At National Review Jillian Kay Melchior describes how her own experience of unemployment benefits proved to her that "extending [unemployment benefits] contributes to the underlying economic problem." Now I have to say, I was hoping at the start that she'd try to excite her audience by telling us how she used your taxpayers dollars to buy Cadillacs and T-bone steaks. But alas, Melchior had a miserable time on UI. And it's easy to see why -- she doesn't seem cut out for the vagaries of everyday life:
I lost my job in January 2011. It was my first permanent job out of college, and losing it was mentally and financially traumatic. I spent the cab ride home, box in hands, fighting tears, and then worrying that I should have taken the subway instead because taxis are expensive and my income source had just vanished.I think my first "permanent" job in New York was as a messenger, and while losing it was financially disadvantageous, I wasn't "traumatized" so much as momentarily hassled, then stoked that I didn't have to get up early the next day. And I wasn't even getting unemployment! That would have made it an awesome day. (I haven't collected UI since the early 90s. That's how deep my devotion to the free market goes!)
Anyway, Uncle Sam offered Melchior the dole and she accepted it as Fantine in Les Miz accepted a life of prostitution: "The Internet consensus is that unemployment isn’t welfare," she chokes, "but it felt like it to me." So different from this hell I'm living/So different now from what it seemed!
Melchior found out that the lousy benefits weren't enough to live on -- and yet insists they were "a disincentive to work." How? Because when she got freelance assignments, UI would cut back on her benefits! In other words, if someone else paid her money, the government gave her less money, instead of letting her accept fixed benefits and keep whatever she earned on top of it. Here I sympathize with Melchior and look forward to her next essay, which I expect will endorse Martin Luther King's national minimum income plan. It's only fair!
Plus, humiliating as that was, Melchior was also forced to observe the law when she claimed benefits, which she counts a further humiliation -- "figuring all this out felt shamefully like working the system," much like when employers force her to take sexual harassment seminars and it makes her feel like a rapist.
As you might imagine, it all worked out for Melchior: "In the end, I took the risk and did as much freelance writing as I could manage. It paid off — in fact, it led to a job" -- Yay wingnut welfare! But the experience scarred her, and she wants to spare other broke people the same ordeal: "A safety net can fast become a trap," she tells the folks to whom she would deny money for food and shelter, "and I wonder how many unemployed people who could be somehow engaged in the economy are waiting things out, taking their benefits and avoiding the risk of effort while they wait for something to open up."
Let her wonder; such are the mysteries of the human heart. What I wonder is why Melchior didn't show the courage of her convictions, refuse to take the benefits, and proudly starve in the street.
Starving would have been the least she could do, to show others how to be a real Republican because personal responsibility! I also like that the Republicans are now framing poverty as a personal crisis, I suppose as part of that personal responsibility thing?
ReplyDeleteShe benefitted from UI, but it made her feel kinda like a moocher, therefore: UI shouldn't exist? I actually looked at her essay at NR, and she's even stupider and more hypocritical than Roy's observations suggest. Disgusting Megan Arglebargle wannabe.
ReplyDeleteSo, she lost her job, got UI to keep her from being on the street, and it sustained her long enough to get a job she likes. Wow, that's...terrible. Clearly we should ditch this system that worked exactly the way it's supposed to.
ReplyDelete"Sympathizing with the unemployed? Ew, gross!" -- Jillian Kay Melchior
ReplyDeleteShorter Jillian:
ReplyDelete"But... but... I'm WHITE!!11!"
I'm sad she didn't do the responsible thing and start a multi-billion dollar technology company. I mean we are always being told that poverty is a sign of deficient moral character and that wealth is showered on deserving, hard working Randian supermen. And since she isn't rich and even collected unemployment, clearly reading her article is the equivalent of taking investment advice from a bum or moral instruction from a drug addict.
ReplyDeleteI actually feel a tiny bit of sympthy for her. No, wait, hear me out. She has put her finger on a very scary and problemtatic aspect of UI benefits--that they can phase out before you are in a secure new job. And that is all the more painfully true now that real, secure, 9-5 jobs are themselves dissapearing. Its one thing to imagine that UI "tides you over" from one living wage paying job to another. Its another to realize that as a free lance writer UI will kinda, sorta, tide you over but if you look like you are getting a little temp job here or temp job there you might lose access to UI without being able to regain it. I mean, I think there is a very terrifying psychological cliff there for everyone. It doesn't mean that people wouldn't take REAL jobs if they could get them. But it ought to mean and probably does mean that people are less inclined to take shit or fake jobs or temporary jobs.
