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"Why Many Unemployed Workers Will Never Get Jobs" - conservative victim blaming from Huffpo.
Awesome. As if America's unemployed don't have enough problems, we got this victim-blaming duffer to pile it on further.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-wolfe/why-many-unemployment_b_5273611.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592
The problem with traditional job skill training in many cases is that you can walk a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Far too many workers -- employed and unemployed -- don't seem interested in finding water on their own. They want and expect someone else to find the water, make sure the journey isn't too arduous, and get someone to pay for it.
Thanks to years of economic prosperity, government entitlements, union contracts and most recently a generation of helicopter parents, many workers from aging Baby Boomers to the young adults known as Millennials don't have the motivational skills to achieve their own success, to keep themselves safe, to avoid a personal crisis, and to get themselves out of a jam.
snip
Many of the unemployed workers have simply lost the ability and motivation to make a better life for them and take responsibility for problems they create -- if they ever learned to do it in the first place. Picking yourself up by your bootstraps is a lost skill. When you fall, it's not your fault. It's expected that someone else come to your rescue, offer you the bootstrap, hoist you up, and nurse you back to health.
I recently mentioned to someone that "God helps those who help themselves." Their response was to tell me God never said that. That is true by the way -- it's not actually in the Bible. But they missed my point. For many generations we believed that. It was a philosophy our grandparents, our great-grandparents, and those before us lived by. People didn't look for handouts, sue someone when things didn't go right, and wallow in their own pity waiting to be rescued.
snip
Up until the last decade or so, it didn't take much to get a job. If you had a pulse and could fog a mirror, you had the qualifications for many low-paying, low-skill jobs. If you sought a better lifestyle, you acquired trade skills or a college degree. Once you had a job, you were pretty well set for life. At that point in your career, school was behind you and employees looked to the company for training, benefits, and even retirement. If you were unfortunate enough to be laid off, the company paid you a severance or you collected unemployment from the government. Companies as well as government and community services even provided another bootstrap -- outplacement services and job coaching to help you get back on your feet.
Thanks to years of economic prosperity, government entitlements, union contracts and most recently a generation of helicopter parents, many workers from aging Baby Boomers to the young adults known as Millennials don't have the motivational skills to achieve their own success, to keep themselves safe, to avoid a personal crisis, and to get themselves out of a jam.
snip
Many of the unemployed workers have simply lost the ability and motivation to make a better life for them and take responsibility for problems they create -- if they ever learned to do it in the first place. Picking yourself up by your bootstraps is a lost skill. When you fall, it's not your fault. It's expected that someone else come to your rescue, offer you the bootstrap, hoist you up, and nurse you back to health.
I recently mentioned to someone that "God helps those who help themselves." Their response was to tell me God never said that. That is true by the way -- it's not actually in the Bible. But they missed my point. For many generations we believed that. It was a philosophy our grandparents, our great-grandparents, and those before us lived by. People didn't look for handouts, sue someone when things didn't go right, and wallow in their own pity waiting to be rescued.
snip
Up until the last decade or so, it didn't take much to get a job. If you had a pulse and could fog a mirror, you had the qualifications for many low-paying, low-skill jobs. If you sought a better lifestyle, you acquired trade skills or a college degree. Once you had a job, you were pretty well set for life. At that point in your career, school was behind you and employees looked to the company for training, benefits, and even retirement. If you were unfortunate enough to be laid off, the company paid you a severance or you collected unemployment from the government. Companies as well as government and community services even provided another bootstrap -- outplacement services and job coaching to help you get back on your feet.
. . . and so on and so on and so on and this isn't the 1970s, asshole.
Do me a favor. Get in a pair of boots that have straps on them. Squat. Now grab those bootstraps and try to pull yourself upright. What happens? TELL ME WHAT HAPPENS???
These guys, AGAIN, grew up and acheived success in an age that had plentiful economic opportunites for everyone, whether you went to college or not. They built their wealth at a time when it was possible to do so with consistency (e.g. not in the past 14 years). College was affordable (sometimes free), there were pensions, benefits, employer matches to 401k, employee training, employer-paid college, etc, etc, etc. They never had significant landmines, financial or otherwise and see things from the winner's circle - zero empathy and firmly in a bubble.
This age no longer exists and now they're finger wagging and scolding workers for not "taking charge" of their lives. "Working hard" is no longer enough. "Going to college" is no longer enough. "Starting your own business" is no longer enough. "There's this . . . invisible unknown intangible . . . that my generation, of course, isn't affected by so much, but YOU BUMS ALL NEED TO FIND and once you do, grab onto it like you would a bootstrap, pay for it until yer destitute and starving and let it KILL ya, by gumption!!"
Fuuuuuuuuuuuuck. Thanks for the advice. Loads. We'll all get working on that bill Republicans and corporations left us.
16 replies
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= new reply since forum marked as read
Where's the discussion on what needs to be done to create more opportunity? Where's the admonishing of corporate America? WHY are people SO afraid to speak out against the Blessed Scripture of the Free Market?
Did Ira just think jobs went away on their own? There's plenty of work to be done, but without government funding it or corporations looking to make a profit from it, it's never going to GET done and we'll have to rely on volunteerism that no one cares about, just so long as it happens, it's cost-efficient to whoever runs things and produces results. Problem solved on THEIR end, if we're bringing up what matters. 
Guys like Ira better figure something out pretty damned fast on how to employ more millenials and change the situations of the unemployed lest he wants captialism to die a screaming death.
