Forum Post: If you don't have a job - it's your own fault
Posted 13 years ago on Oct. 28, 2011, 1:31 a.m. EST by ToTheBottomFeeders
(0)
This content is user submitted and not an official statement
If you are able bodied and unemployed it's you own fault. My 16 year old son has a job and we have 20 million immigrants doing jobs that "Americans wont do". I started out with a paper route, then I cleaned ash trays at a bowling alley, then I flipped burgers, then I turned wrenches and now I'm the CEO of a corporation.
I'm sorry if you ended up with some silly liberal arts degree instead of Science, Engineering or Business (where you can actually find a good paying job). Back in the day I thought about following my passion too. Fortunately I figured out before it was too late that you can't really make any money hula hoop dancing or bongo playing. Sometimes, in life, you do what you have to do instead of what you want to do.
Discounting the Occupy movement as a bunch of impotent idiots begging for free money is a serious error. I completely agree with the principles behind the Occupy Wall Street movement, and I feel that the dismissal of income inequality as a non-issue spawned of thin skins and jealousy is a grave error even though if they and I both succeed in life I'll probably wind up paying more in taxes than I would otherwise.
I grew up working poor in the Bronx and am currently at MIT thanks to a crazily determined mother and a strong, supportive working class community. Simply speaking from my experience and from what I've seen, poor choices may be a part of why people are poor, but they're hardly enough of the picture to just be able to point the finger at an entire population and brand them as lazy, stupid, and useless.
I'll be the first to admit that what I did was hardly in a vacuum. Not everybody has a mother who is a licensed teacher who was willing to quit her job to live as a poor housewife so that she could homeschool her children to keep them out of a failing school system. Not everybody has a father who could find and hold onto a union job with good benefits up until his son's sophomore year of high school, weather an eleven-month strike and a plant closure, and manage to get another union job within a few months of being laid off. Not everybody has a landlord willing to hold off a rent increase for a year longer than he had to to cut us a break. Not everyone knows an incredibly kind nun who just dropped off $500 at our doorstep one month when we couldn't fully make rent on time.
It is theoretically possible to bootstrap oneself out of poverty, but damn near nobody who truly got anywhere satisfactory in life came from absolutely nothing. There is always the one that does, and that person is so many different kinds of amazing it's not funny, but usually there are support systems there that you didn't see that your average bootstrapper was able to take advantage of. There are also whole communities in which the resources don't exist for those kinds of support systems to develop organically and therein lies the trap. When you have someone who comes from a broken home, spends his days in a school that doesn't teach him and where large chunks of the student body punish success, in a community where few people care and the ones that do truly have no support to offer, you've essentially spent his whole life teaching him that success is out of his reach and he'd be a fool to reach for it.
The whole point of discarding this ugly attitude about the economically less fortunate is because only then are you going to watch the kind of change that you're hoping for. Give the poor real economic support for things like going to college and/or vocational training so that they can ditch their minimum-wage job for something they can actually live on. Send their kids to strong, high-performing schools where success is expected and rewarded. Truly offer them opportunity and you'd be amazed at how fast they would take it. Now, if you give someone every opportunity in the book and they still blow it, then feel free to dump them on the roadside; I won't stop you. But until that's been done your attitude is simply part of the problem.
The other major thing we're going to have to look at is what exactly we plan on doing with our poor and our working class; as of right now, the latter (right along with the middle class) is and has been taking one hit after another due to factors like deunionization and outsourcing, and something has to be done about that. A nation composed entirely of BS's and BA's sounds like a great idea in theory, but there are groups of people who truly don't fit into that model and there has to be a better answer for them than "Go flip burgers" or "It's your fault you're underwater for trying to better yourself."
We need to have something more to our economy than just a small group of high-earning professionals with advanced degrees and a large unwashed (and presumably expendable) mass of Starbucks baristas and McDonalds employees trying to make ends meet on $7-$8 per hour, and that's going to mean forcing jobs back over here in the long term as well as a fair number of other measures including reconstruction of our national infrastructure (which would serve to provide stopgap employment until a new manufacturing industry got under way, and would create a fair number of additional permanent maintenance jobs over the long haul) if we want to fix things.
I stand behind OWS namely because I see them as the first movement with enough raw manpower and raw anger to be in a position to force these issues in the long term, and because their initial direction is close enough to mine that action towards their goals would most likely also serve the ends I outline above. We're fairly raucous and unorganized, and we're far from perfect, but as far as I can see Occupy Wall Street is the first real start in this direction I've seen on the national stage.
Cudos...very well said!!! Hope we get to see more and more people like you to speak up and give more strength to this movement... One thing i dont understand is why havent u guys have found a way to start after all this is over??? i mean, this shit's got to go! u know! i remm a 92 yr old scientist Jacques Fresco saying this since past 70 yrs.... He has made more than 2000 inventions in his time and continues to do so even today...
If u really want to see a change in the society of structural classism, ya all really need to even take out some time and follow "The Venus Project".... a Sustainable world for future where poverty, misery, war, politics, money and cruelty will be a distant memory and our kids will laugh at us as how primitive and immature we all were at the time... This is by far the only optimal, logical and humane way to live to life advocated by Jacques Fresco... Please visit http://www.thevenusproject.com/ and research about him in detail to make your own decision... Once the movement is respected in the first world countries like yours and changes start coming in, people like me living in third world countries will then finally get a chance...
If you are able bodied and unemployed it might have something to do with the unemployment rate being really high.....nah....that would make to much sense....let's blame it on silly liberal arts degrees, hula hoop dancing, and bongo playing....right....that makes much more sense
Liberal Arts is the Traditional line of study, from the very outset of Higher Education in the West, that defines the essential nature of what it means to be Educated...it is NOT as this poster describes.