ReplyDeleteBut it *should* mean that. UI benefits that allowed people to be a little choosy would, if they put pressure on the labor market, force low wage jobs to offer either better conditions (less brutal shift work) or better wages. They would not have any effect on good jobs because people will always prefer a good job with benefits to UI payments.
Well, to be fair, when you're the most powerful of the Ainur I can see why taking UI would feel like a step down.
ReplyDeleteThey reall believe that evil lies in the hearts of the worker, who goes in an instant from being a virtuous, self reliant, capitalist actor in a free market to enslaved by the drug and passion filled scent of government cheese.
ReplyDeleteY'know, it's not to late, Jill. You could still cut a check to the government and pay back all that undeserved generosity.
ReplyDeleteYou'd be just like Russel Crowe in that Ron Howard flick, except with less charisma.
But here's the true horror: if it's working for her, what if it's also working for a black family somewhere? (cue dramatic chord)
ReplyDeleteI spent the cab ride home, box in hands, fighting tears, and then
ReplyDeleteworrying that I should have taken the subway instead because taxis are
expensive
Can you imagine the pain she felt as she contemplated the possibility that, in the future, she might have to sit in the same train car as those people?
Here's conservative Jillian Melchior explaining why she was unemployed:
ReplyDeleteThe economy clearly isn’t generating the jobs young people like me need — in large part because of the hostile and uncertain environment businesses face. From Obamacare to EPA overregulation to the proposed minimum-wage hikes, there are myriad well-intentioned policies that have resulted in less work for those who seek it.
Not. her. fault. It's all the government's fault she couldn't bootstrap herself. It's because of Obamacare and the EPA. Never mind that she lost her job in 2011 before Obamacare was even phased in, or that EPA regulations have no bearing on the industry she was in, or that corporations were hauling in record receipts the same year she was let go. It just feels better to blame this on liberal policies. Plus, it pays better to do so.
Remember Andrew Biggs from Roy's last post who said that it's progressives who blame others when something bad happens to them? Guess he's full of shit.
Pew found that...only 11
ReplyDeletepercent of 18-to-24-year-olds considered their job their career.
Well, that's their fault for not having the fortitude to be
a Thomas L. Rhodes Fellow for the Franklin Center for Government and Public Integrity
I was unemployed from November '12-March '13. During that time, I was on UI but took various freelance/weekly contract gigs when I could; through former colleagues, through temp agencies, anything everything. I wasn't dissuaded from doing this even with my ObamaBucks because:
ReplyDelete1) Even the shittiest of assignments always paid me more than UI.
2) I'm a friggin human being who needs self-worth. I don't think I'm out of the ordinary when I note that working gave me that.
These people are bizarre.
Doesn't conservative ideology demand that she start driving the cab? Boy, these people confuse me.
ReplyDeleteIt's when they start with a normal situation — I lost my job and it was scary! So I took UI, then thankfully got back on my feet again, but not without feeling the shame built into the system. — and end up the villain in a fucking Dickens story that they mystify me the most.
ReplyDeleteI first read it as "I spent the cab ride home, box in hands, fighting Bears" and I thought "Woah, this is gonna be good!"
ReplyDeleteBut, nope, another rightie wanting to pull the ladder up behind them. It's a bug AND a feature!
I'm with you she should set a good example for all her gop/teabag followers and give the money back. You know what, she didn't even have to apply for benefits, she should have let them go to someone more deserving. Send her a*2 china or the middle east, like Syria or iran...
ReplyDeleteI don't know what she's bitching about. Her free, taxpayer-provided training as a moocher now allows her to use those mooching skills for a lucrative job:
ReplyDeleteObama Phone' Fraud Exposed: Reporter Gets 3 Free Phones!
Peesawork.
..."I took my private jet out to Bermuda for a much-needed relaxing weekend... then I started worrying because private jets are expensive..."
ReplyDeleteWell, if it's not a personal crisis, then it's a structural one, and that would mean the government would have to address the structure, and that would be social engineering, and we can't have that. So it's personal!
ReplyDeleteThat article is something. She reports that she signed up again and again for free phones -- committing fraud eight times at one kiosk -- knowing she wasn't qualified... and when they send her the phones, it's shame on them?
ReplyDeleteI spent the cab ride home, box in hands, fighting tears, and then worrying ...
ReplyDeleteWow. Such graceful prose.
Like the Obama Administration itself (who, as wingnut dogma now goes, is responsible for the recession itself, for TARP, and probably for 9/11), Obamacare's damage applies retroactively to any problems the nation has faced since 1981.
ReplyDeleteShe's on it!
ReplyDeleteA safety net can fast become a trap, and I wonder how many unemployed people who could be somehow engaged in
ReplyDeletethe economy are waiting things out, taking their benefits and avoiding
the risk of effort while they wait for something to open up.
well, at least the straw men don't have to worry about applying for unemployment.
and a Robert Novak fellow!
