He is between a rock and a hard place. His expected work output has risen by a large percentage since we last worked together while his pay has dropped, yet he is in a spot where if he decides that it is too much for him there are 20 guys waiting to take that job from him.
It is not only the unemployed who have it tough during tough times. Those who have jobs are working harder for less with the fear of unemployment and all it entails hanging over them, plus they are paying the taxes to support the help that we who are unemployed get.
I noted yesterday the complaints online about the delay in unemployment extension. When we forget who is paying for all of this we become a society unrecognizable to our ancestors who came here with nothing.
In Ayaan Hirsi Ali’s new book Nomad she writes about how she was granted 1200 Dutch Guilders (this was before the Dutch switched to the Euro) a month AND a loan of 4000, guilders more that was paid back by withholding 100 guilders a month from the 1200. Thus as a refugee she got 5200 guilders up front and a further 1100 a month (plus housing). She talks about how many people who were granted the same loan ended up sending it back to Africa or the middle east to pay smugglers to bring in more of the family to start the cycle again. All paid for by the Dutch taxpayer. As she puts it on page 177:
Practically everyone I knew had built up overwhelming debts. They applied for credit cards, magical pieces of plastic that meant you could just sign a tiny piece of paper and walk out of any shop with whatever you wanted. They received endless stipends from the social services–for unemployment, for child support, for various medical benefits–and yet in almost every conversation they would lament the miserly amount of money they had to live on , wholly oblivious to the sacrifice of the society that was paying for it all.
They had no idea, in other words, of the obligations of a citizen, let alone the complexities of the welfare state.
Many of the people who she is describing had be raised in tribal cultures. They neither knew of nor understood the basic financial concepts they were dealing with. She herself didn’t know what a savings account or a loan was. We however were born here and have not only education but access to a greater source of knowledge on demand than the kings and presidents of old did. We have no excuse.
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These are tough times we’re living in.
What makes it worse is the way that DC is putting its boot to the neck of the economy, which should have rebounded long ere now. When costs to corporations go down and productivity goes up, they can make a profit, sell their products for less, or hire more people (or some combination thereof). All of those things push the economy up. So, you should in theory work more for less money for a bit, but then increased productivity should push the economy back up, thus lessening the pressure on employees and giving them more options.
Not so much when anyone who makes more than $250,000/year is going to get taxed more, or when employers take $100 million write-downs for ObamaCare.