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Next Steps After Losing Your Job Due to Covid-19

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This post has been submitted to Todayville by Artur Meyster, Founder of Career Karma

Losing your job at any point can be a disheartening and worrisome event, let alone during a global pandemic. With that in mind, however, try to focus on the fact that there are still steps you can take to ensure that you reenter the workforce as an asset to the future of work. Technology is changing everything about how work is performed, as evidenced by the rise in remote work, and more jobs will be disrupted before the pandemic calms.

On that note, the next steps after losing your job due to Covid-19 should be preparatory steps that can help you thrive in this coming future. First and foremost, however, it is important that you remember to breathe and stay calm. The world may seem chaotic right now, but that doesn’t mean your life needs to be as well.

Reevaluate Your Skills

Regardless of the reason you got fired, it is important that you completely break down and reevaluate your skillset. Unless you were in an intensive tech-based career already, it is unlikely that your skillset will be perfectly aligned with the future of work. 

A study by CNBC found that some of the most prominent skills for the future of work will be based on coding or programming. Jobs won’t necessarily be specifically structured for these skills, but rather careers of all types will begin requiring experience with coding as computers begin to dictate business. 

To acquire this soon-to-be important skill, it may be worth looking into top-rated coding bootcamps that can give participants a beginner’s knowledge of coding languages. However, this is not the only tech skill that will be needed in the future. Perform research during this time while you look for a new job, and determine what you are capable of and what interests you.

Reflect on Your Career Choice

Now that you’ve lost your job, it may be worth considering whether or not your career was really right for you. If you don’t believe it was, take an extra minute to ensure that it was the career that bothered you and not the specific job. 

Perhaps your career was the perfect choice for you and you do not regret entering the field you did. If so, you are one of a lucky few. Realizing that you were in the wrong career, however, is actually beneficial if you just lost your job. This means you are aware that you made the incorrect career choice and can rectify that decision by tackling a new field. Unfortunately, it can be difficult for many who are passed the age of a university student to change careers, but certainly not impossible. 

To that end, identifying and pursuing some easier online degrees can be a perfect choice for someone who just lost their job. There are a number of career options that can provide growth in the future as technology takes control of the workforce, many of which now accept online degrees as an accredited source of education.

Consider Attending a Trade School

On the topic of online degrees, there is likely no better path after losing your job than attending a trade school. This form of education, sometimes called a vocational school, is a quick and efficient method of changing careers as they offer specialized courses that prepare students for a specific career.

The Atlantic covered a study that discusses how trade school attendance has risen to levels that rival traditional education enrollment. This option has become respected by employers around the world, and the fact that some trade schools, such as App Academy, don’t charge tuition until you’re hired make them attractive paths.

Technology and the pandemic are changing everything about the work world, but they are also changing education. In today’s day and age, you are never too old to consider a new career path and enroll in some form of online education. 

Conclusion

Losing your job does not mean that the world is crumbling down around you. Treat this event as an opportunity to revamp both your skills and your career. While it may not seem like it now, doing so can set you up for success in the future. Dealing with the loss of your job, whether it was held for a long time or just began, is a difficult task, but making the best of it and growing from this loss can help you to become an even more valuable asset to any company in the future.

 

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RFK Jr. warns Americans ‘will be slaves’ if central bank digital currency is established

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From LifeSiteNews

By Doug Mainwaring

The U.S. presidential candidate cited the Freedom Convoy trucker protests in Canada when the government ‘was able to destroy their lives’ by freezing bank accounts.

Democrat presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. declared in no uncertain terms recently that establishing a Central Bank Digital Currency in the country will be “the end of freedom; we will be slaves if we allow that to happen.”

In a wide-ranging discussion at the University of Austin about freedom of speech and civil discourse, Kennedy said he didn’t “get” the connection between CBDCs and the loss of freedom of expression and other freedoms until he witnessed the Canadian trucker protest.

“The truckers in Canada were protesting the COVID mandates, the lockdowns, masking mandates, vaccination mandates, and others,” Kennedy began. “They started in Alberta. They picked up thousands of trucks as they drove across Canada to Ottawa.”

When they got to Ottawa — they were trying to petition Prime Minister Trudeau — and they were exercising a right that we all take for granted in this country: the right to assemble, the right to protest, the right to petition their government, and the government instead condemned them as right-wing fascists and racists, which if you look at the videos, they’re the opposite. Looks like Woodstock. They were delivering bottled water, they were cooking food for the poor, they were picking up garbage. There were musicians on every block.

It was really a beautiful thing.

However, the Trudeau government perceived the protesters to be an existential threat.

“The government used facial recognition systems and other intrusive technologies to identify the participants,” he recounted, and weaponized that information against them to freeze their bank accounts so they couldn’t purchase diesel for their trucks, buy food for their kids, or pay their mortgages or rents.

A pivotal moment for Kennedy occurred when one of the truckers told him that because of the government’s action, he was going to go to jail because he couldn’t pay his alimony.

He said that transactional freedom is as important as freedom of the press, or freedom of speech, “because if you have freedom of speech in the First Amendment and yet when you exercise that speech — if the government doesn’t like it — they can starve you to death. They can throw you out of your home.”

They keep a social credit score on you so that if (for instance) you’ve got your mask off below your nose, or if you’re not social distancing properly, or if you violate some other social norm, you get penalties taken off your social (credit) score and at some point they punish you.

Penalized persons are then limited to buying groceries from “stores that are within a certain radius of your house. You can’t buy gas. You can’t buy an airplane ticket. You can’t buy anything else, so you’re basically under home confinement.”