ReplyDeleteShe's a human sad trombone.
ReplyDeleteThe fraudster is a fellow at the Center for Public Integrity. That's beautiful.
ReplyDeleteYou actually have to actively sign up for UI. So she sought it out, despite how much it pained her to do so. What a joke.
ReplyDeleteWhat was the job she lost? Another wingnut welfare position? But wingnut think-tanks are a huge growth industry, so I don't understand why they're letting her go.....
ReplyDeleteShe is a graduate of Hillsdale College...
ReplyDeleteThis explains a lot. Hillsdale is a Petri dish for right-wing "journalists." Teachers at Hillsdale include John J. Miller, Mark Steyn, Stephen Hayes, and, well here, let it be a fun surprise...
I've only been on UI once in my life, and it was when I worked for a dispatch labor union in a specialized field. I went on UI when it got slow - like for maybe a month with literally ZERO work, and my seniority was so low down that I missed out on even the little jobs that might come in. But because I was registered with the dispatch union, the state of WA did not require me to apply for and take jobs outside my field.
ReplyDeleteUsually I worked so much, and with OT, that when a dry spell came I was grateful for it and didn't bother applying for UI, but that one summer it was very very dry, so I signed up.
This was in 1981 or so; I don't know if the state of WA still has the exemption for dispatch unions.
But here's a question, then - do you take another job at 1/2 the pay, and then miss out on the real work when it comes in? Or take the low paying job and then bail on them when the dispatcher calls? Because our work calls came in with no advance notice, it was "Tomorrow at eight am, report to....."
For me the calculation was, take the UI - and hope the real work comes back soon. I don't think I was wrong.
If a safety net is a trap, the lack of a safety net is the opposite: freedom itself. You'll never get tangled up in no net, quid pro quo. In fact you'll be so emaciated that you'll be able to wriggle out of just about any trap.
ReplyDeleteHoly shit, it's IRL Debbie Downer.
ReplyDeleteAnyway, Uncle Sam offered Melchior the dole
ReplyDeleteActually, the State of New York offered Melchior the dole, paid for in part by her employer. Unless she stayed on it for a real long time, none of it was Uncle Sam's money.
At the very least she passed up the opportunity to solicit some free market bromides from the cabbie.
ReplyDeleteSo, it was terrible that she had to accept UI, and then it was terrible that they cut back on it when she got work? If this isn't a case of "the food is terrible--and such small portions!" I don't know what is.
ReplyDeleteIf only she'd married Pajama Boy, they'd be rich!
ReplyDeleteHoly shit.
ReplyDeleteThe risk of effort, or the effort of risk? If its both risky and full of effort it is not, in fact, easy to find a job. Especially when there are no jobs. Looking for a job when there are no jobs is not, in fact, anything other than pointless make-work. Why shouldn't people take UI and wait out a dry spell in the economy. Wishing won't make more jobs appear.NOr will hunting for them.
ReplyDeleteThe scarecrow industry has really hit a downturn.
ReplyDeleteOh, my.
ReplyDeleteQuoth the head of the Journalism program: “He’s the best Twitter user I know,” Miller said.
What an encomium.
I'd also like to point out that this is in a long line of dishonorable mentions from unmarried and no kids or dependents or mortgage holding whiners. What if you have kids, a house, and dependents? UI benefits might be the only thing between you and homelessness, let alone starvation. I just don't get the insistence that everyone can tighten their belt or move home and sleep on mommy's couch. what if Mommy and Daddy are already sleeping on *your* couch and you are also supporting your children, or a disabled spouse? Homelessness is pretty much forever, at this point. We should be doing everything we can as a society to make sure that a temporary work loss doesn't put more people out on the street.
ReplyDeleteIt's hard to sympathize with someone whose first instinct is to take a cab home from work in New York.
ReplyDeleteAnd they've got the William F. Buckley archives.
ReplyDeleteWell, I'm on unemployment so I can tell you two things: 1) I am legally required to apply for jobs and document this (so yes, make-work), and 2) I do not anticipate the economy improving significantly before my benefits run out (which will be soon).
ReplyDeleteBut I do have an interview tomorrow for a long-term contract position, so, y'know, wish me luck.
But if you only had invested in hay futures in 2008, you'd be a rich, rich man!
ReplyDeleteAll the best, Tri!
ReplyDeleteI'll keep my fingers crossed for you--which will make typing difficult but you are worth it! All the best, a Tguerrant says. I really hope this turns into something good for you.
