Thoughts?
Good cause - but we need more interviews before we need more shirts…
but how many jobs is Obama supposed to create?
Well, let’s see - you can get one free shirt for your interview.
You can then wear that your first day on the job. Then what do you do?
Better you go to Sears or Kohls and get five or six shirts - this might set you back about a hundred bucks or more, but you’ll be set for the year.
Good initiative. I also hope they’ll consider doing the same for women’s clothes.
Wash it? Of course two or three shirts would be better than one, but that doesn’t mean it’s a bad idea.
Yeah, except that some of us (the demographic this idea is aimed at) don’t have a hundred bucks sitting around. I’ve had to pray for tips so that I could buy groceries before, and that was while already employed (if you can call it that). There’s no rainy day fund left if it’s been raining for six months.
No, you go to Goodwill or the Salvation Army and spend a half day picking through their racks to get 5 or 6 good shirts for about $10. Then you’ll be set for the year.
Really, the problem isn’t lack of shirts - it’s lack of jobs. It does no one good to look great but be homeless due to lack of funds.
That dress shirts don’t create jobs - unless maybe they are talking about opening a factory to make dress shirts in the U.S.
If there is one job and 500 applicants, maybe one of those people would get the job wearing a dress shirt that wouldn’t have without the dress shirt - but the guy that would have been hired because the other guy didn’t have the dress shirt would still be out the job.
Right - but these are custom (that means expensive) dress shirts, meaning that for every one that you can buy you can buy several from Sears or Kohls. And while that is fine when they are making a donation, when it comes to the government footing the bill in the form of bailout money, you ought to get more bang for the buck.
Incidentally, many private charities help out with interview clothing, including Catholic Charities and the Salvation Army. They help men and women both. These and other charities doing this work in your area should be remembered in your charitable giving this year.
Agreed. I was doing a new shirt cost comparison - even then the idea sucks when it comes to the government funding it.
Seriously? This really smacks of a high-end shirt company trying to get a government contract when the market for high-end shirts is sagging. I’d rather see something from my tax money- build a bridge or create a new job (or save an old one).
Wel isn’t Obama supposed to be creating a ton of jobs???
Obviously its not lack of shirts, but with the additional job hes going to create this can’t hurt.
I’m full of optimism for a future full of jobs and shirts.
I don’t want to kick this to another forum, but this is the kind of thing that will doom Obama if he’s not careful. He got elected on promises of fiscal rectitude, and now he’s not only throwing tons of money around, he’s doing it on things that have an extremely tenuous relationship to economic stimulus.
This shirt idea is a farce - stimulative for one small firm only. And we have people jumping for joy over it - “Good cause!” “Good initiative!”
Multiply this a thousand times over and you have the sum of the criticism of the Obama plan, now creeping in from liberal quarters as well.
aren’t we all
With everything else Obama is giving away I was surprised when I read he didn’t accept.
A better initiative would be ensuring the economy can create jobs. Exerting effort to ensure job applicants have shirts when there aren’t jobs to apply for is like helping the homeless by giving them furniture.
True enough.
This is a good idea, but it’s not a good idea right now. In good economic times, there are jobs sitting empty and people who could do those jobs who aren’t getting them because they can’t afford the initial investment for things like interview shirts. In a time like that, a charity like this would be a benefit for everyone, since it would help ease income disparity and make the system work more efficiently.
Right now, though, the problem is the lack of jobs in the first place. I still wouldn’t say this idea is bad, mind you (people getting nice shirts can’t hurt anything), but it wouldn’t do much good, either, and there are surely better ways of spending the money.
This is not a stimulus program but a redistributive program. Giving away dress shirts suitable for interviews might help people compete for jobs more fairly based on skills rather than on access to interview clothing. But obviously it won’t create jobs. Clothing made in the US is essentially a novelty item at this point. Giving the company the customary tax advantages of a charitable donation is as far as the government should go to promote this.
Dress for Success is a charity that provides (primarily) women’s interview and work dress clothing to the needy. They get lots of donations from companies as well as from individuals.
Shouldn’t we wait for the president to actually agree to this proposal before we suggest it’s going to “doom” him? So far all I can see is a proposal by a private company with an agenda. I hadn’t heard that the White House was backing it.