When Unemployment Knocks on Your Door
Obama’s Labor Department recently touted the news that initial jobless claims dropped to 457,000, and we are told that the drop is “a sign that the economy likely added jobs in July,” even if it doesn’t dilute the overall high unemployment numbers.
That’s cold comfort to people like me. I was informed not long ago that within six months I’ll no longer have a job because my facility is going to be closed down and all of the work done here is being moved to a facility in South Carolina. A few of us will be kept on, but the majority will be getting the chop starting some time in January.
I have no complaints about how the announcement was handled. I could see that our management team was visibly shaken when they doled out this unpleasant news. They fought to keep the facility open, but the final decision was made by the top levels of the corporation. Our managers said they would do everything in their power to move those whose jobs are being eliminated into other positions within the company for which we may qualify, even if that means relocating to another part of the state or another part of the country. They wanted to give us as much lead time as possible to help ease the transition to either another job or — as a last resort — the unemployment line. In this respect, we are luckier than most.
Interestingly enough, I work for a nationwide health insurance company. Is this because of the belt-tightening that’s due to come when ObamaCare is finally implemented, or would it have happened anyway? I don’t know. Right now, that doesn’t seem terribly important. And corporate restructuring happens all the time in order to save money and resources. Still, ever since ObamaCare passed, I’ve been looking for another job, knowing that it was just a matter of time until this industry would have its life juices slowly squeezed out until there wasn’t much left for anyone except government bean-counters. And for quite some time, I’ve known that if layoffs ever occurred, I’d be among the first to go. You know, I really hate being right.
In fact, I’ve been looking to leave my state and the Northeast entirely. It’s expensive to live here, and my husband and I have been just barely holding our own for some time. His situation is not much better than mine. A former IT systems administrator who used to earn just under six figures, he now has to make do as a contractor in corporate help desk support, making about a third of what he used to with no benefits (sick leave, vacation time, insurance) whatsoever. He doesn’t expect the formerly lucrative IT job market to rebound any time soon — if at all. And although our house is not underwater, it’s becoming increasingly difficult to pay our mortgage and meet our other obligations. We’re seeing “for sale” signs pop up all over town, and earlier this year, our neighbors walked away from their house because they simply could not keep up. Times are tough everywhere.
Pam,
If you can take the heat, you might want to look at Texas. We’re big on balanced budgets and a right-to-work state. Also, no state income tax. And, if the worst happens, we’ll probably be an independent country again. We have our own power grid and actual working nuclear plants. It’s sorta like Australia without the accents!
Good luck finding a position and I hope you don’t become a victim of hope and change!
Unless you have some nukes, you’d be saluting the Mexican Flag in no time. Or something worse.
Remember San Jacinto! They’ll wish they’d never been born.
Anyone wonder if the illegal Hispanics in our country have been hit this hard?
I understand that Obama and his family are off on another vacation.
Perhaps, after he returns to the dusty oval office he will fix this mess.
Just as soon as he figures out how to make sure that the Islamic Muslims get started with their ground zero mosque in New York City and he grants amnesty to the illegal Hispanics.
Then somehow, as a devout Christian man Obama has to convince the doubting Thomas’s out there that the 10+ (unofficial) unemployment rate doesn’t mean that he doesn’t feel their pain.
That is why he will demand that Congress pass legislation to punish the living hell out of those inconsiderate big companies (like yours Pam) with much higher taxes and penalties for treating their people so bad.
Don’t worry too much about the fact that those big companies will have to lay even more people off at that time either. Just think of it as the “new normal”, take two aspirins and soon you’ll get used to it.
Usually Salvation Army Thrift Stores have 25% off everything days once a week now. You can pick up a lot of what your family needs there.
However, in a year or so if your children’s stomach seem a little fat, don’t fall into the trap of thinking that, at least they’re eating well. Malnutrition isn’t nice.
If you’re not an illegal Hispanic or minority I’d say forget about getting any relief from the Social Security Administration or any similar agency.
America wanted this creep.