The truckers in Canada were never charged with a crime. They were certainly never convicted. It was just (that) they were doing something the government didn’t like.

So the government was able to destroy their lives, and that is a very dangerous power to give government. And that’s why I’m against Central Bank Digital Currencies because that is part of the path to getting us where China is today.

That’s where they started. That’s where all these other countries … with a Central Bank Digital Currency (started). And it’s the end of freedom. We will be slaves if we allow that to happen.

Kennedy is far from alone in his alarm over the prospect of a CBDC being introduced in the U.S. or Canada.

Although digital currency offers some attractive features, it also would grant the federal government unlimited opportunity to weaponize the technology against citizens, allowing it to both spy on the spending habits of everyday Americans and block access to the money in their personal bank accounts.

U.S. Sen. Ted Cruz introduced the CBDC Anti-Surveillance State Act last month to prohibit the Federal Reserve from issuing a central bank digital currency that Republican sponsors of the bill believe could turn the nation into a “surveillance state” by handing over control of personal finances to federal government agencies.

“The Biden administration salivates at the thought of infringing on our freedom and intruding on the privacy of citizens to surveil their personal spending habits, which is why Congress must clarify that the Federal Reserve has no authority to implement a CBDC,” Cruz said.

“While Americans across the country are being punished for thinking, speaking, and voting the ‘wrong’ way, the last thing we need is the government surveilling personal finances,” Heritage Action for America explained in a statement concerning the new legislation. “Anti-CBDC legislation is necessary to safeguard Americans’ financial privacy in the face of potential surveillance, control, and political intimidation.”

“CBDCs present major privacy concerns for everyday Americans, including granting the government the ability to collect intimate personal details on U.S. citizens, and potentially track and freeze funds for any reason,” the Blockchain Association noted.

“Big government has no business spying on Americans to control their personal finances and track their transactions,” said Republican U.S. Sen. Rick Scott of Florida, a co-sponsor of the bill.

“It is a massive overreach,” he warned.

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Balanced budget within reach—if Ottawa restrains spending

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From the Fraser Institute

By Jake Fuss and Grady Munro

This level of debt-financed spending has contributed to an estimated $941.9 billion increase in gross federal debt from 2014/15 to 2023/24. In other words, partly due to its spending habits, nearly one in every two dollars of debt currently held by the federal government has been accumulated under Prime Minister Trudeau.

The Trudeau government will table its next budget on April 16. Federal finances have deteriorated in recent years due to the Trudeau government’s string of budget deficits, and high spending has led to a significant amount of debt accumulation, which imposes costs on current and future generations. Yet if the government presents a plan in Budget 2024 to rein in spending growth, it could balance the budget in two years.

Far from its promise to balance the budget by 2019, the Trudeau government has instead run nine consecutive deficits during its time in office. And it doesn’t intend to stop, with annual deficits exceeding $18 billion planned for the next five years.

The root cause of these deficits is the government’s inability to restrain spending. Since 2014/15, annual program spending (total spending minus debt interest) has increased $193.6 billion—or 75.5 per cent. If we control for population growth and inflation, this represents an extra $2,330 per person.

This level of debt-financed spending has contributed to an estimated $941.9 billion increase in gross federal debt from 2014/15 to 2023/24. In other words, partly due to its spending habits, nearly one in every two dollars of debt currently held by the federal government has been accumulated under Prime Minister Trudeau. Debt accumulation will only continue barring a change in course, as the federal government is expected to add another $476.9 billion in gross debt over the next five years.

Simply put, the Trudeau government’s approach towards federal finances has been characterized by high spending, large deficits and significant debt accumulation.

This approach to fiscal policy is concerning. Growing government debt leads to higher debt interest costs, all else equal, which eat up taxpayer dollars that could otherwise have provided services or tax relief for Canadians. And these costs are not trivial. For example, in 2023/24 the federal government is expected to spend more to service its debt ($46.5 billion) than on child-care benefits ($31.2 billion).

Accumulating debt today also increases the tax burden on future generations of Canadians—who are ultimately responsible for paying off this debt. Research suggests this effect could be disproportionate, with future generations needing to pay back a dollar borrowed today with more than one dollar in future taxes.

Although the Trudeau government promises more of the same for the coming years, this need not be the case. Instead, a recent study shows the federal government could balance the budget in two years if it slows spending growth starting in 2024/25. The following figures highlight this approach. The first chart below displays currently planned federal program spending from 2023/24 to 2026/27, compared with the spending path that will balance the budget, while the second chart shows the resulting budgetary balances.

Figure 1

Figure 2

As shown by the first chart, to balance the budget by 2026/27 the federal government must limit annual spending growth to 0.3 per cent for two years. As a result, annual nominal program spending would rise from $469.4 billion in 2024/25 to $472.3 billion in 2026/27. For comparison, the Trudeau government currently plans to increase annual spending up to $499.4 billion during that same period.

Should the government implement this level of spending restraint, the federal deficit would shrink to $21.8 billion in 2025/26 (as opposed to $38.3 billion), and the budget would be balanced by 2026/27 (as opposed to a $27.1 billion deficit). All told, by slowing spending growth to balance the budget, the federal government would avoid accumulating significant debt. Moreover, this also sets the government up to return to budget surpluses in the following years, which could be used to start chipping away at the mountain of federal debt already on the books.

Rather than continue its current approach to fiscal policy, and risk needing to employ more drastic cuts in the future, the Trudeau government should implement modest spending restraint now and balance the budget.

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