Loser of the Year
No matter how big a loser someone is, he can find a way to feel superior to you.
I’ve been on unemployment three times in the past six years. Each time was better than the last, and each time I stayed on until the last cent was exhausted. I didn’t even try to get a job; it was a paid vacation.
. . . .
Given a choice between getting a check every week for doing nothing and getting a check every week for flushing 40 hours of the prime of their lives down the toilet, [working people] chose the latter. I mean, what kind of self-hating, masochistic Protestant bullshit is that?
Not only do I feel no guilt whatsoever about sucking from the state’s teat, I feel that I’m absolutely entitled to it. First of all, the employer that fired me pays for half of my unemployment, and fuck them.
. . . .
We may debate the purpose of life, or whether it even has a purpose, but one thing we can all agree on is that we were not put on this Earth to work, work, work. To be the master of one’s time and oneself is the obvious ideal. Most people don’t experience this until retirement, when they’re old and broken down, when they have to go to the bathroom every five minutes, and no one will have sex with them without advance cash payment. I say fuck that, I’m having my golden years now. And they are golden! Youth is not being wasted on this youth.
Every once in a while I’ll find myself downtown in the middle of the day and I’ll see all the drones hustling this way and that with their pinched little waddles, looking at their watches and pouring Starbucks into their faces, and I’ll think, my God, I’m the luckiest bastard alive. Maybe I’ll have to pay for it on the back end and work as a Wal-Mart greeter when I’m 85, but then again, I’ll have a lot of company.
Via Malkin.
He does have a high opinion of himself. Somehow by the end of the piece, I did not share it.
SPQR (26be8b) — 3/11/2008 @ 8:53 pmGuess who he’ll be voting for, if he can tear himself away from the TV.
Mike K (86bddb) — 3/11/2008 @ 9:07 pmRon Paul?
SPQR (26be8b) — 3/11/2008 @ 9:09 pmClose. Think more Socialist…
Scott Jacobs (d3a6ec) — 3/11/2008 @ 9:11 pmWho is the CPUSA running this year?
SPQR (26be8b) — 3/11/2008 @ 9:13 pmObama, I think…
Scott Jacobs (d3a6ec) — 3/11/2008 @ 9:29 pmGood candidate for the CPUSA.
SPQR (26be8b) — 3/11/2008 @ 9:31 pmThe thing is, if they raise taxes enough in order to support all of the losers who drop out of the work force, so that they can increase unemployment benefits, I would drop out, too.
I’m a hard worker, but I’m not a sucker. I don’t go to work because it’s fun, or because I enjoy working. I do it to get money. If I can’t get substantially more money for working (because unemployment benefits are up and so are taxes) then why bother?
I would rather drop out and wait for things to get bad, then vote Republicans into office, and get back to work, than slave myself out to Dem taskmasters.
Daryl Herbert (4ecd4c) — 3/11/2008 @ 10:24 pmHe would make a good City of Chicago employee. My neighbor, Slats Grobnik, made our Alderman his idol when he heard that the Alderman had never worked a day in his life. (From Mike Royko.)
nk (5ce644) — 3/12/2008 @ 3:43 amOh come on, unemployment insurance is the poor man’s golden parachute.
What’s the difference between a guy enjoying unemployment and the CEOs who get million-dollar-a-year pensions for life after getting fired for completely screwing up their companies?
Now, if those ex-CEOs wrote articles about how much fun they were having while not working, that would really make me mad.
Phil (6d9f2f) — 3/12/2008 @ 7:03 amI figured out a couple of years ago (and, no, I’m still working…three jobs) that I could resign my teaching position, sell my house to my parents, have them move it into Section 8 housing, rent it back on a very reduced rental rate, go on welfare, food stamps, medicaid, and with the Earned Income Tax Credit, get myself about $18,000 in direct income/credits without ever going to work….at the time it was more than my takehome….
But, I enjoy what I do, and my side jobs pay very well and are also fun…
So, I work, and wish others did it that way too, but some don’t…
reff (bff229) — 3/12/2008 @ 7:07 amThe difference lies in where the cash is coming from. The company (through a board elected by its stockholders) chose to provide the CEOs with the payoffs. On the other hand, the mooch is receiving money forcibly extracted from other citizens, money that’s INTENDED to help people through times between jobs.