ReplyDeleteMaybe it wasn't her first instinct? Maybe she was planning on going down into the subway but, you know, poor people?
ReplyDelete"The Internet consensus is that unemployment isn’t welfare," she chokes, "but it felt like it to me."
ReplyDeleteMelchior, UI is insurance. That's what the "I" stands for. Look at all your paychecks -- there's a line there showing pay deducted for UI. You've been paying into it, just like your 401k, so relax. I mean, I'm sure the people who comprised "the Internet consensus" explained this to you... but you were so committed to "feeling" they were wrong, you couldn't see it. I'm trying again now, in case it's easier to see when not crying in shame. You poor self-loathing / self-righteous dingbat.
That's why Tom Friedman writes for the New York Times and Jillian Melchior writes for the NRO. She lacks the boldness, the daring, the correspondent's instincts for inventing quotes while minimizing the tip.
ReplyDeleteBalls to that. No twitter-er could ever be better than Zodiac Motherfucker.
ReplyDeleteSomeone once told me that freedom's just another word for nothing left to lose...
ReplyDeleteHmmm, yes. According to her bio, before becoming a Robert Novak fellow, "She has previously worked as an opinion writer and History Page editor at The Daily, an assistant online editor at Commentary, and a Bartley Editorial Page Fellow at The Wall Street Journal Asia."
ReplyDeletethere's a lot of what matt taibbi called "peasant mentality" around this: a prime example being glenn beck's exhortations back a few years ago that if you were jobless, you need to just go and get a job at a fast food restaurant or a retail outlet like k-mart. which is fine if that's what you want to do, but i think it's safe to say that people actually really like to work - if that work is emotionally and spiritually rewarding, they feel that it's valued, that they have some control and a say over the circumstances of said work, and that their whole person is being utilized in that work. peasant mentality, which i think you could say is really just the inverse of an authoritarian personality, says otherwise.
ReplyDeleteFurther nosing about - The Daily, an news app owned by Murdoch's News Corp., launched on Feb. 2, 2011, at the Solomon R. Guggenheim Museum in NYC. It went on the watch list in July 2012 because it was losing $30 million a year. On Dec. 3, 2012, it was put out of its misery on Dec. 3, 2012, for lack of audience. Sounds about right.
ReplyDeleteThey may have offed the History Page editor well before the coup de gras, since as we all know, David Barton has the history franchise locked up.
brain just went splodey
ReplyDeleteJames O'Keefe committed voter fraud for your sins!
ReplyDeleteThis lady, whose edcuation consists of a bachelor's in political science from a small 3rd tier regional liberal arts college, and no appreciable skills other than writing stupid shit on the internet: "The economy clearly isn’t generating the jobs young people like me need"
ReplyDeleteThe dude from two stories ago: "This is a group of people who graduated with degrees in Lesbian Dance Theory and then were surprised they didn't get six-figure paycheck out of college."
At least knowing some Lesbian Dance Theory might prevent you from getting your toes stepped on at a pride parade...
Wait a minute! Is this our Jill? She's married!! Why didn't her conservative provider husband provide for her instead of permitting her to mooch on the taxpayers like some lazy trollop?
ReplyDeleteI'm wondering why she didn't conserve her precious, precious cash by offering to blow the cabbie in exchange for the ride. Not much of an entrepreneur, is she?
ReplyDeleteIt's insurance. Pooled risk. Pooled with other people. That's socialism.
ReplyDeleteThose look to be the cheapest cellphones imaginable; the same sort of LG candybar phone that Net10 or Tracphone gets a whole $9.99 for. They're so goddamned cheap that checking for fraud would cost more than anyone could possibly steal. How many 250 minute-per-month phones is our hypothetical criminal going to maintain? Nothing like going through the eight phones in your pockets to see which one you just got a text on. Christ, what a waste of skin she is.
ReplyDeleteNever mind the surprise guest lecturer. I want the answer to this question: What the fuck does Mark Steyn teach? Pouting? Sniveling? Homophobic insults? Being a pathetic toady from a completely different country?
ReplyDeleteGood luck! I've collected UI a couple times; it's not any fun.
ReplyDeleteAh, the Thomas Friedman approach. Broke? Unemployed? Why not start a business? And if that doesn't work, you can always get a media corporation to comp your profligate, jet-set lifestyle.
ReplyDeleteI don't know why more people don't do this.
ZMF is on Twitter? I know him only from the AV Club commentariat.
ReplyDeleteBartley Editorial Page Fellow at The Wall Street Journal Asia
ReplyDeleteYou know, if you're in a position where you can get a national newspaper to pay for you to dick around in another country (at a time when actual reporters often can't get a travel budget) and report on things that you really don't seem to be qualified to discuss? If that's the case, then you have led a charmed life. Just because your majestic aura lost some of its luster doesn't mean you have a hard-luck story to share.
