Personal Dork Assistant

Turning the Corner

Here are the news, just in time to support the President's favorite campaign catchphrase.

• Older Investors Jittery as Markets Dissappoint

  But even with her long-term outlook, she has found the market's recent performance unsettling. And so this month, Ms. Pitts sold all of her shares [about 500] for $6,000, less than a quarter of the $25,000 that they were once worth. She now plans to give the money to her son, who is building an extra room on his house for the kids.

  So much for the American Dream. Even had she sold at the top of the bubble it would've only been scraps off the capitalist table. The hope is the most pathetic thing about it.

• Which way for small-town America hard hit by recession?

  "I made a really good living, and I liked my job, and what is so bad is that we have come out with nothing after all those years no pension, no insurance, no nothing," she says. "The day it closed, our insurance was gone, our pension was gone. It was devastating."

  Sorry folks, manufacturing in America is deaddeaddead.

• Outsourcing is Good For You

  "She's got an interesting argument: outsourcing means cheaper IT products, meaning businesses will buy more, meaning more products to make & manage = net gain of IT jobs in the US. Ummm, did you follow that?"

  Sorry, no. By the way, high-tech jobs in America are deaddeaddead, too. Especially as I'm starting to see how the sausage is made. Around 70% of Dells products are ODM'ed. So much for "high-level design" jobs staying in the US. Let's not even get started about software.

And finally, because anecdotal evidence sucks.

• Census: Poverty rose by million

  The number of Americans in poverty rose by 1.3 million to 35.9 million, or one in eight people. The number of Americans without health insurance rose by 1.4 million to 45 million, or 15.6% of the population. Both sets of figures rose for the third-straight year.

  The income of the median U.S. household was virtually flat at $43,318 after a two-year decline.

  The uninsured figure is probably more significant than the actual poverty figures. After all, if you're uninsured, you're only one small illness away from poverty anyway. That's much more indicative of the population struggling economically to hold on to the bottom rung of the middle class. And what do you do if you're uninsured when you get sick? If you're in LA, nothing.