I hear more and more people complaining about shiftless hordes who don’t want to work. Maybe they know something I don’t, but when a supermarket near my house opened, 10,000 people applied for 400 jobs.
At a convenience market where I buy coffee, a cashier was complaining about her job, remarking how things are done differently at the other two places where she works.
There was a time when nearly everyone could work a single job, or perhaps two, and survive. Not so today. Wal-Mart has made billions for its founders but in Canton, Ohio, one store found it necessary to hold a food drive for its own employees.
The poor work, but still draw resentment.
John R. Kasich, the Republican governor of Ohio, told his cabinet, “I’m concerned about the fact there seems to be a war on the poor. That if you’re poor, somehow you’re shiftless and lazy.”
When the poor ask for more, the rich counter with charges of class warfare – hiding the fact that such a war actually is being waged in the opposite direction, and with great effectiveness.
I fully understand the propensity of the rich to take and hold all they can. Despite the efforts of Christianity and the other great religions, intense greed is endemic.
But why do so many average people believe that social programs primarily serve the indolent?
For sure, there are cheats. Lots. Nothing sends off a member of the middle class like watching someone use food stamps for groceries then buy cigarettes with cash. (This isn’t even cheating.) Such stories, sadly, prevent the recognition of real need.
In America, we are all tense and frustrated and filled with resentment and fear and sometime hate. For the angry Middle Class, the easiest target is the unemployed, who have come to represent a fault-filled force that siphons off taxes. Without such targets, many people would have a tough time getting through the day.
What can we do to stop this inner angst, this potentially explosive and destructive energy? We’d be so much better off without it.
Maybe the remedy is safe, secure, fair-wage jobs and the return of a culture of opportunity and equal advancement.
People find happiness in work, not welfare.
Corporations all over the U.S. are holding billions in cash. Might there be investment and jobs somewhere in those stashes? If we’ve all got to vent, why not send a little steam up instead of down? It’s time to stop wasting energy trying to disband a phantom nation of the lazy. It’s time to get to the real problem.
Lanny Morgnanesi
NotebookM 
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