Goddamn it, I'm angry again. This is some wingnut welfare brat waving something in my face that I'm never going to have, while saying "But I thought it would be bigger!"
See also: the college weed dealer who makes as much money as they can, while they can, then gleefully rats out their dealer when they're finally busted.
ReplyDeleteProfessor Jonah of Liberal Fasciology! One credit in twelve days sounds sweet, but you probably have to do all his research for him.
ReplyDeleteFor the love of God, Melchior!
ReplyDeleteNext she'll be ramming it down your throat and you will be grateful its not bigger.
ReplyDeleteIndeed I do wish you the best of luck. I was on UI for 4 months in 2012 -- I'm grateful for it, but it was no fun.
ReplyDelete(Office hours: 6-7 PM, chip aisle at Kroger
ReplyDeleteOffice waiting area: Air freshener aisle, Kroger)
Good luck, Triplanetary!
ReplyDeleteYeah, Hillsdale's a doozy:
ReplyDelete"The president of Hillsdale College took heat from several lawmakers
during a hearing today in which he said state officials visited his
campus to determine whether enough “dark ones” were enrolled."
That guy replaced the guy who stepped down after his daughter-in-law, with whom he had been having a 20-year-long affair, killed herself outside the campus arboretum.
Melchior, eh? Isn't she heir to a vast myrrh fortune?
ReplyDeleteDo they have special stacks containing all of the racist shit he wrote in the late 50s and early 60s? Or did they try to shove all of it down the memory hole?
ReplyDeleteDamn... I wonder if we've found Chunky Reese Witherspoon...
ReplyDeleteWhat I wonder is why Melchior didn't show the courage of her convictions, refuse to take the benefits, and proudly starve in the street.
ReplyDeleteShe's following the example of her role model, Ayn Rand.
Set texts? *shudder*
ReplyDeleteHe can do all those things, Sir!
ReplyDeleteBest of luck, 3P.
ReplyDeleteYou have to run somebody over to get that distinction.
ReplyDeleteWell, that and Friedman has the good sense to marry serious money.
ReplyDeleteLet's give amnesty to 22 million illegal aliens - that should fix the unemployment situation.
ReplyDelete"The Internet consensus is that unemployment isn’t welfare," she chokes, "but it felt like it to me." That's just begging to be made into a First World Problems meme.
ReplyDeleteNo, you see, because if she hadn't taken the benefits, they might have gone to someone less deserving.
ReplyDeleteYes, because we all know no one hires an illegal.
ReplyDeleteSpeaking of, it's choice that the fellowship is named after Eugene Pulliam, whose journalistic stylings helped make Indianapolis the shithole it was for so many years.
ReplyDeleteUnemployment benefits are supposed to tide people over between meaningful economic activity, but collecting them can be a job in itself. I wasn’t being “paid” $405 a week to be as productive as I possibly could. I was being paid to apply for jobs, and I risked losing pay by making the extra effort to provide for myself.
ReplyDeleteYeah, gee, who knew earning income would disqualify you for unemployment benefits? I agree with her, the government should pay people a weekly stipend until they land on their feet.
Figuring all this out felt shamefully like working the system.
"A young woman, alone in a cold world! Only unemployment could keep her warm! Would desire ruin her? Exploitation Cinema proudly presents, Melchoir Sings Desire!"
Break a leg -- and I mean that in a good way!
ReplyDeleteJust a baffling, baffling article. This is one of those rare instances where the thought processes that motivated an article are so alien to my own or any I can grasp with my imagination that it just about defies rebuttal.
ReplyDeleteActually, this is such a weird article that I am going to call out the authenticity of some of it. I have on rare occasions met people who are so prideful that getting something like UI benefits would pain them like our author is claiming it pained her (I work with the homeless). Here's the difference: those people, even when in dire circumstances, don't ever get UI benefits. They never sign up for them.
I think the author is genuinely ashamed. In her worldview, she's ashamed that she was incompetent enough to get let go and to need these benefits in the first place; she's ashamed that these benefits might act as a kind of locator device, forever pegging where she exists on the social ladder; she's ashamed she was weak enough to sign up for them, to go through the whole complex and demeaning process; and she is just as ashamed that they worked exactly like they were supposed to.
The thing is, it is depressing to learn that you aren't thought of as important or unique, that you can be thrown so casually into the teeming anonymous masses, that at any moment what you've come to think of as your life can be shredded and reformed into something even small, more fragile and more chaotic. So many people are living on a knife edge, and it's sane to find that scary.