At three score and ten years my wife and I would offer to help you and your family Pam, but with approximately 35k annual gross retirement income we’re trying to plan for our own healthcare needs. That while we’re carrying much of the load for our own 3 kids in their mid 40s (and our 6 grandkids, plus two great grandkids) that have been wiped out since Obama took office.
Yes, they voted for him.
Yes, they keep their mouths shut when they’re around me now.
Experience is a hard lesson learned – for some people.
Others never learn.
I noticed the retired school teacher across the street standing out in his yard in front of their Obama-Biden poster the other day screaming, “Why me Lord, why me..?”
He might have been angry at the illegal Hispanics that live in the house next to him for buying two brand new SUVs.
Good luck Pam. At times like these you find out what you really believe and who you are. It can be painful but also positive and enlightening. Several years of part-time work running lean and mean, at times down, not beaten. Endure, persist, live–no warm, fuzzy, suffocating blanket here either–FREEDOM!
Pam Meister, much good luck to you and your family. I really understand what you’re going through and my town here in New Jersey is going through the same thing you are. Times are tough and seem to be getting worse, not better. But I have always relied on myself and have found that those who demand the most from the government are usually those employed BY the government.
For example, the teachers here in New Jersey have some set of stones. All Governor Chris Christie is asking them to do is not take a pay INCREASE this year and to kick in 1% for their own health insurance for themselves and their family. And yet their Teacher’s Union refuses to do even that. There were many years in private industry when the company I was working for said they couldn’t give ANY salary increase because of tough economic times and it was always understood that I had to help pay for about 10% of my health insurance premiums (and they always went up, not down). So rather than just be grateful that they even have jobs, the Teacher’s Union doesn’t want to give an inch. And lets not even talk about the pensions, health care benefits, holidays, and sick leave these union workers get. Oh, and did I mention that they also get a full year’s salary for working about 10 months out of the year? People tend to forget that. And what’s worse, a teacher’s salary today, including all the benefits, usualy is almost twice as much as what a person in the private sector makes with comparable experience here in our state. And we haven’t even talked about the police officers, firemen, and sanitation workers in our state, let alone the people who have white-colar jobs in our state and local governments.
And in the private sector, NOBODY ever offered me tenure. Since I was an “executive,” you could be fired at the whim of your boss or when the economy turned sour. There was no such thing as “job security.” But you could be the worst state employee on this planet, but if you have tenure or seniority, you had a job for life. Oh, and did I mention that their health benefits follow them AND their families for the rest of their lives?
How it ever came to this, I don’t know. But, given all of this, I’m still proud that I made my own way in life and that I never even considered working for the state. The problem with living on the state plantation is that, once you get used to living there, it’s almost impossible to leave.
State workers should have the same benefits as those people in the private sector. Period. If they don’t like it, let them find a job in the real world and see how they like it.
It’s so important to not let them kill your instincts to self-reliance.
Unemployment insurance, its extension to 99 weeks, and emergency re-extensions with a bleeding heart Pelosi calling it the singlemost important economic stimulus (insane)…is a good metaphor for how the entire approach of the Democrats/the Obama philosophy engenders dependency and dhimmitude.
Some people give up looking for work or stop looking until the 99 weeks wind down and then only look to keep their unemployment status ‘active’.
Self-respect erodes, getting the check in the mail comes to be seen as some kind of entitlement as opposed to a temporary stopgap.
Originally, receiving unemployment was only supposed to last for 13 weeks.
Of course it’s a very different economic climate now, but it’s obvious to me (anyway) after 19 months of BS that this administration is more intent on expanding the dhimmitude than engendering a business friendly climate.
If we’re going to be led by a handful of élitists, we’ve got to be broken, like mules.
Hang in there, Pam.
Pam, best wishes to you and your family. I have a small business in construction material manufacturing. Our business is 10% of what it was in 2006. There are many underemployed small business owners who own a job but aren’t making any money. Get everyone of your family and friends to understand that IT DOES NOT HAVE TO BE THIS WAY!
Educate them that they must vote for free market, small government, cut spending and taxes conservative reps.
We will turn this around, it starts in November.
