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Lost interest in reading contributions from people who do nothing but make excuses for themselves and others. Yawn. Also, I work a full time job, and come home and work my farm - just got new bred cows and my horse in, training them to milk and ride, been out fixing fences and putting up gates, and the chickens are laying like crazy. Plus it is deer hunting season and we had one to butcher for the freezer. I support a disabled husband as well. I came to realize most on here don't know what I'm talking about when I mention "work" - the honesty, the integrity, and the necessity of it. They just want a job that gives them money and doesn't demand all of their time or attention. Or, failing that, a gubbermint that will take care of them for the rest of their lives, because we should 'feel sorry' for those who have got themselves into their situations and use our own money (or bill our children and tax their futures) to bail them out. Shrug. Bored now.
Gee, I suppose I should apologize - I'm sorry I have a life, that doesn't breathlessly, daily include giving you a "conservative" to snipe at. Sad that I am in my 50s and work harder (and more happily) than many of you in your 30's and 40's. Of course, maybe that's why I can always find a job... I got offered another one yesterday; someone trying to seduce me away from my current employer... But I suppose you would consider me mean and arrogant for mentioning it; how dare I work for a living, enjoy it, stay busy and productive, and actually am sought after because of it! Jealous children in sandboxes are boring. Of course, maybe if you didn't spend so much time on here self-righteously excusing/pitying yourselves and each other, you could be working and have a productive, joyous life, too. Perish the thought.
<- Lives in Michigan. Obviously unemployed, and have been since July 2008. I got married in May of 2008 and almost immediately got laid off from my great job as an electrical engineer for a Chrysler / GM supplier. I have tirelessly pursued employment in the same field, different fields, and now grocery stores as a stock boy and grease pits as an egg flipper. THERE ARE NO JOBS TO BE FOUND HERE. I love how easy it is for some of you to say, "get up off your lazy ass and do this or that, MOVE!" Pfft.. you inconsiderate fools. How do you move when you're upside down on a mortgage that's only 2 years into 30? Foreclosure? Bankruptcy? How about I keep collecting my unemployment compensation because at least it keeps us in our home. How many unemployed live on your block? Let's take their unemployment INSURANCE money that they paid into while working, and watch what happens to the property value and equity in your home when you live on a block full of abandoned shells. It's fine and dandy to want to debate the merits of extensions, I hate entitlement programs myself. I would give almost anything to find a decent job and be able to get off it, but I wont destroy my credit and future prospects over it. Where I live in S.E. Michigan we have a REAL unemployment rate of 30%. You might as well say that 1/3 of people are out of work. This makes it really easy to find a job when you have 100 applicants to one opening.
It is so amusing to me to read all the comments from people about how they work for the sheer love of working and the thrill of being productive. But then when they are taxed on their earnings, they complain so bitterly about how their "hard-earned" money is being stolen from them by the undeserving. I smell hypocrisy.
It is so amusing to me to read all the comments from people about how they work for the sheer love of working and the thrill of being productive. But then when they are taxed on their earnings, they complain so bitterly about how their "hard-earned" money is being stolen from them by the undeserving. I smell hypocrisy.
I see no contradiction here. Why shouldn't a person be able to love their work, and enjoy producing things, and yet feel taken advantage of, when a third party demands some of the profits. Seems like a natural reaction to me. I think the Mafia works in much the same way. "They just wet their beak"
It is so amusing to me to read all the comments from people about how they work for the sheer love of working and the thrill of being productive. But then when they are taxed on their earnings, they complain so bitterly about how their "hard-earned" money is being stolen from them by the undeserving. I smell hypocrisy.
There is no hypocrisy in doing what you love, and being paid for it/rewarded for it - and then to resent that others who have no such drive, no such desire, no such independent thought, reason, and inspiration, should suckle at its teat.
Perhaps this will help you to grasp it -
"Capitalism demands the best of every man – his rationality – and rewards him accordingly. It leaves every man free to choose the work he likes, to specialize in it, to trade his product for the products of others, and to go as far on the road of achievement as his ability and ambition will carry him."
or this:
"My philosophy, in essence, is the concept of man as a heroic being, with his own happiness as the moral purpose of his life, with productive achievement as his noblest activity, and reason as his only absolute."
