote.

In fact, Bolles believes each person has three missions: Discovering God; making the world a better place; and exercising “your greatest gift, which you most delight to use” in your God-given mission. How do you know what that is?

Bolles said it’s the talent that “gives us the greatest pleasure from its exercise … usually the one which, when we use it, causes us to lose all sense of time.” Watching two week of winter Olympics has helped to remind me of the kind of passion that breeds success.

It starts with knowing what really lights your fire. Do you know?

Don’t do it, even if Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid thinks that’s what you’re made of.

If you hadn’t heard, Arizona Sen. Reid creatively pitched for the new $15 billion Obama jobs bill as a way to reduce violence against women. Yeah, I guess that’s something we can all agree on.

For the record, we’re against all forms of spousal abuse here, even if we don’t support the government’s approach to the recession (i.e., nationalize everything that moves). The reverse of that question–”have you stopped beating your wife?”–used to be the classic example of the Unanswerable Question. Along with the admonition not to make eye contact with a stranger in any bar in West Texas, lest you be asked: “Yew see something yew lahk?”

Uh, I think I hear my mom calling…

Now, there may actually be a little something to what Harry blithely asserted, based on rigorous empirical evidence (conversations with constituents). Domestic violence also tends to go up during the holidays, when couples and their families are in greater and more prolonged proximity to each other. That’s pretty much the same thing that happens when one partner is unemployed and suddenly has nowhere to go for half his waking hours.

If the more couples are together, the greater the incidence of violence, then the solution ought to be clear: Legal limits on how much time couples can spend together. Make it enforceable by a progressive tax–i.e., placing the most domestically involved into the very highest income tax brackets.

Fly-over country might not like it–but, hey, let them get their own cable news channels, newspapers and movie studios.

By the way, there’s one other social phenomenon that’s up during this Great Recession: Suicide. For the first time since the Great Depression, there is now an empirically verifiable correlation between the suicide rate and the unemployment rate.

Sure, people don’t like estate taxes. But maybe, just maybe, the answer to people dying is raising taxes on them for doing so.

Wouldn’t it be great if people stopped doing all this doggone dying?

I know I’m overdue for an update here on my pursuit of a small business franchise opportunity. Well, there simply hasn’t been much to report while I continue the search for that elusive critter–initial start-up capital.

However, that search has turned up something I must share: All of us–yes, this means you–need to see our credit reports. You might be shocked. I certainly was.

After nearly 38 years of marriage and a spotless record of paying our bills on time, we are the proud owners of an excellent credit rating, in the high 700s. The only thing keeping us out of the highest percentiles was the very recent accumulation of debt for an unsuccessful e-commerce venture. That substantial debt resides on two credit cards that are a challenge for us to pay down so long as I continue to be unemployed.

Now, under most circumstances, that wouldn’t be a big deal. Our score is still well above average. But when you’ve got your hand out for a small business loan, the littlest things can mean a lot. Like an overdue library book.

No, I’m not kidding. Unbeknownst to us, it turns out that the Pikes Peak Library District had turned us over to a collection agency and reported us as deadbeats to the credit authorities for a $41 overdue fine that we knew absolutely nothing about.

How can that be, you ask? Here’s how:

Apparently, when our youngest child, now 21, was still a minor, she took out a book that she ended up losing. She then also proceeded to lose her library card, too, but that’s another story. (If you knew this child, you would nod your head at this point in total understanding.) Perhaps the library district sent overdue notices to this child. We’ll never know.

What we do know is that because she was a minor, this debt magically transferred to her parents (moi).  Except that we never received any such notification. Nada. But you know what they say: Ignorance of the law is no excuse. Steve and Mary Jane Adams, without knowing it, had become Scoundrels. Scofflaws. Deadbeats. Disqualified for small business loans.

How can this be, you ask? We’re still not too sure. But, again apparently, at some point in this process our offspring attained majority and, because of privacy laws in America, her business was no longer any of our business. Got that?

So, how can we legally be on the hook for something that legally we aren’t entitled to know anything about? Hey, that’s what we’d like to know. Get in line. And chalk it up to the 21st century nanny-state state of American jurisprudence.

Does this sound like a Catch-22? No doubt. Think it can’t happen to you? Yeah, that’s what I thought, too. I think we’re eventually going to work our way out of this just fine.

But then, I’ve been wrong before, you know?

Suppose you don’t get another job, but you pursue elf-employment. How do you price your services?

Here’s one formula for calculating a billable hourly rate, which I have adapted from several sources (including personal experience):

Work backward. Say an in-house staffer would be paid $45,000 a year for the same work in your locale. That’s the market rate. Divide by 1,500, which is the number of billable hours you might reasonably expect in a year (thirty hours a week times fifty weeks), considering client development, marketing, and other nonbillable time, yielding a base of $30 an hour.

In all cases, adapt this to your personal situation. If, for example, you really are billing out 40 hours a week, your annual hourly factor would be 2,000 (40 hours a week times 50 weeks).

Then add another 33 percent to cover the cost of taxes and fringe benefits that you bear (for example, Social Security, health insurance and retirement) plus another factor for your own costs of doing business (overhead, such as rent, equipment, supplies). Some accountants use a 35 percent factor for fringe costs.

The overhead cost factor will vary much more, depending on the nature of your business. If you’re a writer, like me, you may not have much more than the costs of a personal computer, paper, long-distance phone calls and the like. Check with an accountant for guidance.

In our hypothetical case, those three calculations would look like this:

$30 (base rate) + $10 (33 percent fringes) + $6 (20 percent overhead) = $46 per hour.

Therefore, you know you would be charging a fair rate somewhere  around $45 to $50 an hour.With a little research you also may be able to obtain suggested flat fee  schedules from professional organizations and publications. That gives you the flexibility to bid a job two different ways.

If you’re really hungry, the flat fee is more likely to win the job because your prospective client knows his expense is capped. The downside for you is that things generally take longer than projected, and you may end up eating those costs.