But she's a conservative. And for conservatives near-sightedness is a mark of character, the laudable simplicity of never making things more complicated then they have to be. The proximate cause of her shame is, technically, the UI benefits. Therefore, UI benefits are the problem. Oh well. At least she's still young.
But this misses a central construct of the right-wing morality machine: The only possible reason someone is poor is because they are morally deficient. Thus, they must be punished, and the most appropriate punishment for being poor is to be made even more impoverished. This is especially to be applied to single mothers and their offspring.
ReplyDeleteYou'll note that conservatives completely lose their minds when they discover that poor people have things like telephones, refrigerators, access to indoor plumbing, and clothing that is not rags.
Remember these are the people who tried to blame Ruby Ridge on Bill Clinton, and even more ridiculously, on Janet Reno. Reality isn't their strong point, which is why they're so keen on creating their own.
ReplyDeleteWin! Please collect your internet at the front desk.
ReplyDeleteUncle Sam contains multitudes.
ReplyDeleteThere's a pretty common school of thought among internet conservatives: all the good things done by the government come from the county or the state, while all the bad things done by government come straight from Obama's devilish quill pen. This winter I've seen people blame poor snow clearing, a completely municipal responsibility, on Obama.
Everyone knows that illegals only eat sunlight, live in the trees, and are clad in fine robes woven from reeds and moonbeams. No illegal could possibly need his taxes done or want to go skiing or be in the market for a new refrigerator; what need do those magical, welfare-collecting creatures have for such trifles?
ReplyDeleteNo, there's not a wingnut welfare college, there's at least a dozen of them. From the allegedly respectable schools like Dartmouth, BYU and the University of Chicago Economics department to middlebrow places like Grove City College, Patrick Henry, and George Mason down to places you wouldn't recommend to your dimwitted and mean nephew like Liberty University, Orel Roberts University and The King's College (New York). There are enough wingnut welfare colleges to form their own football conference; The Poison Ivy League.
ReplyDeleteI've been meaning to write about this over at my own place, but since I'm avoiding real work I'll do it here. I agree with you, Dex, but I think about it in the other direction. Its the return of a new Subsistence Economy in which, for the poor, there is to be nothing left over after mere subsistence, not even what Marx called the "replacement value of the worker" or the tiny amount needed to let people survive and replicate themselves. The ideal worker to our new Feudal Overlords (because this is also the new Feudalism without any sense of noblesse oblige or feudal obligation to one's subordinates) is one who is educated enough for the job, in debt, non unionized, married but no children. The "married" part enables the worker to survive better and cost the employer less since there is another salary there to make up for the minimum wage or part time work that is all tha tis offered. Ideally the worker has no children because they cost more and get sick and cost labor time and productivity.
ReplyDeleteBut there should be no expectation on the part of the worker for bread *and* roses. Nothing but bare subsistence and the right to beg for another part time job.
Somebody explain this to me, I feel like an absolute dope.
ReplyDeleteThe best twitterer of all time was the escaped snake from the Brooklyn? zoo. Hands down (as it were).
ReplyDeleteNRO is so old they actually have a latrine out back, for just this purpose.
ReplyDeleteI had forgotten about Hillsdale. Its worth everyone's while to read that link. Here's my favorite line among many favorites:
ReplyDelete"A former senior-level employee of Hillsdale calls him “one of the great fund-raisers in the history of political ideologies.” Also, he had a "free range phallus."
People are really confused about who pays for what, and why.
ReplyDeleteI was oppressed by an internet consensus! Help, Help! I'm being oppressed by anonymous, crowd sourced, comfortable thoughts being beamed into my head!
ReplyDeleteHere's another thing which your very good essay made me think. She can never remove the stain of having been unemployed--that, to her, is like falling in caste rank and becoming an untouchable-- but she can forever excorcise the demons of her weakness and shame by retrospectively rejecting the UI benefits that tided her over. Thus her new story ("I survived the seduction of UI and became a better, stronger, conservative because of it") fits neatly into a "once I was a sinner" model of conservative thought. In fact, for conservatives who don't swing that way (are not actually evangelicals) she will eventually pose as a brave ethnographer and journalist of the underclass and will pretend that she applied for UI and lived on it as a lark, to determine how easy it was for fraudsters to gain access to it (a la obamaphones).
ReplyDeleteyeah you're absolutely right. the future, as , says, is dubai.
ReplyDeleteI hope you nailed it!
ReplyDeleteOr, failing that, why not marry a really, really rich person?
ReplyDeleteYeah, I was on unemployment for about six months, until last April, and I ran into the same problem as she did. The fix is easy: Change the rules so your benefits only go down when your benefits plus whatever freelance income you get totals more than you were making at your last job.
