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Wednesday, July 27, 2011

Best. Idea. Ever.
Posted by Jill | 11:28 AM
This sounds like a great way to get karmic brownie points (from Digby):
I have a business idea. Who wants to incorporate and and sell themselves to jobless people as their "current job" for resume purposes? You could just charge a little fee if the person gets the job. Why not? It's no more immoral than saying people shouldn't be allowed to work if they aren't already working.

This business about not being willing to hire the unemployed is reprehensible. I was laid off from a job three years ago not through any fault of my own, but because the grant money ran out and I had less seniority than my peer who stayed (there were two of us and they could only afford to pay one). I managed to get my current job during a very small window when anyone with even passing familiarity with the job function could get hired, but then I set my mind to essentially starting from scratch. Yes, it required a lot of effort, but if a person can learn, that person can get up to speed quickly.

Mr. Brilliant is currently working at a contract job that pays significantly less than he was making before he was one of at least six people over the age of fifty let go from his last job, and has nothing to do with what his skills are, but at least he can tell people who might have "permanent" jobs available that he's working.

If you had any doubt that there is a systematic attempt underfoot to completely eliminate the middle class, here it is. Those who have lost their jobs have a head start on the road down to grinding poverty, and those in a position to hire (you know, those "job creators" that John Boehner always talks about) want to make damn sure they stay that way. Meanwhile, those of us who DO still have good-paying jobs burn out, then try to take some much-needed vacation time and spend it with gnawing anxiety about whether they'll still be seen as valuable after taking a few days off.

The Republicans, particularly the Tea Party wing, has been masterful at taking jobs as an issue out of the public consciousness entirely because of this debt issue. Remember when the Republicans ran on job creation? Where are the jobs? And what does John Boehner expect the "99ers" to do now? Die in the street?

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5 Comments:
Blogger The New York Crank said...
I have long maintained that companies ought to be scanned by state or federal inspectors for de facto age discrimination. (Yeah, I know – fat chance!)

But consider:

If you have, say, an ad agency where five hundred people work, and only three are over 55, and one of those is the chairman and the other two are clerks, you can bet they don't hire and won't keep middle-aged employees.

How can you extend the retirement age if you don't also extend, by law, the employment age? I'm way past that now, but people turning forty need to start a mass anti-age discrimination movement before they find themselves out on their butts and "income free" in their fifties.

Yours very crankily,
The New York Crank
7/27/11, 11:56 AM  
Anonymous The Wifely Person said...
Brilliant idea. I actually created an email address to be the HR manager for a friend. It can be done and it has.

All's fair in class war.
7/27/11, 12:50 PM  
Blogger Pangolin said...
Remember, sleeping in the streets is illegal as well as sleeping in parks, cars, empty lots, etc. What is supposed to happen is that the jobless either hire themselves out at slave wages or get incarcerated and join the American Gulag.

It's illegal to be poor. The GOP really has no problem with concentration camps as long as they get to be the guards.
7/27/11, 4:40 PM  
Anonymous mandt said...
Time to shave the teabags!
7/27/11, 11:07 PM  
Anonymous Anonymous said...
Look, the whole "deficit/debt limit crisis" was ginned up by the Repubs to stall out any further attempts by Obama to deal with the economy/jobs crisis. (And why Obama has bought into it is beyond me.)Think their attitude is like that of the Russian Bolsheviks: "When times are bad, they're good for us".

And this whole "debt crisis" was foisted on us by the very people was CREATED the mess in the first place--and now claim to be "the party of fiscal responsibility"! The genius and shamelessness of it is awe-inspiring.

Y'know, it's a shame Charles Dickens is dead. These times were made for him.
7/28/11, 1:58 PM  
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