Wednesday, August 19, 2009

Comfort

If your sitting there wondering how you'll pay that last overdue bill with a shrinking bank account and no job prospects stop for a moment and consider that if you were living in Zimbabwe you would now be a trillionaire. Not billion with a b but trillion. Bill Gates would have nothing on you. The zimdollar is now worth 2 trillion to the U.S. dollar. The one twist to the economic windfall would be that there's nothing to buy with all that loot and a bus ride costs 1 trillion. People there have gotten creative with their transactions relying more on U.S. dollars and South African currency. One woman wanting a bus ride presented the driver with a trussed chicken bound with wire. I wonder if she got her change in eggs or did she need exact fare?
And that leads me to the reason that this country will never fail by our own hand. We could be wiped out by some natural disaster but there are enough greedy bastards out there who rely on us to support their champaign and caviar lifestyles. They might make the best widgets in the world but they realize that if us poor schleps at the bottom can't afford their fancy widgets then they'll have to cancel the order for that bigger yacht they'd been drooling over. But who'd really want to be that wealthy? You'd have to worry about which house to occupy and were the caretakers really honest. Are my children safe or should I worry about kidnappers? And we think we're not that well off by American standards until we look in the storage closet and see all the crap we haven't used in years while some poor bastard on the other side of the globe is wondering if he'll make enough Zims to even eat today. So take solace because there's worse. There's always worse.

7 comments:

Anonymous said...

Honey, there's always worse. And these people have no knowledge that MORE people equals LESS of everything. And when you have nothing, it seems that the ability to get pregnant would be nearly impossible, and yet, the birth rates climb. If there was just some way we could send clean water, good food, and birth control pills.

As for America? There was a time when people lined up for government jobs that allowed them to feed and house their families. It we added the words "work for it" to the ability to get assistance, there'd be a riot across America and the ACLU would be leading the parade.

S.W. Anderson said...

I haven't heard much about large numbers of people being eager for assistance. Accepting it as a necessity, yes, but not lining up for it.

I heard awhile back that when they opened a new big-box store in the New York area, something like 2,000-plus people lined up for a shot at 300 and some jobs.

Demeur said...

Darlin, I've known a few people on welfare and I guarantee they didn't want to be there. You've bought into the republican "welfare queen" B.S.
We've had job fairs here where there was less than 50 jobs offered and 2000 people show up. Don't tell me Americans don't want to work. We work more than any nation on earth and that's a fact.

BBC said...

If your sitting there wondering how you'll pay that last overdue bill with a shrinking bank account and no job prospects...

I have never in my life had to deal with that. Deciding what job I wanted next was my biggest challenge most times.

Darlin, I've known a few people on welfare and I guarantee they didn't want to be there.

I happen to get around a lot and know a hell of a lot of people on welfare and other such programs, and believe me, they like it there and live pretty damn well off of the taxpayers.

And they get better health care than you do, for free!!!!

Tom Harper said...

I hope the Republicans don't find out about Zimbabwe's economic chaos. It'll give them a new goal to strive for. "This is what we want for America's general population."

jmsjoin said...

This is pretty telling and interesting Health care versus health care profits

S.W. Anderson said...

BBC, I'm sure you can find a bunch of people who prefer to be on welfare. I'm sure at least a few of those are lazy loafers and/or people with mental and emotional problems. They are misfits, literally. I'm also reasonably sure you would not be happy with some of them working for you or next to you, or worse, in charge of you, in one of your many jobs.

It's easy to pull out anecdotes about this guy was lazy all his life and that woman never worked out in a job because she didn't want to. Anecdotes don't always reflect the overall situation accurately. But to the extent those anecdotes are accurate, hitch up your big-boy britches and get over it. Such is life in a big, diverse country. You turn on a radio, don't be surprised to hear some static now and then. You go for a drive, don't be surprised if traffic is a hassle. You work and pay your taxes in a big diverse country, don't be surprised if a few people don't.

MOST people on welfare would rather have a job that offers decent pay, some benefits and the possibility of moving up if they do well. More than a few have tried for one, only be turned away time and again. Or, if they got the job, only to be laid off time and again. And no, it's not always their fault. It can be as simple as having another recession come along or their company gets bought out, and it's last hired, first fired.

Many people these days are what is known as discouraged workers. Their inability to get and keep a job is a big factor in why some rich and powerful people have become more rich and powerful. It shouldn't be that way, but it is that way.