And by the way, I’d get out of the Northeast, they will be the last to turnaround because they are the most liberal.
Good luck and God bless.
Pam, you are very forunate. Let me iterate why:
1) You have a solid set of skills and a varied background.
2) You have experience under your belt
3) You’ve been given a six month heads up.
I was 2 years into my career out of college when I was suddenly and unexpectedly told that that day would be my last day working as my position was being eliminated. I hadn’t even made it out of the ranks of the lowest of the junior engineer ranks (T1). I had a singular area of experience and it was not in direct application with my degree, so the two did not exactly help each other (since to an employer, a degree means jack except for certain minimum requirements for a candidate who is not just fresh out of college and seeking his first job in the professional realm).
That was fourteen months ago. I had been UNABLE to find a position in engineering anywhere that wanted me. If it was in my area, I was woefully underqualified, or if I was, someone with more experience than I but in the same boat got grabbed up b/c he was willing to take the lower pay just to get a job again. My company had screwed me securely in the Death Star’s trash compactor with only a few centimeters left till the walls met.
Yet I have been firmly against rooting to eat scraps off the Obama executive table. I didn’t want extended unemployed benefits, or healthcare mandates. I wanted him to stop choking those who would be willing to hire me if they could afford to do so (or feel confident in spending the money to do so) economically. The thing I didn’t want as strongly as living out of my car with no money and maxed CC cards was to become enslaved to the government dole.
I only recently found my escape and I start my new job as a subcontractor this Tuesday.
What I lacked to get a comparable (to what I’d been doing and earning) job after my sudden and no-warning layoff, you’ve got, and you’ve got the benefit of time as well.
Good luck. And know that you’ve been given more in your arsenal than some of the rest of us have.
Quit whining. Not looking to Obama for help? Sure you are, you’re looking to him for an excuse.
Real class act there, Beetee! You are a trulu sorry excuse for a human being – in much the same fashion as your idol is a truly sorry excuse for a President.
Are you really a lawyer? Or do you just spell like one?
Some people have to twist logic into unrecognizable gibberish just in order to make an insult.
I had 27 employees in 2004. In 2005 sold the business and moved to China. I was fed up with the intentional destruction of the American Economy and strangulation of small business by the Government. It is the single best decision I’ve made. Life here is far less complicated and so much easier to plan and enjoy.
The problem with the US isn’t the president or political party, its the foundation the economy has been built upon; the Petro dollar and deficit funding. Its the worst of all worlds, a perfect storm of value destruction.
America is entering a depression, will last for about a decade, and there is no way out of it. The severity will depend on how long the voter refuses to focus on economic solutions.
There was a thread on this site by Victor Hansen,( “Whimper or Bang”) he defined the situation pretty well. More importantly solutions were not political, they were Economic and based in common sense, a very good start.
Having a Republican president will not help any more than a Democrat if the Economy is allowed to continue being controlled by Petroleum trading (Petro dollar system), and we continue running massive deficits. The total Combined Deficit is now over 100 Trillion Dollars, the budget required to fund all existing programs on and off the congressional ledgers through 2045. ( includes pensions, medicare, social security, etc).
You may want to review other options, China is just one. America has been making terrible choices since 1971, it is the last several years that those decisions are starting to catch up. It will get far worse if the Nation continues to be distracted by political oneupmanship instead of focusing on the underlying economic problems.
Hope you have ditched your US citizenship too. As of July (?) last year you have to pay an exit tax levy on all your assets before they let you off the US citizenship hook. The US is the only country on earth that’ll pursue you to the end of the world for your income taxes.
Like a roach motel: you can get in, you can’t get out.
China will be the entry position for many future college graduates. Learn the mandrian language and head for the larger Asian cities around the South China Seas, like Cacoa. You will be pleasantly surprised with the number of enterpernuers who have started up businesses there and who are looking for Americans who understand capitalism as it was meant to be. Know your math and economics. You will be well-rewarded.
But the “messiah” or “The One” who believes he could ditch the Law of Supply and Demand the way he ditched the bankruptcy laws exacerbates my problems.