Rob Crawford (04f50f) — 3/12/2008 @ 8:34 amWelcome to the 21st Century’s definition of a “dole sucker”!! Thank you someone’s god he probably won’t reproduce!!
Sue (46d8d7) — 3/12/2008 @ 8:51 amOn the other hand, maybe if enough of them reproduce all over the world, then we can all go back to basics: you know, grow your own food, cook your own food over wood fires, catching and killing animals for their skins to cover our asses when it’s cold, living to about 30-40, losing our children before they’re even a year old. Don’t know about you guys, but it sounds great: the outdoors, no carbon footprint…WOW, what a thought.
Sue (46d8d7) — 3/12/2008 @ 8:54 amIt’s pretty obvious why he can’t make a living from writing.
Jim Treacher (592cb4) — 3/12/2008 @ 9:11 amUnfortunately, this is nothing new. My sister’s husband died in 1984 leaving her with 2 kids. She was suddenly eligible for all these different programs so she did the math. She was working at a low paying job paying half her income to daycare and the other half to rent. So it wasn’t a hard choice for her to decide to suck off of the system for the next 16 years.
I could not accept that my sister would choose to make you and I pay for her and her family for all that time. Really ticked me off.
The benefits ran out when her youngest turned 18. When she got back into the job market, she went from entry level to mid management at a credit card servicing company within 4 years. $25K to over $100K. Had she chosen to be in the work force, she could have been a productive member of society. Instead, she chose to be a leach.
As you can see, this still ticks me off. And she has never seen anything wrong with this. Oh yeah, she is planning to vote for Obama even though she can’t identify any of his platform or any past accomplishments.
I sometimes wonder if we are actually related.
Jay Curtis (8f6541) — 3/12/2008 @ 10:18 amWas she dropped on her head as a child????
Scott Jacobs (fa5e57) — 3/12/2008 @ 10:21 amI blame it on the drugs. She got into them as a teen. I was planning to join the military so I didn’t. Other than that our childhood and education were identical. So it must have been the mind altering substances she used, right? 8-/
Jay Curtis (8f6541) — 3/12/2008 @ 10:37 amThe benefits ran out when her youngest turned 18. When she got back into the job market, she went from entry level to mid management at a credit card servicing company within 4 years. $25K to over $100K. Had she chosen to be in the work force, she could have been a productive member of society. Instead, she chose to be a leach.
In her case especially, I think your math has some pretty serious assumptions built in that make it certain she can’t win. For example, making $100k as a single parent working full time may not, in fact, be worth it to a mom who started out her life as a mom thinking she’d be a full-time parent.
Also, these kids lost their dad. This isn’t a case where daddy pays child support and takes the kids on weekends. Mommy is all there is. How many hours a week would mommy have to leave her kids without a mom in order to make that 100k?
Also, is a woman who’s raising kids full-time and not working really a “leech.”? If so, then there are tons of women out there being “leeches.” Basically, every married stay-at-home mom is a “leech,” off of her her husband, because she doesn’t work full-time.
Now, if she’d chosen to have kids out of wedlock, you’d have an argument she chose to have kids alone and make society support them. But she didn’t — her kids were born into a traditional family that got cut in half by death, through no fault of hers.
Some people in our society still put a premium on kids having a full-time parent. But in your sister’s case, I think that actually the more “conservative” a person’s perspective, the more likely they would support social programs taking up the slack in her case.
It’s true that people shouldn’t take advantage of this system by skipping out on marriage intentionally. But the original “social services” were called “widows and orphans funds” for a reason.
Phil (6d9f2f) — 3/12/2008 @ 10:55 amThere is actually a pretty decent literature on the psychological benefits of work. Obviously there are some crappy jobs but a lot of poor people are motivated and eventually move up the financial ladder. This guy is going to be unhappy all his life. We are hard wired to work and achieve and, absent damage or a screwed up childhood, most of us enjoy it. This is a pretty good book on the subject. The theme is that people get pleasure from mastering tasks that require skill and control. That includes work, driving and sports. Work ranks #1 with most people. Some of the jobs he studied are pretty menial to most of us but some people enjoy them, or at least enjoy the prospect of getting paid for them
Mike K (f89cb3) — 3/12/2008 @ 11:04 amI agree with your point, Mike K., and that looks like an interesting book. Of course, pronouncing the author’s name is a job in and of itself.
