Amen:and a few years ago Oprah had on some people who were homeless, the one lady was angry because she now had to live out of her Mercedes, she said she used to earn $100,000.00 a year! The Oprah had a man on with 3 kids, he earned $25,000.00 a year. had money saved. he had a old used car, and had bought a camper so he and his children could take vacations.
It is all a matter of the priority people put on the way they live. There are many who do need help, and do need a job. Some have a job but not enough to make ends meet. Some had illnesses that put them in the whole because their insurance ran out.
First of all, Yes my friend has to work to keep her head above water, I don’t know why you keep insisting I am talking about you! I am talking about people who are fussy about things they eat etc. when some of the people who donate to Food banks etc. are not living high on the hog. If you feel the cap fits wear it, if not then you are one of the exceptions to the rule!
There are some holes in this theory. Suppose you’re a 52 year old factory rat and your company just got busted up to make a few bucks for Mitt Romney. Do you honestly think you are EVER going to get a good job in the future? Of that a job in a fast food place (which you aren’t going to even get) is going to be enough to live on? Maybe your idea makes sense if you’re one of the few unemployed guys in a small town. Try being one of tens of thousands out of work in a large city. If there are 100 people applying for 1 job, what do you tell the other 99? Hey, go find a lodger who’s just as hard up as you?
The truth is, many of the unemployed are never going to get a good job, no matter how many crappy jobs they get. Not everyone can compete in a terrible job market. A just and moral society (the antithesis of libertarianism) will extend the safety net until times get better. We can cut them off and leet them suffer. Or we can give them a helping hand, knowing that every dollar they get is plowed right back into the economy, allowing those fast food workers to keep their jobs, allowing the grocery clerks and gas station attendants to keep theirs, the people that sell things to the grocery clerks and gas station attendants, etc. Money denied the unemployed is money that is taken out of the economy, leading to more unemployment. Horatio Alger is a myth, let’s stop pretending that people are desperate because they are lazy. You want them to work, fine. Make an enviornment that encourages job creation, and not simply throw money at rich people in hopes that they’ll create jobs.
I can understand point A, that it looks better to keep working. But I don’t know how true point B is for people getting jobs at McDonald’s. Let’s say an accountant was unemployed for 1 year, then started working at McDonald’s. Is he really going to meet many people that could hire him or put him in touch with the right people? Professional people do go to McDonald’s to eat, so it’s possible that someone with the power to hire him could order a Big Mac from him, but the guy is going there to eat, not to network, and I don’t know how receptive he’d be to receiving a resume there. And it’s not like the accountant would have much chance to talk to the customers and learn who works where and who has connections to jobs, considering how much McDonald’s emphasizes having short wait times. Maybe one of his coworkers at McDonald’s might happen to know someone with a connection that he could get an accounting interview through, but I don’t think he could count on that.
Maybe I’m missing something, but for the most part, taking a minimum wage job at somewhere like McDonald’s in order to meet people to make a change sounds like it wouldn’t work.
Point C makes some sense to me, that it might be good to feel productive and have control rather than keep getting job rejections and feel out of control. But point D seems a little insulting. Do you really think that unemployed people get out of the habit of working and get lazy and are unable to go back to being hard workers once they get a job? I don’t know anyone who has gotten out of the habit of working when unemployed.
This. My brother and his wife and daughter make so many inane and offensive FB posts as hyperconservative Tea Partiers that I’ve cut off their newsfeeds. Always some crap about how lazy people on food stamps are, how soldiers make less than minimum wage but those damn fast food workers want to make more money (that’s from Sarah Palin, naturally), how unemployed people just don’t want to work, etc., ad nauseum.
At the same time, they claim to be followers of Jesus. I can’t imagine that Jesus would have had such contempt for the poor.
So she is NOT working three jobs by choice. OK, thanks for clearing that up.
I have explained this already. If you can’t comprehend plain English that is your problem, not mine. Or maybe it’s just a complete lack of empathy, an incomprehension that, given slightly different circumstances, that could be you.
But you just said that for some of these people, times will NEVER get better. They will never find a job making what they were making. Do we continue to pay the 52 year old factory worker his entire wage until social security kicks in so he doesn’t need to take a cut in lifestyle? That doesn’t seem sustainable.
Being on unemployment is never close to your regular wage. Thing is, you don’t know who will or won’t recover. So you provide some safety net, but you don’t subsidize a specific lifestyle.