The Law of Supply and Demand says that when Demand > Supply, prices rise, when D < S, P goes down. Don't understand? Google a more in-depth explanation.
E.g. Obama and his ever helpful Congressional elves guarantee happiness to NYC fat cats with the taxpayers' money. How? The multi-million dollars condos in NYC are not selling, Obama (mind you, not the Oneness himself, but his minions) told the fat cats they could charge the pre-Great Recession prices for their pricey condos, and are guaranteed payments if the buyers defaulted. In non-Obamaland, the Law of S & D says that the prices of the pricey condos have to drop until "bargain-hunting" buyers deem them low enough to hunt them. In Obamaland, the prices don't drop. The buyers could pay a couple of thous to move in and not pay a dime more and let the Fat Cats foreclose. The buyers would live in multi-million dollar condos in the middle of Manhatten rent free, the Fat Cats would bank the millions with Goldman Sachs which is also guarnteed by the taxpayers, the taxpayers will own the million dollars condos. The Fed will unload the pile of million dollars condos on the cheap, the Fat Cats would buy a bunch of them on fire sales prices with the taxpayers' money.
Where does the One get the millions to pay the Fat Cats? From you and me, from the small business owners, from those of us who have not paid their "fair shares" in taxes, and are afraid to go to jail if we do a Geithner.
Another e.g.: endless unemployment checks to "stimulate" the economy (speaketh the Speaker of the House, the brilliant Queen Pelosi).
Alice B, do you know who pays for the endless unemployment checks? Ultimately, the evil business owners. They pay into a state fund to finance unemployment benefits. The more of your ex-employees file for unemployment benefits, the more you have to pay into the funds. Would a sb owner take the chance of hiring a new employee and risk bankrupting his business when things don't work out as expected? No hiring, no risk, no?
The One is not an excuse, the One is the problem.
You’ve got the right attitude, Pam! Just because the economic downturn smacked you down doesn’t mean you have to lay there and take it. Or take the dole that the politicians and bureaucrats expect you to take. I haven’t had a steady job for 2 years, but I am going to community college to get some career-related job skills so that in a year or so I can get and hold a job again. In the meantime I will be working a lot of evening hours at Wal-Mart, but that’s OK. I will endure, I will succeed, I will hold my head up and be a working winner, not a downcast loser filing an aid check. Of course, I don’t have a family to take care of or a mortgage to keep up on, so I can strut a bit. But if Obama thinks I will take his Ceasar-style bread, he will be mistaken. Americans demand opportunities, not handouts.
Obama can take the crumbs he offers and shove them where the sun don’t shine. That is, if there is room in there, as he is full of it.
Well built ships survive storms. We’ll do OK.
My advice is to look for a good lawyer (many are doing pro-bono work) to renegotiate the mortgage.
If you try and do the “right thing” you’re severely at risk. Look, I’ve known several reporters who have written this story and it just gets worse if you don’t have a job. You’ll burn through your savings doing the “right thing” and find yourself on the brink of foreclosure.
In the long run, the foreclosure says nothing about your character, your ability to work hard, or your faith in God. You are simply a casualty of an economic catastrophe the same is if your house had been hit by a hurricane.
Principles are wonderful but they don’t put food on your table nor a roof over your head. It reminds one of the story about the many who drowned at sea after three boats had passed by. “I fear not, for God will provide” said the floating castaway. When he reaches the pearly gates he is admonished by St Peter, “God sent three ships for you. Why didn’t you get on one?”
Pam, I was a Business Owner for 25 years. I had 75 employees and $ 5 million in annual sales. I have been looking for employment for the last year. I just interviewed for a bank teller position and didn’t get the job. My ex has lost her job and become paralyzed by the H1N1 vaccination. All I can say is welcome to the party.
Pam , come down to Greenville. . . we need folks like you here, and we are not as hot as Texas. Best wishes for you and yours. To Alice the Beehind: typical troll. . . bashing on someone trying to do the right thing, and spurning the “help” of the mighty “o”. Stupid tool.
“Hallelujah, I’m a Bum!” — Sung to the tune of “Revive Us Again”, the song was printed by the Industrial Workers of the World in 1908
Why don’t you work like other folks do?