ReplyDeleteI can see why this idea escaped a conservative: it would actually work to help people who aren't on wingnut welfare; it deprives Melchior of her allusions to THOSE people; and before coming up with it I had to think for a whole minute and a half.
I really wish I understood that.
ReplyDeleteSometimes I get the feeling that something like three quarters of the modern economy is make-work, and keeping it healthy requires money to be moved around so swiftly and in such over-complicated ways as to obscure the fact that most of us are Useless Eaters by any objective standard.
ReplyDeleteAnd yes, I very much count myself among those three quarters. In fact, it's probably even worse than that. I spend my professional life providing a service that helps people play the stock market - so not only do I produce nothing of value, but I am part of the elaborate smokescreen meant to conceal the fact that people like me produce nothing of value! :P
(don't get me wrong, now. Being a bleeding-heart liberal and all, I'm all for everyone getting to be an Eater, whether they are Useless or not. It just makes me wince very hard indeed at conservatives gushing about how they do REAL work, not like those liberal-arts weenies)
I'm sure that paragraph got her a pat on the head, a gold star and a new job.
ReplyDeleteWow! Suddenly, upon my reading that, she's won me over - I'm now pissed off that my tax dollars went to keeping her from having to get a real job.
ReplyDeleteThere must be plenty of insurance salespeople who are Republicans. Maybe one of them can explain to Melchior that buying insurance (as she did when the paid into the fund while she was working) is really just buying peace of mind. Peace of mind as in "OMG, I lost my job. How will I afford food? Wait a second. I'll use my unemployment insurance policy!! Whew!!"
ReplyDeleteTaking this further-- because I do think religious/mythologizing forms are important to conservative thought-- there are basically two ways one can go about deserving something: you can either take what you want by force like a warrior, or you can earn it through suffering like a saint.
ReplyDeleteI think these forms are operative even in irreligious conservatives. Remember that tongue bath Kevin Williamson gave Mitt Romney? The one about how he's this tribal chief or something? I don't think Kevin is religious, but I do think he essentially believes the Mittens of the world are a kind of paladin of the high capitalism set, and whatever they have they earned as spoils as it were.
What about people who can't be paladins? They must suffer to earn what they want. Not ordinary suffering either, they must be heroic in their suffering. It must exalt both the sufferer and those who finally by their charity relieve the saint of his suffering. Unfortunately, it takes an awful lot of abasement and suffering to turn it into something heroic rather than just sad.
Where does the welfare state fit into this view? It doesn't. There is no heroism in UI benefits or SNAP or TANF or whatever. That's confusing. So what is it?
It's temptation. Welfare softens us, it temps us from our call to a higher moral purpose. It's what conservatives think about stimulus spending for example (are we sure we've suffered enough?). When conservatives claim that the social safety net has enervated lower class Americans over the last 60 years you rarely see them try to defend this claim with evidence. But what are they supposed to say? How can you quantify corruption of the soul?
There's a story about St Francis I think in The Recognitions. Old Frankie is walking down the road when suddenly he has an impulse to lessen his austerities (of course he thinks this is satan talking). To combat this he hurls himself off the road and into a patch of rose bushes. First off: ouch. Secondly: Jill knows that's what she should have done. So she's going to have to spend some time making up for that in St Ronald of the Wingnuts convent.
It's a good joke! The three wise men were named Balthazar, Caspar, and Melchior. I learned this Tuesday morning from a college radio show run by two comedians who use fake voices for the entire three hours of their program. No one could name the wise men so no one won the tickets, I think.
ReplyDeleteIt's very geeky. 'Melchior' is very similar in spelling/pronunciation to 'Melkor', which in Tolkien's mythology is the original name of Morgoth, the Satan-equivalent (Sauron was originally one of Morgoth's minions). Ainur is the collective name for the various deities; Melkor was one before he fell to evil and was renamed Morgoth.
ReplyDelete(random side note: my computer's spell-check recognizes Morgoth as a valid word but not Melkor)
Ah, a wise guy, eh?
ReplyDeleteWith all of the associated bullshit, maybe the EPA should step in and regulate her business as a feedlot.
ReplyDeleteoooookay. (steps slowly backwards.)
ReplyDeleteSeriously, thanks for breaking it down for me.
Wow. Would totally like to throw myself into a bed of thorny rosebushes with this comment, roll around, and emerge bloody but sweet smelling.
ReplyDeleteShe has put her finger on a very scary and problemtatic aspect of UI
ReplyDeletebenefits--that they can phase out before you are in a secure new job.
Yeah, and whose fault is that?
Eh, I would've gone with something about not having any more gold, frankincense, or myrrh to fall back on, thanks to those dusky moochers with the suspiciously early baby.
