Beck nails it. These people just want to stay home and collect a paycheck, a.k.a. the Democrat voters.
Ah, excuse me, I don’t know what your experience is, but this is something I know about personally. It’s highly insulting for you to suggest that people just want to collect unemployment. In my state unemployment means no more than $300 a week, and that comes to less than the local poverty level. Nobody wants that. Nobody wants to lose his home and possessions, or to face poverty and homelessness. It’s insane to suggest people want this.
I’ve been officially unemployed since April but I started looking for work long before that, because I knew this was going to happen. I spend most of every day looking for jobs in one way or another. I’ve got a good resume and have taken classes on how to apply for jobs, have had my resume tuned up by professionals, have exhausted every resource of state, county, and local government, have networked like mad. Still, I have not had a single interview. Five hundred other people in my office were laid off at the same time and have had the same experience; so far as I know only three or four of them have gotten jobs. We are all focused, competent people, and many of us having nursing or other supposedly valuable degrees. But no one even responds to applications.
I would be willing to take any job, but they don’t hire you for entry-level jobs when you’re in your fifties. Especially not at McDonald’s unless you’re a native Spanish speaker.
Glenn doesn’t know what he’s talking about. He doesn’t have the experience of applying for hundreds and hundreds of jobs and never having a call back. Probably you don’t either. But thirty million people in this country do. He’s outvoted.
P.S.: Please, spare me the helpful pep talk about how this was our fault for not going into a different field 25 years ago (we were working in healthcare research which is supposed to be a hot field), not updating our skills (mine are completely up-to-date and I keep getting more training as I can find money for it), not living in the right part of the US (I live in the DC suburbs where the unemployment rate is among the lowest in the US, we need to move to Texas (cannot for legal reasons related to my child), or if we all just tried harder we’d get those jobs. Yeah. We’ve heard it all already.
With all due respect, you can’t make a blanket statement like that, neither can Beck. I got laid off in October of 2008 and have sent out Resumes almost daily for professional jobs. I have had two interviews since 10/2008. One of the interviews was for an entry level position (I have 35 years of experience).
I can’t do many lower level jobs due to disabilities. So I am stuck until I get a job that I can do. If you think I am happy to sit at home making 15% of what I was making, you are an Idiot. That is idiot with a capital I.