Or - gasp - this -
"The three cardinal values of the Objectivist ethics ... are: Reason, Purpose, Self-Esteem, with their three corresponding virtues: Rationality, Productiveness, Pride." "Productive work is the central purpose of a rational man's life, the central value that integrates and determines the hierarchy of all his other values. Reason is the source, the precondition of his productive work – pride is the result."
And finally, this -
"The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours. But to win it requires total dedication and a total break with the world of your past, with the doctrine that man is a sacrificial animal who exists for the pleasure of others. Fight for the value of your person. Fight for the virtue of your pride. Fight for the essence, which is man, for his sovereign rational mind. Fight with the radiant certainty and the absolute rectitude of knowing that yours is the morality of life and yours is the battle for any achievement, any value, any grandeur, any goodness, any joy that has ever existed on this earth." (embolding mine)
Nobody ever put it better than Ayn Rand - and the Tooheys of the world continue to deride man as anything but a servant of other men. As Rand noted, those Tooheys are often powerless in their own lives, and seek power by demanding and forcing those who are proud, productive, innovative, creative, and who take joy in their production, to bow to the yoke of those who are not, will not, and refuse to do the same. Man has such astonishing potential, whenever he lifts up his eyes from the 'woulda shoulda' s, stops living for others, reaches out, grasps what he has with every fibre of his being, and creates what he can with all of his abilities and might, planning and forethought and determination. He also has such astonishing ability to make excuses, be cowardly, accept the Tooheys' estimation of him as a slavish animal bound to the earth and small-mindedness. People CHOOSE which they will be.
2008? I would ahve beeen long gone by now. The problem is that the long your unemployed the hard it will be to get another job. I suggest you look elsewhere even if it means separation for awhile.Unemployemnt is meant to last for every long and the long you wait to make a moved the worse it is.Good l;uck
SCGranny, never fall back on cherry-picked platitudes to prove your point, for there are always others that contradict yours.
The righteous is concerned for the rights of the poor; the wicked does not understand such concern. Proverbs 29:7.
"If hard work were such a wonderful thing, the rich would keep it all for themselves." --- Labor leader Lane Kirkland.
LOL "Cherry-picked platitudes"? Thanks, but as a fan of Ayn Rand's writings - precise, blunt and bountiful (I have most of her writings as quoted) - those are the words I live by, not a religionist's or a classist-Marxist's philosophy of "personal power thru the reduction of humanity to servants". I'd hoped to use her amazing vocabulary rather than my own poor attempts to explain it to you, but of course - as usual - you went off on a tangent. People who insist that others are mere servants of the rest of humanity corrupt the very essence of man's "god-given" abilities, hope, and achievements. While people sit around with their hands out, or look down at the earth in misery at what they haven't got, they miss their own ability to seize their lives and do something wonderful and productive with them. They accept their assignment to a class, they accept what the gubbermint or their society hands them and tells them they deserve, and haven't the wisdom, knowledge, or discipline to look further - especially when they are told "It's ok, it's not your fault, you're not responsible". Well, dangit, it is NOT ok, yes it IS, and yes you ARE. Inspiration doesn't come from a philosophy, a bible, or a social contract that you never signed - it comes from within YOU. We have allowed ourselves to be measured by the too-short ruler of others' judgements and estimations, rather than setting our own goals, going after what we want, and calling 'success' what we choose to achieve. We have allowed our individual abilities to be sucked into the swamp of 'everyone gets a prize, no one is better than anyone else' lies. (IF you believe in a god, that is perhaps the worst insult you could offer him/her - that your abilities are part of the mass, are unimportant, and are not individually given.) And it is this lie which corrupts the abilities and makes people prisoners of mortgages and marriages and jobs that allow them to cage themselves rather than free themselves. It is this mindset that allows people to excuse themselves and blame others - and expect those same others to provide for their needs, wants, and desires.
Sorry, I'll be gone again for awhile - this pre-Thanksgiving weekend and the following week will be full of my life. And yes I am THANKFUL - to have been raised and to have raised my children to not let others tell us what our abilites, hopes, dreams, and achievements should be - and be limited by blame and self-pity thereby.
I will address SC later, I have to go now and file my bi weekly claim for unemployment.
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