How the hell can I work when there’s no work to do?
Refrain
Hallelujah, I’m a bum,
Hallelujah, bum again,
Hallelujah, give us a handout
To revive us again.
Oh, why don’t you save all the money you earn?
If I didn’t eat, I’d have money to burn.
Whenever I get all the money I earn,
The boss will be broke, and to work he must turn.
Oh, I like my boss, he’s a good friend of mine,
That’s why I am starving out on the bread line.
When springtime it comes, oh, won’t we have fun;
We’ll throw off our jobs, and go on the bum.
— Adpated from wikipedia
A longer and very nice version here:
http://www.archive.org/details/HarryMcclintock-HallelujahImABum1926
The problem is that even people with such an indomitable spirit and a commitment to self reliance are no match for the ruinous policies of the Progressives. This is because excessive growth in government and their ideologically driven and expensive programs create a zero sum game – their gains are the private sector’s losses. And government has the resources and political power to continually grow their side aggressively while we have to pay for it.
For example Jerry Brown, the seriously liberal AG and candidate for Governor in California boasts that he has hired over a thousand attorneys who are ready to sue any local businesses that violate the idiotic Global Warming Final Solutions Act. That money, if left in the private sector, could be creating jobs and providing goods and services that people actually want. Instead, it will help to drive over a million jobs out of the State and in the end will actually hurt the environment as industries move overseas where they have far fewer restrictions on emitting real pollutants. The government almost never gets things right – and when they do as sometimes in the military, it is at a cost many times what would be expected in the private sector.
And the Progressives have latched on to the fictional Keynesian notion that government spending – no matter on what – energizes the economy. The reality is that we as a country are only going to be as well off as our total useful productivity. All government should be an overhead function that represents no more than 10% of our collective activity. That is what we ought to be willing to “spend” on it. Instead it has now reached 45% of GNP as indicated by some recent studies.
Unfortunate story, Pam, but you do seem to contradict yourself. On the one hand you say, “Despite what the Marxists at the highest echelons of government would like you to believe, hard work and resourcefulness — not reliance on government handouts paid for by other taxpayers.” but on the other, you mention unemployment compensation “not being nearly enough…” . Well, which is it? Guess what? Unemployment insurance is one of the many “socialistic” policies that many of your capitalist sympathizationers sympathize with. Unemployment comp., like Social Security, seems to me, saved a lot like you from having to eat out of garbage cans in back alleys. Don’t be too quick to bite the hand that feeds, Pam.
mika, “the hand that feeds you” — what BS! One: That hand is ours, that is the government that is theoretically supposed to be law abiding and our *servant* not our master.
Two: Better NOT to take the unemployment. No self-respecting person in the US is ever going to be “eating out of garbage cans in back alleys”, even should they refuse government welfare, food stamps, and “unemployment”. It’s not poverty that makes folks drop to such a level — it’s insanity, it’s the kind of immoral self-degradation the left celebrates and encourages. There’s work enough to pay a simple apartment rent, buy decent clothing, heat, water, and food for anyone in the US. Ask any illegal!
Unemployment compensation is way too long — no more than five months — enough to get one through a winter should be the rule.
One reason I posted the *1908* FOLK SONG
Unemployment benefits are earned. Welfare isn’t. There is a maximum one can get for unemployment and if someone is making close to a yearly six figure salary unemployment benefits are quite paltry. You’re quite merciless with your “…having to eat out of garbage cans…” shtick. Maybe when we all become dirt poor thanks to Obama and the Democrats the fall won’t be so great. A new era may be on hand for the average American. Time for new resoucefulness for many but I’ll bet you this administration will not support them one iota. This administration supports illegal alien rights over the right to earn a decent living for the legal middle class citizen. It champions reliance on GUBMINT rather than self-reliance. The GUBMINT tit is filled with drugs. Once sucked one gets addicted. Are you an addict?