The Aristos, as distinct from the Plebs (plebians/commoners)cultivated a broad understanding of the Ideas that shape Civilization, without which there would be no Science, and consequently no Engineering...and Business is for monkey-wrench personalities who have no higher aim than other brutes...the alternative to which is a narrow-minded specialization (cog in the machine, reification of Man), which only turns out functionaries and simpletons as tools of the merchantile class and capitalist paracites, such as CEO's of corporations.
Education by any other name is merely technical training, and Enlightenment is not made of nuts-n-bolts. Of course, what does being a CEO have to do with Enlightenment? Nothing, of course.
Getting a job will not stop wars or ecological catastrophes. Many jobs actually contribute towards these things.
We need a true democracy and a new socioeconomic system.
Nothing lasts forever - least of all capitalism, which is perhaps the most unsustainable system ever conceived.
Tell that to 25 million unemployed or underemployed people (like there is enough jobs for all of them).
Not everybody is here because they don't have a job. Some of us want to turn the job destruction process around, and create more and better paying jobs for other people and for our future descendents.
We want a return to the American System of economics, or simply the "American way". If you are against that, then you are a traitor to America and should seek employment elsewhere.
Re. the BS 'forum-post' above, I recommend and offer the following links, re. the award winning, documentary film, "INSIDE JOB" :
a) Latest Working Link : http://documentarystorm.com/inside-job/ ,
b) Official Movie Website : http://www.sonyclassics.com/insidejob/ &
c) Free Movie Download : http://www.multiupload.com/7B46GXEHYZ .
'Inside Job' provides a comprehensive analysis of the global financial crisis of 2008, which at a cost over $20 trillion, caused millions of people to lose their jobs and homes in the worst recession since the Great Depression, and nearly resulted in a global financial collapse. Through exhaustive research and extensive interviews with key financial insiders, politicians, journalists, and academics, the film traces the rise of a rogue industry which has corrupted politics, regulation, and academia. It was made on location in the United States, Iceland, England, France, Singapore, and China.
"If you don't have a job - it's your own fault" = False ! However, IF you are a SH!T for Brains, its your own fault for having your own head jammed so far up your own (x) that your personal perspective does not extend beyond your own rectum !!
fiat lux !!!
Hahahahahahaha!!!! What a douche bag!!!!
Why are you against throwing criminals in jail? The Gangster Class running Wall Street, with their Gangster friends in our government are committing massive financial crimes.
And you're okay with letting them get away with that? You equate that with flipping burgers somehow?
Where's the logic in that? You have some serious problems with your thought processes!
Or maybe you just watch too much Faux News, which is the same damn thing.
And what does that have to do with the Occupy movement? Absolutely nothing.
If you think it does, then you're either functionally illiterate, or just not paying attention. Either way you have no business posting your ignorant nonsense at this site.
Hi... This is Kaizad and I am from india... I am in full support of all the "Occupy" movement, not only in america but world wide... I have an interesting observation to share with ya all... If u really want to see a change in the society of structural classism, ya all really need to even take out some time and follow "The Venus Project".... a Sustainable world for future where poverty, misery, war, politics, money and cruelty will be a distant memory and our kids will laugh at us as how primitive and immature we all were at the time... This is by far the only optimal, logical and humane way to live to life advocated by Jacques Fresco... Please visit http://www.thevenusproject.com/. Once the movement is respected in the first world country like yours and changes start coming in, people like me living in third world countries will then finally get a chance...
Is it just me, or do 2-words stand out more than any other in this guys rant?
"I'm sorry".
With a mind-set like that it's no wonder.
Without an employer, the potential employees are like an army without a leader.
Are you the CEO of that deli down the street? You make shitty sandwiches (oh yeah, are you the old man who's always dressed in woman's clothes, or the other old guy who always talks to himself)??
And the whole Rolling Stones song routine, I mean, really :)
I am usually amused at the 'prestige' so many feel being the CEO of a corporation gives them. As if that some how makes them superior to others...
Yet, truth be told, a business plan, a registered company name, some names to list for the board and a couple hundred dollars is all that is needed to create a corporation.
Claiming to be the CEO of a corporation, means very little.
Shhhh....
Oh, did I reveal some deep dark secret?
I'm the CEO of a school. Just got my card printed out.
Thrasymaque
CEO
School of the Cool
Bali, Indonesia
Pssst... Don't tell anyone, but I'm just a Class Event Organizer.
Oh how cool! Now you can post ridiculous stuff also! Wonderful!
It's not that great. I really can't compete with all the conspiracy theorists on here.
It at least gives you the opportunity to get into the running.
Mushy Potatoes leaves the devious witch. Mushy Potatoes colors underneath the humorous tax. The royal revolutionary rules next to any bankrupt. Should a physics elaborate? Mushy Potatoes prevails beneath a fundamentalist. The horrific kettle strikes.
nakedgirls
You're 100% right. I've always blamed others for me being unemployed and it's gotten me nowhere. Then I took a long look in the mirror. I have a been a lazy, worthless example of a human being that contributes nothing to society. I would spend leftover government student loan money on booze several times a week instead of spending it on groceries and essential items. I would watch Netflix and surf the web all day instead of studying interview techniques, applying for jobs, and improving my resume. Now I must pay the price for my poor life choices and lack of effort. I will be a 25-year-old man with a useless Bachelor's degree in the arts that will be forced to live with his parents in less than six months time. I deserve every bit of this. If only I had listened to people like you four years ago, maybe my miserable life would be different. Thank you for your words of encouragement. I will try to turn this around because I know I am still young and it is still possible, but people like you should be very disappointed in people like myself, who feel entitled but expect to put absolutely no effort into achieving their goals.
Type facetious stuff much?