[caption id="attachment_1190" align="alignright" width="300" caption="Unemployment can be permanent."]<a href="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/jobless-men.jpg"><img class="size-medium wp-image-1190" title="jobless-men" src="http://mikerappaport.net/onevoice/wp-content/uploads/2011/06/jobless-men-300x182.jpg" alt="" width="300" height="182" /></a>[/caption]

The employment contract used to be a two-way deal.

An employer hired someone to do a job, and as long as the person worked hard and did the job well, he would have a paycheck for as long as his employer continued to run a profitable business.

It wasn't at all unusual for someone to work for the same company for his entire career. Many businesses were owned and operated by people who lived in the same community, and they saw themselves not only as part of the community but as having a responsibility to the local population.

No one became fabulously wealthy, but the folks in management lived comfortably and their employees -- even the ones in blue-collar jobs -- were able to support their families and live with a certain degree of security and certainty.

That's certainly not the way things were in this country under unfettered <em>laissez-faire</em> economics as we practiced in this country in the late 19th century.  Those were the days when men like J.P. Morgan said they were under no obligation to pay a man what he was worth, and men like Jay Gould said he could hire half of the working class to kill the other half.

The Morgans and Goulds and others like them acted as if they were rich because they were favored by God, and that they were doing God's work by providing jobs in the community, and with no income tax or inheritance tax, the game was pretty well rigged in their favor.

Of course, things changed. Workers unionized and the government decided that intervention in the economy was necessary to see that people were treated fairly. And through the middle part of the 20th century, the American economy boomed.

Of course the descendants -- both literally and figuratively -- of the Robber Barons didn't like that, and whether it was through political contributions or other means, they really never stopped fighting against government intervention in the economy. They said that if the government left business alone, profits would be higher and everyone would be better off.

They were half right.

Profits were higher, but wealth began gravitating toward the people who owned the companies. While middle class wages  stagnated, the rich got richer and richer.

In the interest of greater efficiency, bigger businesses began gobbling up smaller ones. Fewer and fewer companies were owned locally, so fewer and fewer employers actually knew the people who were working for them.

Ultimately, more and more American businesses weren't even owned by Americans.

And it became tougher and tougher to be an employee. Where in the past, jobs were safe unless the company was losing money, now things became shaky if profits were lower than expected.

Another problem was that many people found themselves working for different companies than the ones that had hired them. Indeed, some folks had employers they never would have chosen to work for.

That was what happened to me. I had been working for a Southern California newspaper for nine years and was pretty much at the top of the totem pole as a columnist, editorial writer and film reviewer. My company didn't pay particularly well, but it did things right in terms of the product we delivered to our readers.

Then our company sold the paper to another company, which had entirely different priorities. Our new owner cared only about the bottom line, and within weeks of taking over, he began cutting jobs. When the new company took over our newspaper in 1999, there were 99 newsroom employees -- editors, writers and photographers. I believe there are now about 30.

Almost everything we were told by our new employer turned out to be a lie, but there really wasn't anything we could do about it.

And once the massive cuts came in 2008 and after, the most vulnerable employees were the oldest and best-paid.

That's the way it is in a lot of places now, and when you're older and accustomed to making a good income, losing a job often turns into permanent unemployment. Most American businesses have shed jobs in recent years -- that's why we've got 9 percent unemployment -- and even though business is bouncing back for some, few if any have rehired as many people as they laid off.

This is what happens when the government stops "interfering" with business.

Amazingly, one thing that has been reported lately is that many businesses that <em>are</em> hiring are refusing to hire people who are currently unemployed. There seems to be a stigma attached to unemployment, particularly for the so-called "99ers" who have been out of work for more than two years.

This is what happens when the employment contract becomes a one-way deal.

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