DP
365Stairs, I salute you for working three jobs and not whining about it. I’m proud of you and I wish I had your energy.
Some folks on public assistance are lazy goldbrickers, it’s true. But lots of other people on assistance are good folks who are just doing what’s logical in their circumstances.
Let’s say you’re on public assistance of some kind, (unemployment for example) and you land a tentative job. WHAM! they yank those benefits right out from under you, before you can build up any security or savings with the new job.
I’ve been through this experience myself, and it’s very demotivating. So anyway, that explains the decision of some folks to stay unemployes as long as they can, thereby “gaming the system.”
Beyond that, there’s this crazy disparity between what society has designated as a “high value” job versus a “low value” job. The way we set wages is crazy in my opinion. It’s so discouraging to blue collar and service workers that I can see why many of them would choose to stay home as long as they possibly could.
Consider this:
A high-value job = stock broker (>500K per year)
A low-value job = home health worker (<30K per year)
Both the stock broker and the home care worker love their jobs. Both are good at their jobs. But considering the pay differential, can you see how the hospice worker might want to game the system a little, once in a while, if she could?
I can.
But let me give you a more concrete example of what I’m talking about.
There’s a member of this forum who barely ekes out a living on her paid job. But, in addition to that job, she spends lots of her own time and money training and placing service animals for handicapped people. What this woman is doing is a very socially useful thing, in my opinion. Yet in order to keep doing it, she’s got to “cheat” the unemployment system and avoid getting that full-time job at Wal-Mart — because if she does go to work for Wal-Mart, then she won’t have the time or energy left over to do what she does with the service dogs.
Society needs people like you to do what you’re doing 365Steps. But we also need the service dog lady to do what she’s doing, don’t we?
I’m willing to tolerate a little distortion of the free market system in order to keep both of you meaningfully employed. And to keep myself employeed, for that matter.
–David “The Starving Editor” Preston