Your saying “bite the hand that feeds you” speaks volumes about the Progressive/liberal mentality. They think it is their money and we the great unwashed masses should be greatful for the handouts. The fact is that it is “our” money and this was supposed to be an insurance plan where we all contribute so that those unfortunate enough to lose their jobs could have some support while they found another. There should be no shame in taking it any more than when your auto insurance company pays for your dented hood after an accident. The current regime’s policies are the primary causes of job losses and a slow recovery – and how convenient for them that more and more people are relying on this program and will certainly vote for the party who keeps extending and enlarging the it.
You seem to be of the belief that when a person needs a hand out they should get a good swift kick in the groin. Yes, I have problems with that. You say that excepting unemployment is sucking on the t-t, but you also recognize that its are tax dollars that are being used to help keep us from being evicted from our homes and having to sell our children into prostitution. My cousin Fernando has been unemployed for over two and a half years. He has not had to sell his daughters into prostitution in those years since! And why? Because he has been able to collect unemployement and food stamps for himself and his wife and there seven children. He is not asking for an handout, just a hand. Don’t lump all of Americans into one basket because of corporate greed and disinterested!
I don’t know how you picked that up from what I said. I think you just wanted to make your liberal point about corporate greed. Progressives love to blame corporations and praise government programs but it should be just the opposite. Corporations can’t force anyone to do anything and they ususally have significant competition to keep them honest and efficient. But government has free reign to be wasteful, fraudulant and stupid. And they are.
Sounds like you’re talking to me. Are you so naive to believe that every person paying their grocery bill with “Food Stamps” is needy? There are plenty of people usurping the system and it’s people from various parts of the world not just “Mexicans”. I’ve seen people with fur coats and expensive cars use food stamps. Gubmint programs are rife with fraud. There are people who use Ambulances as a taxi service. Whatever Gubmint uncovers is the tip of the iceberg. Does Gubmint have the manpower to uncover fraud? Do they even care?
Unemployment benefits are earned because each paycheck has an unemployment tax taken out of it and also the employer’s portion of unemployment tax is added to it. Unemployment benefits are earned limited and temporary so it is not sucking on the Gubmint tit, welfare food stamps and medicaid is sucking the Gubmint’s tit. Yes there are truly needy people but I’ll bet there are a lot more who usurp the system. And how long does one get these free benefits? A month a year 10 years? Some are doing it for 4 generations. Socialism breeds laziness because people who get equal pay whether they work hard or not have no incentive. This administration does not champion incentive in fact it seems to condemn it. Earn more and we’ll punish you with higher taxes. A recipe for failure indeed.
I did not mean to disparage Mexicans in my previous post. Personally I find them hard working quiet and respectful, actually I like them better than the fur coat wearing Mercedes driving medicaid getting food stamp paying people that usurp our system.
One reason I posted the *1908* folk song (by the Wobblies, too) to show what JOY there was in being out of work without being on the dole. That of course is not what they meant by writing the song. They wanted the socialism policies you just spoke charmingly of.
But look what has availed — instead of a JOY in accepting the circumstance, poor of rich life offers up, we have today a whining nihilism of too too many waiting for that next welfare check. Unemployment “benefits” are just a form of welfare.
Listen to Harry McClintcock sing that 1908 song in 1926. It is self-confident and joyful, only a touch of lament, more cockiness than anything. A real American’s way of dealing with present bad circumstance.
Halleluia! Halleluia!
What a difference from today’s indulgent whiners and victim-class. A bum was no victim!
Halleluia!
What complete b.s., bvw! The only reason you don’t understand the despiration of having to eat out of garbage cans is probably because you’ve got a silver spoon wedged down you’re throat since you’re a baby! Please! I hope that Pam doesn’t consider you her BFF and takes your advice seriously! You can strum your guitar and sing your folk songs like Joan Baez or Bob Dylan, but your hippi mantra has outlived it’s usefullness. Hello? It’s not 1963 anymore! Pam’s got some real problems, and you hoping that a “change is gonna come, yes it is…” is not going to put dorittos in the bowl or Cheerios in her husbands lunch box next month. Pam thinks she has a chance in this economy, but she doesn’t. Her job, and yours and mine, are being outsourced to China and India as we speak! You’re telling her to pick her self up by her bootstraps is going to ensure that both her and her family starve to death. Please think before you try to offer advice. Not everyone was born with a silverspoon, bvw!
