Labor Day Thoughts

It’s ironic that Labor Day is apparently the day unemployment revenues end for millions of people. Republicans talk as if all these people could have gotten jobs, but instead of finding work they sit around expecting and accepting free handouts. There’s a shortage of workers for many jobs, but a lot of people can’t find a job because the skills they have aren’t needed for as many jobs as they used to be, and they don’t have skills that are needed for the kind of jobs that are available. Minimum wage jobs or grueling unpleasant jobs are the only kind of jobs a lot of these people can get, and the federal minimum wage requirement has remained stagnant for decades while the rich and those with the right kind of jobs have been making a lot more and are helped in doing so by tax laws that are in many respects highly regressive and full of loopholes and breaks that favor the rich and influential, and people working at minimum wage can’t make enough to get above the poverty line, and a lot of people who have been out of work for months are shunned or ignored when they try to get a job, and a lot of people don’t get enough to eat or have been, or are in danger of being, evicted out onto the street and aren’t able to get minimally decent health care, and a lot of children are deprived of adequate educational opportunities. The problem isn’t laziness so much as it is that we live in a plutocracy, and too many people who are either mean-spirited, or selfish, or misguided are in positions of power and calling the shots.