GOP Leaves Unemployment Aid Unused In Wisconsin
Walker and the legislature have crafted and passed tax breaks for the wealthy and business: people out of work can starve, as the state refuses to tap into available federal funds that could help out 10,000 jobless citizens.
Unfathomable and politically psychopathic on the part of the public officials involved - - but signaled, perhaps, by a key Walker backer who told The NY Times recently that people would rather have an unemployment check than a job.
So the logical step is to cut off extensions of the checks by leaving the money unspent, forcing people, as this rationale goes, to take a burger-flipping job or mail-order catalog fulfillment position at the minimum wage.
Leaving more profits for owners.
Is this what it means to have the state open for business?
2 comments:
I really wish you had ended your observation differently. But then I guess I would be MY observation and not yours. However I guess in response to that I would ask - just what exactly are you observing.
As a (I assume) life-long white collar person who probably has not faced dire economic situations in your personal life, or have any real knowledge of life in the lower classes, I'll guess you were expressing the "depths" to which a well-respected reporter (or whatever you were) and pal of influential people might consider really horrible jobs.
The problem with your frame of reference is that it makes things seem actually better than they are by implying that the burger-flipping job option is THERE and the unemployment-receiver is too proud to take it. Now how does that differ in essence from what the WMC shill is saying? Not too much. it only differs in degree, So unfortunately it validates the Republican position.
It portrays a long-term unemployed individual as picking and choosing to some degree and being too lofty to pull themselves up by the bootstraps. Pampered College Boy Must Not Flip Burgers!
Isn't it more the truth that there are not enough jobs available for all workers? In this game of social musical chairs, the Powers have removed and are hoarding enough of the chairs so that whoever fills those burger-flipping jobs, people will be left out of the game.
This is my on-going frustration with the bulk of politically active people being middle-middle and (an awful lot of them) upper middle class and well-connected in their communities.
i.e. as nice as it is that people took to the streets when middle class persons were threatened by the union issue, it is also painful to note that there was no 'solidarity' for people who actually lost homes. The poor being used to being scammed, used to not being "activists" and demanding rights, and just, used to being poor and having no voice. The vaunted middle class did not feel the hit of the housing tragedy, and so kept on with their lives after a brief shudder of horror while watching a 2 minute news spot.
I am to a point where I believe the only chance for real change is it significant numbers of people have to LIVE with the Republican TeaParty rhetoric.
The destruction of living with the new cultural design will not be "creative", but perhaps for some it will be instructive. That guy over there does not need any social safety net, he has failed personally, and deserves his fate. That's all fine, until the gun swivels around to you. Then of course... more taking to the streets for those newly awakened folks.
It will only be after the people championing the Ryan and Fitzwalker lifestyles actually are forced live within their rhetoric that they will (possibly) be able to think clearly. The unfair part of that lesson will be that those alredy lower down the social scale will suffer more, while (if) these idiots learn. But it has always been that way.
Americans are too smug and too stupid to logic this out. Too much in denial and afraid to admit the American Dream is crap.
They'll have to feel the Lash hit them hard repeatedly, maybe then they will stop worshiping it as "strength".
But, not enough Burgers are being sold in America to employ every one as Flippers. And I was uncomfortable with the element of reticence in your Unemployed Man, and the attitude of unwillingness he had to "stoop" to jobs meant for "lesser-beings".
They're just covering their bases in case the child labor bill doesn't pan out.
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