Related: “From Hooverville to Obamaville” by Paul Hollrah, 8/18/2010
http://www.familysecuritymatters.org/publications/id.7080/pub_detail.asp
“The spoiled “me first” generation of the recent past will be but a memory and, for the first time in decades, teenagers will learn that there is, in fact, a bottom rung on the economic ladder. Every family member will have to contribute something just to put food on the table and keep the utilities turned on. And while the Kool-Ade drinkers in the mainstream media will do whatever they can to keep the blame off Barack Obama’s shoulders, the American people will know, intuitively, who it is that causes them so much pain.”
Well, he paints a bleak picture. Reality will differ, but he ain’t so far off the mark, I reckon.
He also lines up the policy-wonkisms of facts that will have jobs VERY scarce to be found in the next dozens of months.
“Anonymous”…you don’t seem to be able to place quotation marks in they’re proper location, so do all of us a favor and…oh, I don’t know, DON’T USE THEM??? I’m sure your are trying to make a point, in you’re own, quaint little way, but please don’t use the big boy, college punctualization marks without KNOWLEDGE.
May I suggest that you consider relocation to Texas? You’ll be among hundreds of thousand who have recently fled the coasts to live here where a nice, brick three bedroom home sells in the low to mid hundred thousands, there is no state income tax, a very favorable business climate, and where the economy is actually growing and companies are actually, regularly hiring. Yes, it’s hot in the summer, but we actually have air conditioning, and it doesn’t rain all the time. Add such luxuries as indoor plumbing, readily available toilet paper and electricity and it’s pretty inviting.
To hold out and survive the remaining years of the Obama administration, there is really no better place. Good luck.
Speaking as one who has gone through cycles of income and outgo, and been between contracts for extended periods of months at various times since 1981 I have learned one thing only to stay sane, sober and happy in such economic conditions. Stay off the dole at all costs.
In those periods where I was earning more than enough to pay the regular expenses I was sometimes happy and sometimes vexed, and in rarer intervals overwhelmed, such is the nature of earned reward — it takes sweat of the brow. But the joys of a good day at work or a well-done project are long-term and deep.
When I was on the dole I was lazy and then depressed, and lacked any joy, even though I was able to better meet my bills, it was still as blanching and weakening to the spirit as a slow but steady internal bleed. The vexation was rarely enough to make me do the radical changes in habit, personal vision and motivation needed to stop the bleeding and find a way to earn real money. Indolence is spiritual debasing and welfare — which does indeed include unemployment breeds selfish indolence no matter how resolved one is to avoid it.
Only when I either rejected the dole, or it ran out did I return to joy. In the first, my joy was born of self-confidence unimpaired by a sense of obligation or subservience to some benefactor. In the second condition — when the dole ran out, necessity does bear healthy children, for it moved me past pride to take whatever job might be that would earn some cash. Even a little cash, earned by the humblest of labor is a joy to get.
And without internal joy, it is impossible to well sell oneself in the marketplace.
I did have a silverspoon at birth, it was the habit of some Aunt to provide one to all her nieces and nephews. But there was also a rat-trap under my crib, and my mother returned home from the hospital with her newborn to a rented cabin, for my Dad only made $2,500 a year then.
My upbringing was closer to that of Hogan’s Alley, and most of our clothes hand-me-downs.
I am able to sing that song “Halleluia I’m a Bum!” with gusto, because I know the truth of it. You can’t get up again until you (1) accept that you are down and (2) take a certain delight in it. If you refuse to accept being broke and out of work — at any level of functioning — say by borrowing, by refusing to greatly reduce spending, by trying to keep up appearances — your will not be able to really get up again. You will be psychologically disabled.
Get off the dole! Refuse it! Take joy in it!
Halleluia! I’m a Bum!
That’s the magic door out of being a “bum”, actually.
