Matt Labash, at the Daily Caller, answers questions:
With so many people on unemployment benefits, what do you think about requiring them to work 20 hours of community service, and 20 documented hours of job searching in exchange for unemployment income? – Ed Yeah, sure – because nothing’s going to motivate an unemployed person to spend 20 hours a week banging their head against a closed personnel door, like spending another 20 hours a week in a fluorescent vest, stabbing trash on the side of the road. Besides, if we put that many people to work for free, my worry is that we’d create a community-service scab labor pool, thus throwing more people out of low-wage jobs, which would further compound the unemployment benefits problem. Plus, the last thing I need to be doing is looking over my shoulder, fretting that some unemployed hedge fund manager is willing to dispense advice-column wisdom, gratis, in order to collect his unemployment check. No thanks. I need that money, not only to feed my family, but to purchase the fake identification and paperwork I use to run a welfare-fraud ring (you’ve got to have money to make money), which isn’t just enriching myself, but which also stimulates the economy when I pay the laminator, the printer, and bribe my guy at Social Services. The way I see it, there is no greater indignity than once-reliable breadwinners losing their jobs, being unable to support their families, and having no prospects on the horizon. Do you really think that a once striving and productive, now downwardly-mobile member of the middle class, likes being in that position? It used to be that a guy who sat at a desk and typed things for a living figured if the bottom fell out of his cushy existence, he could at least buy a tool-belt and some work-boots and get a construction job. Well good luck even doing that now, since unemployment in construction has now reached nearly 20 percent, the industry having shed 2.1 million jobs since 2006. As for low-wage jobs — at my local church food pantry, the lion’s share of people who avail themselves of free groceries are single parents who are fully employed, but don’t eke out enough of a living to adequately feed themselves or their kids. Accepting charity does not always mean you’re lazy. It might just mean you’re desperate…. So perhaps we should stop blaming each other and start blaming others, as our forefathers intended. Perhaps it’s time we stopped scapegoating victims and began thinking of constructive solutions – such as outsourcing the unemployed. Why not? We’ve been shipping American jobs overseas for years. Why not ship the American jobless overseas? Maybe they can catch up with their old occupations. For too long, the world has fed like trichina worms off of our good fortune. Now, perhaps, it’s time for these parasites to drink the contaminants of our misfortune.
More here.