DRJ (a431ca) — 3/12/2008 @ 11:07 amWe are hard wired to work and achieve and, absent damage or a screwed up childhood, most of us enjoy it.
The key here is “and achieve.” If we feel like we’re not achieving, work feels like slavery.
I think that a lot of people who seem “lazy” are really just having trouble finding “achievements” to make, and any “work” they might do seems purposeless.
Money paid for working, in and of itself stops being an “acheivement” once you’ve gotten the same sized paycheck for a certain period of time.
The biggest nightmare jobs aren’t hard jobs, they’re jobs that feel like you aren’t achieving anything.
Phil (6d9f2f) — 3/12/2008 @ 11:14 amPart of the motive for reading books like that one is to figure out how to make work more rewarding and, therefore, encourage people to do a better job and stay with it longer. Some of that is the Japanese approach to manufacturing where workers are encouraged to participate in design of work and bosses are STRONGLY encouraged to spend at least part of their day on the work site and not in some closed off office. Times have changed. In the 1920s most factory workers were barely literate and the process required multi-level supervision. Machines were primitive. Now it is very different and smart companies know this. There are still dumb ones, of course but not as many.
Mike K (f89cb3) — 3/12/2008 @ 1:58 pmGee,this reminds me a lot of my older brother(the one who’s living with me currently).He’s been trying to find a non profit or gov job.He’s been forced(by guess who)to take a job as a sub teacher or be turned out into the cold.And to add insult to indignity,I won’t let him drink my single malt.
corwin (3c20ff) — 3/12/2008 @ 2:56 pmIt’s been a tough time and a slow time growing up for him.The problem was,my parent were only semi rich.After going through inheritance taxes and being split 5 ways there wasn’t enough to keep him the rest of his life without working.Still,it’s been different living with him I’ve been able to read Molly Ivin’s collections,a book by a psychiatrist analyzing GWB and heard about Global Warming through a long winter.Today,he asked me to pay for his car ins and plates.Nope.
Isn’t it strange how different kids can be from the same family?
DRJ (a431ca) — 3/12/2008 @ 3:00 pm#19
“Also, these kids lost their dad. This isn’t a case where daddy pays child support and takes the kids on weekends.”
I obviously did not include all the details of her life. The father was kill when he got stoned, stole a motorcycle and crashed into a police car at over 100 miles per hour wearing only his underwear in January in Kansas. He also was chronicly unemployed and drunk and physically abusive.
“Also, is a woman who’s raising kids full-time and not working really a “leech.”? ”
I would normally say no to this. After the many conversations with my sister, the answer in her case would be yes. Even more so after you get the chance to meet her adult children who now carry an entitlement mentality into every situation the encounter. In actuality, she probably has just produced two more permanent members of the “gimme” crowd.
“Now, if she’d chosen to have kids out of wedlock, you’d have an argument she chose to have kids alone and make society support them.”
The first was born out of wedlock. The second was not. She chose to have kids because at that time in Kansas, there really wasn’t an alternative when you find out you are pregnant after 4 months.
“It’s true that people shouldn’t take advantage of this system by skipping out on marriage intentionally. But the original “social services” were called “widows and orphans funds” for a reason.”
She stayed single for the sole reason of not stopping the government payments.
She was the brightest and most intelligent kid in my family. Her I.Q. scores were almost 20 points above those of the other three of us. We were raised by the same parents in the same house, school, church and social environment. Our parents instilled in us a belief that hard work, integrity and honesty were a form of reward in their own light. We were very poor financially. Each of us started working at what ever we could find well before our teen years. Three of us have never been unemployed for more than a couple of weeks in our adult lives. One spent almost her entire adult life unemployed, surviving of your and my taxes.
#25
“Isn’t it strange how different kids can be from the same family?”
DJR, you said a mouthful with that one. 😎
Jay Curtis (8f6541) — 3/12/2008 @ 4:58 pm