One of the women I was in orientation with for my last job had been working for the food service contract company. There was an opening for an entry level job and someone said “you should apply.” One of the project managers had started as a teller in the bank that was in that building - again, an opportunity opened (at that time for a lower level project coordinator job) and the manager said “you should apply.”
I’m not sure I would target McDonalds as the ideal place for that sort of minimum wage networking job - you want a coffee shop in an office building where you have a regular clientele that you can impress with your ability to remember their regular order and juggle an early morning rush.
Oh, I know, which is one of the reasons its really difficult to even maintain a standard of living on unemployment. But one of the gripes on this thread seems to be you can’t take a lower paying job and maintain the standard of living you had before.
Some people will inevitably see their standard of living decrease if they can’t find similar employment.
I think that was one of the OP’s gripes. And I agree with the counter-gripe that one day, maybe today, he’s going to need to reset his expectations and adjust to the new reality. Even if it seems like just yesterday, he was on top of the world.
But the other gripe the OP has is that it makes fiscal sense for him to keep taking unemployment, since the costs incurred by his getting “any ole job” wouldn’t be offset by the low-paid wages of minimum wage. He cites the high costs of child care, specifically.
This gripe is harder for me to challenge. The OP’s family benefits more with him on unemployment than it does with him working at “any” job. A family of six living on a minimum wages will require all kinds of financial assistance. From subsidized day care to food stamps. They won’t be able to keep their home. So they may need housing assistance. There’s also health care expenses. From a sheer financial standpoint, it makes more sense to keep the OP on UI until he finds a job with wages that can sustain his family, rather than to pretend the minimum wage job he’s forced to take is good for everyone involved, taxpayer included. It so totally isn’t.
However, the pragmatist in me also thinks eventually this argument breaks down. Millions of people have somehow figured out how to juggle child care and work without putting themselves in a hole. It is difficult, but it can be done. I don’t blame the OP for not doing it now. But it probably needs to be anticipated.
To be fair even though the Democrats would prefer to keep unemployment going, they didn’t seem to put up much of a fight, as the bill breezed through both the House and the Senate if I recall correctly. It is possible, if unlikely that they may readdress the issue and retroactively extend the emergency unemployment, but it seems maybe disingenuous to put blame squarely at the Republicans feet when the Democrats went willingly enough along with it.
To the OP - So what’s your plan if you don’t find another job the you find acceptable? Michigan’s job prospects aren’t good, but you don’t seem ready to make a change of location. Right now your plan isn’t working, even with government assistance. You seem to be hemorrhaging money even with the government subsidy. Are the taxpayers to maintain you in your middle-class life forever? Why should your family be maintained as middle class simply because that’s where you were a year ago. Your family is no better or more special than people who were poor a year ago, but there aren’t the resources to magically make every family middle class just because that’s where they want to be.
You haven’t been able to find a job. Not because you aren’t looking, but apparently because they aren’t there. Although I despise him, I have to quote Dr. Phil here - “How’s that working for you?” The quote has been attributed to many people, but no less true: “Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results”. It is less painful for me to have my tax dollars support someone besides myself if I know they’re working toward not being supported by me as soon as possible.
Well, since it’s childcare that’s the main issue, that’s a time-limited problem. So unemployment won’t actually be better than low-wage work for the OP forever.
My friend chooses to work, doesn’t expect others to take care of her. You are entitled to your opinion of me, because you think one thing of me, doesn’t mean it is true.
I have never asked anyone for help in my circumstances, I always lived under my income. I lived in dire poverty for about 29 years, That included the help my parents got in food from the welfare,We were very glad to get it.
I did low paying jobs jobs. Didn’t buy anything; washed my clothes out in a bathroom sink. When I first got out of high school I had a job that paid $12.00 a week, my room mate and i each paid 9 dollars a week for rent, She bought bread,and peanut butter, I bought lettuce and blue cheese,we shared a pound of coffee. We lived on that until I got a job as a maid. Then got a job as cook in a restaurant. I never even felt poor. Do I expect others to do that…NO!!!. But i don’t think they should be fussy about what others are paying for. You don;t need to agree with me, Our life style has helped us to be independent.
I guess it is just a matter of what a person expects out of life.
Then why do all those rich Christians fight modest tax increases for the benefit of all tooth and nail?
Enough of this - I’m tired of your whine about the poor not being grateful enough for the crumbs off your table. Worthiness should be based on actual need, not how adroitly the needy kiss the ass of the better off.