However, I do not wish to pay anybody unemployment benefits for an extended period of time. We are keeping our business going with personal savings and retirement benefits. We haven't had a vacation in 12 years. We've never had a two-week vacation. In other words, I have limited sympathy for the plight of the unemployed after a few weeks. Quit whining and get cracking.
Who is whining? I have never received unemployment benefits and never will. And at over 300 jobs applied to, I think I can safely say I've taken a crack at it.
We have a small business as well - only open for five years but thank the good Lord still in operation. (Some weeks it feels touch and go.) We haven’t had a vacation since before it opened; we’ve used up all our retirement and savings, everything except the life insurance policies.
But I do not begrudge the unemployed one single dime of the benefits that they’ve paid into for years and years. That’s what it’s there for - to count on when times are tough! The guys I know collecting *are* “cracking,” as you put it. But if there aren’t jobs out there, what are they supposed to do? Beg? Shoot themselves? (Most of them don’t have parents alive anymore to move home to - or the parents are IN homes.)
You and I are lucky in that we DO have our own businesses. No one would hire my - 53, had a stroke, and been late on my mortgage and car payments when times are slow.
What I *really* want to do is get so prosperous that I can hire some of these former co-workers of mine. When times are tough, we should help each other out, even if it is with a friendly word or two. The hard times we’ve suffered in this household have only made us more sympathetic to others who face the same things, through no fault of their own.
It sounds like you need a vacation badly, my friend.