Rynar wrote:
It used to be, throughout the great depression and in succeeding generations, that being on the government dole in any capacity was shame inducing. If you were, you didn't talk about it, and you worked your *** off to get off of it, because it meant acknowledging personal deficiency.
I feel this has changed, and I find it to be problematic.
What are your opinions?
Longer and more vehement than I expected.
I question your original premise Rynar. 'The Dole' covers a lot of territory. The most common meaning has long been that you are receiving unemployment insurance. Yes, some people still think being on the dole is shameful, but in this economic climate most folks are accepting that Jim is collecting UI because he lost his job along with half the other guys in town when the factory shut down. It is kind of hard to call it shameful when you are thanking God for you still having a job when so many around you do not. Welfare was originally meant to cover families for a short period of time, and yes, getting off it was the impetus.
What I consider the major part of the problem is we are trained and retrained and told we can't do a job without the proper training. For the most part in the modern world there is a certain amount of truth to it. You wouldn't want to hire a guy just laid off as a Steelworker as a Sous Chef unless he could show some credibility and experience as a Sous Chef now, would you? The real problem is people take that concept to the jobs where training is creating muscle memory. If you need more than five minutes training to learn how to use a shovel, grab a wheelbarrow and wheel it where they tell you. If it takes more than ten minutes to tell you how to load a truck, maybe you should ask for a job at the next warehouse down the road.
Back in the Depression, the United States was still up around 90% agricultural production, and to be a farmer or a rancher meant that you were a jack of a lot of trades, and willing to try just about anything to get the job done. You could dig a well, build a fence, milk a cow, sow the field, slop the pigs, whatever it took. If you were willing to work, even during the worst of the depression, you could find some work for miserable pay and keep you and your family out of potter's field. Yes, there were a lot of jobs people didn't want to do. Pride, it kills a lot of people. There might be times when you had to go talk to the local Reverend and ask for some help, but you tried to keep that to a minimum. Those who were worse off than you might need it. Yes, that attitude was real back then, my mother's family lived through it. They were Okies, they came to California and picked fruit, Grandma took in laundry and did okay because she was willing to wash other people's clothes. My mother says she didn't know they were poor until the charity folk came around giving them stuff for Christmas - heck, most everyone she knew was about as bad off.
That can do/will do whatever it takes spirit has been lost now that we are about 90% Urban. People don't know how to feed themselves off the land anymore. Knitting and crocheting are expensive hobbies instead of survival skills to keep your clothes and blankets repaired. Hunting is another expensive hobby for a lot of people, though it is regaining popularity as people start looking at being able to make it through next winter. In order to invent the technology, run the factories, create all that wonderful stuff we're looking at as luxuries we can't afford anymore, people came in to the cities, the pay was better, there were jobs, and there was all of a sudden training to do one thing. They forgot how to work for themselves and forgot to train their kids how to do it. When times got bad they forgot shame.
Farms are now commonly run by huge corporations and the little farmers are slowly dying out. The places that used to train people how to do the hundred and sixty three odd jobs they needed to do every week to keep a small farm or ranch running are dying out. Now you have colleges that specialize in training people to fix a computer, period. The next one down the road will teach you how to fix a copier, or maybe be a medical assistant, but not much else. The country is killing itself by being too modern, by not encouraging diversity of job skills and reward appropriately those who can survive.
Those of you who are survivalists already understand a lot of this, but do you understand that one of the worst things lacking in the raising of people today is the lack of coping skills? Here, go down to the mall and ask people if there is anything else you can sell them today, until your job is gone and nobody has prepared you for no minimum wage crap being available for you. What the hell do you do then? What do the car-makers do when they can't fasten three bolts on the passenger side drawer at their spot on the assembly line anymore? They can't retrain to throw the wheels on the hub because, oops, the plant shut down.
It isn't a matter of shame, it is a matter of the deliberate dumbing down and pacification of the American people.
The corporations want to bring the jobs back to America, they just want to break the unions and make it okay to ignore safety standards and pay people a bowl of cornflakes and a dollar a day. Dumb down the workforce until they can't cope with life, come in and save them with jobs they can barely stay alive on.
There is a major problem with this plan. Henry Ford figured it out, and its why he made a fortune. He paid his employees enough where they could afford to buy the cars they were making, which translated into everyone else wanting them too.
You are looking at it from the wrong angle Rynar. People are being taught by the Government and the Corporations that being a slacker unable to feed yourself or your family is a valid lifestyle choice. The shame is being purposefully removed from the equation because the government and the corporations do not want self sufficient citizens who have the strength of character to understand why they should be ashamed of not making their own way.
It is about control. It is about forgetting the lessons of the past. It is about destroying the world as we know it.
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