Last spring I graduated cum laude from the University of Michigan with a degree in nuclear engineering, but nary a single job interview. What did I do? I decided to return to the University to get a master’s degree, and I landed a GSI position (known as a TA position at most colleges), and I rented a cheap apartment.
My Father helped support his family while he put himself through college during the depression. He became an engineer. He said to me, “There’s noting wrong with being poor. I’ve been poor, and it isn’t pleasant, but you can fix that through hard work. The problem is to get the G*****m government to leave you alone.”
Just a few thoughts about what has helped me when unemployment has loomed.
When tempted to feel sorry for myself (who isn’t from time to time?)I remember the Kohima memorial :
“When You Go Home, Tell Them Of Us And Say,
For Their Tomorrow, We Gave Our Today”
My Dad taught it to me and I have taught it to my son.
That soon puts your worries in perspective. Truth is, I feel honoured to be able bodied and mentally able to earn a living serving my community.
As far as blaming your Government…..Get over it,people get rich and poor under all sorts of regimes, focus on serving and producing,adding value and getting an edge.
Check out Thomas J. Stanley who has some great insights about this kind of thing.
There are 168 hours in a week,if you sleep 8 hours a night thats 56 so you have 112 waking hours to allocate as you desire. Why not spend at least some learning skills,making contacts and building confidence. The bigger your social circle the more likely someone knows someone who needs help or has a vacancy. There is no guarantee that your present skill set is adequate. Get some more.
Lightworker. Lightworker. Obama is a “Lightworker” – or at least some dopey folks used to think so.
Pam we are sorry for your plight but working for a small employer that once had 90 and now have 57 we are scared to hire. Our backlog is great right now but we are dragging things out because we can’t hire people! “Can’t” is because we are being told by accounting professionals the more we expand the more we are going to be slammed with taxes (health care and gains) starting in 2011 and peaking in 2013. We are so sorry for our reserve but we are terrified for the future.
I can honestly say that I feel your pain and your husband’s pain, from personal experience. I can no longer find IT work either, and I live in SC. I’ve updated my skills (A+, Network+, MCSA 2003, studying for Cisco certs) and right now I’m working as a part-time retail clerk, starting out at minimum wage.
On the positive side, I will say that the people in the store where I work are helpful and easy to get along with (same is not generally true of IT shops) and I get health insurance after being there a month (though I have to pay for it). So I’m doing the best I can to make a go of it, and if nothing else, be the best retail clerk I can be. Bloom where you’re planted…maybe God has some purpose in mind for me being there.
While I can’t say that this is the best possible use of my time, energy, and talents, it’s the best I can do with the economy being the way it is.
I’ve been blogging about this for a long time.
For the last four years, my family of four has been trying to make ends meet on my wife’s part-time work and the business I started from my home office. It hasn’t been easy, and I was of two minds: 1) I paid into those assistance programs, so I certainly should take advantage of them now that I need them. 2) No way am I going to become reliant on the government.
My wife, being my wife, did sign us up for heating assistance one winter, and until our youngest hit 5, we were able to qualify for WIC. At points we qualified for our state’s medical assistance program, and that was very nice, however there came a summer when my wife worked some extra hours and we failed to qualify — by about $20.00 over the income level. The kind state worker told us that my wife should work less so that we could continue to get medical assistance.
About two months ago, I took on a second job, and we’re having our own version of “recovery summer” as we are finally able to start saving again. Our family income increased enough where it made sense for my wife to quit her job so one of us was home with the kids. The need to purchase our own health insurance has run us up against more bureaucracies. Our kids would normally qualify for the state assistance program since my job does not offer health coverage, but because my wife quit her job (as opposed to being fired), we must wait until October to see if they qualify.
The worst part about seeking government assistance was the bureaucracy and the almost dehumanizing way one was treated. That alone was disincentive enough to keep us along the road to self-reliance. However, the suggestion to work less (or get yourself fired) so we could receive government assistance really soured me. I’ve got no problem with helping out people who need the help, but there almost seemed to be an encouragement to be poor. Job security for government workers, I guess.
welcome to Africa.
good luck Pam and keep writing.
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