ReplyDeleteI'll keep my fingers crossed for you--which will make typing difficult but you are worth it!
ReplyDeleteSedcondig what Aimkai sajd.
I first read it as "I spent the cab ride home, box in hands, fighting Bears"
ReplyDeleteSo, "fighting bears" is what the young people are calling it nowadays?
Anyway, feel free to elaborate upon the theme. I'd donate some unspecified fraction of a BitCoin to read it.
Well, I knew about the conservative evangelical places, and King's College is just a notch or two above being a scam. But the fact that there would be any legit institution that would so enthusiastically embrace Jonanism? Astonishing.
ReplyDeleteOh, absolutely. The solution to every single right wing plaint, except those based on their version of morality of course, is simply to fix what doesn't work. If the "problem" is the cost of fraudelent obamaphone use the solution is not to get rid of the program but to make sure that right wing interns at spurious institutes can't abuse the program. And ditto if the problem is that UI benefits for the unemployed get scary as you come to the end of them and the temporary job market hasn't picked up. Solution: let them relate to the job market more effectively by extending them until real jobs are available or let the worker keep the benefit while taking on part time jobs.
ReplyDeleteWell, shit, I really should have read all the way to the end before making my Magi joke, shouldn't I? In penance, I think I'll cut off my hair and pawn my watch.
ReplyDeleteWorse, to me anyway, is the pushing down of conservative politics (and the assorted silliness that inevitably comes with it) into even municipal government.
ReplyDeleteIn the bedroom community suburb I live in I started seeing city council candidates "endorsed by the Republican Party", which is notable because council seats are non-partisan. Fast forward a few years and now yard signs commonly tout a candidate's conservative bona fides, e.g. anti-abortion, anti-gun control.
Try having a conversation with your professional, educated, ostensibly intelligent conservative neighbor as to why the real estate agent who was elected to a two year council term can't close down the Urgent Care even if they did do abortions (which of course they don't), or why it is fucking stupidity times infinity for the same councilman to join the nuts from the local Catholic church in picketing the same non-abortion performing medical clinic, because babies.
Sending lucky thoughts and good vibes your way. Lykke til!
ReplyDeleteAh yeah, that's about how I see it too. Let's Put the Future Behind Us- J. Womack 1996
ReplyDeleteOnly Douchehat knows for sure!
ReplyDeleteyeah, do as I say not as I do
ReplyDeleteIt had some stiff competition from that monkey in the parka though.
ReplyDeleteHope you get it.
ReplyDelete"But it ought to mean and probably does mean that people are less inclined to take shit or fake jobs or temporary jobs."
ReplyDeleteOf course, shit/fake/temporary jobs aren't obligated to hire you, even if you were earning more before previously, because they'll expect you to split ASAP.
There's a weird idea that if you've had a job that paid $X, you can automatically walk into any job that pays < $X, so the unemployed mid-career engineer would have her pick of jobs if she would only lower her standards.
Good luck! I ran out of unemployment last month. I have a first phone interview with a certain fruit-logo'd company on Monday. Fingers crossed.
ReplyDeleteBroadway!
ReplyDeleteTo be fair, maybe she had a lot of crap to take home, which would be a pain in the ass on the subway.
ReplyDeleteIt's either that or "Pinsk or Minsk" And if "I have one question- Is it good for...." is thrown into the mix, it covers most everything like a cheap synthetic blanket. Very little escapes that bailiwick!
ReplyDeleteFeelin' good is good enough for me. I should probably try to be more idealistic.
ReplyDeleteWhatever it is, he's against it!
ReplyDelete"Hey, idiot, get the hell outta my rosebushes! What are you, nuts?"
ReplyDeleteAgreed. They don't want overqualified people and they don't want people who expect better treatment--this extends (and has always extended) to race and ethnic sterotyping in who gets offered which jobs in certain markets. If the restaurant biz is dominated by one ethnic group the chances are good that you won't get hired for a line job or a cleanup job or a waitstaff job if you don't fit the ethnic/class model that the owner expects of his workers. Among other things because owners prefer to manage a "type" of worker rather than an individual.
ReplyDelete> I wonder how many unemployed people who could be somehow engaged in the economy
ReplyDeleteAah, yes, 'somehow'---perhaps as fertiliser, perhaps (if that's too 'extreme' or 'cruel' or 'beyond the bounds of all human decency' for you lily-livered libruls) just standing around rich people's homes acting as human coat-racks---after all any job is better than no job....it is known.
Conservatives are very quick to limn their Despised Classes as being 'ungrateful'; what was it always, I forget---no wait, other people forget....
ReplyDelete