How many lazy deadbeats does it take to screw in a lightbulb?
I know I haven’t been writing much lately, but there has been a medical crisis that has been happening with my Father-in-Law that has taken precidence over everything else. But now the situation has somewhat stabalized so now I can get back to the business at hand – and yes I will tell you all about it soon, which includes why I think that the people who are against health care reform are against health care…
While surfing the web in another fruitless job search I came across a Newsweek article entitled Are Fed-Up American Workers Getting Their Gumption Back? The article describes how the people who still have jobs are getting fed up with being taken advantage of by their employers. They are getting pissed that their bosses are getting bonuses and all of the perks like vacation and stock options, while they have to fight just to get some time off to take a child to a Doctor if they are sick, or get a fantastic performance review – yet have to endure a salary cut instead of a raise. Now I can understand how they can be miffed at their bosses. They have been made to feel afraid to speak up for themselves for fear of suddenly being out of a job. In this economy that is a reasonable fear.
However it looks as if the peasents are beginning to get angry enough to storm the bastile, as there are more and more grumblings coming from the rank-and-file that they are not happy. I read the article in full and I can understand why they are getting pissed at their bosses. After all their bosses are going on “junkets” to spas in California and calling it a “business expense” while the workers are searching their couch cushions for change to afford some Ramin Noodles until payday. I also read some of the comments made on the article, and there was one comment (isn’t there always just one with me) that got me going that was written by someone who identified himself as “William”:
As a small businessman I can tell you that Yes we are getting ready to vote back in Republicans. I have gone from 3 employees to 17 now. I did so because first the Reagan and then the Bush tax cuts allowed me to have enough profit left over after expenses for the banks to be willing to loan me money to expand.
The ‘Risk’ I take is that if my business fails everything I own is attached to it. My employees walk away and on to a new job. That risk is only worth it if I get a decent return after taxes. What really burns me is the premise that the tax rates were fair before the tax cuts. They were never fair to begin with. Now they are at least tolerable. I pay half of my employees contributions for social security and medicare. I pay for their workmans comp and state unemployment, both of which I am ineligible for. I pay both halves of my social security and medicare. Obama’s people are now floating the idea of taking the cap off of wages that pay social security and medicare…AND doing a needs assessment for the benefits. If you took the risks and built a business, established a 401K, invested wisely, stayed married, and enter retirement with assests you may not get any social security or a limited amount. That is just another tax. Federal, State and payroll taxes are close to 50% now. If Obama and the Dems in California have thier way I will pay nearly 60% of my income in taxes.
Screw that. I will cut back, meaning reduce jobs, create unemployment, before I pay over half my income in taxes. Same thing with Corporations, or should I say Co-operations. They are owned by the shareholders. They do what the shareholders say. Some if the biggest Shareholders are CalPers and the public employees unions. CalPers expects an 8.5% return on their investments. They tell management what they want. Management is given a bonus for getting it. If they told them to create as many jobs with as many benefits as possible, that is what they would do. 50% of American households are invested in mutual funds. Half this country expects a nice return on their investments. Than means The evil corporations are really just doing what your parents and grandparents and police, fire, and teachers want them to do: be profitable.
Want them to invest their cash horde? Give them reason to believe the government will support new investment. Give them an investment tax credit. It really encourages us to invest our own retirement money in this country. When will you dems get that? Investing money borrowed by the feds is not healthy and does not accomplish what you think it will. There is 2 trillion dollars in cash being held by Corps. Give them an incentive to invest and you will see new jobs, new goods and services being created…
Obviously I had to respond to this guy, and here was my response…
“Screw that. I will cut back, meaning reduce jobs, create unemployment, before I pay over half my income in taxes.”
William…
As someone who is one of the long term unemployed and not one of the “99ers”, you sound like the last boss that a person in my situation would want to work for.
You say that you would screw over your workforce if the Bush tax cuts go away like they’re supposed to. Well how does that make you any better than all of the larger corporations that have sent our jobs overseas and left us and our families high and dry?
What makes you think that if your business were to fail that your employees would be able to move on to other jobs? Businesses are making profits again, yet they are not creating jobs as they are supposed to since it would cut into their profit margin, keeping us “lazy deadbeats” out of work and hungry. If you think that the people who have jobs are pissed at their employers, that’s nothing compared to how we unemployed job seekers feel about buisness owners like you right now. We want to work, we want to support our families so that we can afford food. Yet the same Republicans that you want to vote back into office say that we are “a bunch of lazy deadbeats who don’t really want to work, who only want to sit around collecting unemployment and let the Government take care of them for the rest of their lives.”
Small problem with that…many of us have applied for work with these same people who have this opinion of us, only to be rejected by them one minuite and then insulted by them the next. Myself? It has been 2,797 days since I last held what a Tea-Partying Republican told me was a “real job”, in other words – a job that was not a comission-based sales job. In that time I have contacted 1,090 companies and small business owners such as yourself in an attempt to secure myself a steady job so that I can put food on my family’s table. Only 52 of you have brought me in for interviews, and none of you has offered me a job. So why don’t you explain to me how lazy I am?
If the Republicans are voted back in things are only going to get worse – not better. Jobs will again be cut and sent overseas, we will have more unemployment – not less, and Congressional Republicans, Tea Partiers and business owners like you will continue to write off the unemployed as absolutly and totally worthless, and not deserving of employment or assistance as the middle-class is disenfranchised.
So remind me not to waste my valuable time by applying to work for someone like you.You’re the last person that I or any of my unemployed friends should be wasting our time on.
Guys like this just make my blood boil…and my blood pressure is high enough, thank you. Just when I think that guys like this cannot surprise me anymore – they do. It’s bad enough that they tell us that we don’t want to work, but what makes it even worse is when they come out and say that they dojn’t want us to work – even if it is in a roundabout way.
It might be this way for a long time now, and that is not only going to suck for us but it will come back and bite them in the ass in the end.
Just watch and wait long enough – it will happen.
Until next time…
