Lazy Unemployed Vs Productive Rich? Part 2

Dec 10th, 2010
 
by F. Grey Parker

In response to yesterday's column, I received a number of comments accusing me of advocating socialism. This leads me to question whether or not the responders actually read the piece. 


I borrow no more from the mortuary dust of that philosophy than I do from the slaughterhouse that still we pretend to be an alternative.
 
The American Right continues to blame President Obama's "socialistic" policies for the lack of domestic jobs and then simultaneously brands the unemployed as "lazy." 

They can't have it both ways.

 

There are currently an average of 6 applicants for every available opening in the current job market.


The most reactionary critiques of the jobless have ranged from the smug   (Senator John Kyl (R-AZ) articulating the notion that providing jobless benefits prevents people from even looking for work)   to the unbelievably disgusting   (Ben Stein's contention in the American Spectator this past Summer that the long term jobless aren't just shiftless, they probably smell).

 

The primary Conservative meme continues to be that millions of people would rather be on unemployment than "take a job for less." In the slim number of cases where this may be happening, it is likely a far more complicated situation than the venal, depraved greed they portray.

 

"Not so!" cries their echo-chamber. "It's simple. You take any job." 
 
Really? Any job?

 

There are part-time positions that provide so very little that they will not support a worker living out of their car. That's if they still have their car. Also, the competition is such that there aren't enough full-time positions for which the only qualification is an ability to ask "would you like fries with that?"

 

10 to 15 hours a week at minimum wage in America averages out to about $500 per month at best. Is there a place left in our country where a single person can survive on so little, much less a family?

 

When there aren't enough paper hats to go around, our system has utterly failed. This is your father's Capitalism and it has rotted to it's core.

 

There has been precisely one proposal from our country's elite and Right Wing to turn this tide. That is, of course, to extend the most destructive and failed tax policy in our history. I would implore you one last time to consult with the facts at THIS LINK. It contains total job expansion figures since the U.S. Government began keeping record. 
 
The "stimulative effects" of the so called "W Tax Cuts" are clear. They coincided with the collapse of job creation altogether. 
 
So wrong-headed and unpopular is this plan that the GOP's servants of avarice have found only one way to make it passable: holding the extension of funding for unemployment hostage.

 

By continuing to prop up outmoded and distorted economic models, we will not only guarantee more stagnation, we will ensure collapse. Clinging to ridiculous talking points rather than adapting to the speed of change, is sending our once heralded American Dream the way of the Dodo.

 

We are failing to face these challenges just as dramatically as the proto-Capitalists were unable to comprehend the full meaning of the end of Feudal and agrarian systems over a century and a half ago.

 

We need nothing less than a new paradigm. A revolution of the tax code and the philosophy of the responsibility of profit. 
 
Alas, the only class that believes there is such a thing as a free lunch is that of the hyper wealthy. And they have already hijacked the flow of capital.