Why Many Unemployed Workers Will Never Get Jobs

www.huffingtonpost.com/ira-wolfe/why-many-unemployment_b_5273611.html?ncid=txtlnkusaolp00000592

With each passing day, more and more workers with out-of-date skills will find themselves on the outside looking in.

While dissension between political parties about fixing the economy is fierce and turf battles muddy up regional and local solutions, nearly everyone agrees that job training and re-training programs are critical.

That's true. I have no qualms about training employed and unemployed workers new skills. It's a must. It's a necessity. It's an indisputable truth.

But we have a huge problem on our hands that runs much deeper than the unemployment figures reveal. Despite billions of dollars invested in job skill training, it's not helping to reduce the unemployment rate, get more people back to work, and raising the standard of living. Why?

The problem with traditional job skill training in many cases is that you can walk a horse to water but you can't make it drink. Far too many workers -- employed and unemployed -- don't seem interested in finding water on their own. They want and expect someone else to find the water, make sure the journey isn't too arduous, and get someone to pay for it.

Thanks to years of economic prosperity, government entitlements, union contracts and most recently a generation of helicopter parents, many workers from aging Baby Boomers to the young adults known as Millennials don't have the motivational skills to achieve their own success, to keep themselves safe, to avoid a personal crisis, and to get themselves out of a jam.

When I refer to motivational skills, I mean basic life skills. The skills we used to learn as children that carried us through the trials and tribulations of adulthood. Children learned to entertain themselves. When we fell, we were told to get up, dust ourselves off, and try again. We learned there was a difference between winning and losing. Just playing the game was an opportunity, not a guarantee.

We now live in a world where self-help isn't about helping oneself improve our lot in life but finding a scapegoat for our failures and a surrogate to do whatever you want done for you. We expect employers or government to pay for health insurance while we eat too much, under-exercise, and engage in extreme activities. We don't save enough but expect the government and our employers to stash enough money away for a long retirement.

Many of the unemployed workers have simply lost the ability and motivation to make a better life for them and take responsibility for problems they create -- if they ever learned to do it in the first place. Picking yourself up by your bootstraps is a lost skill. When you fall, it's not your fault. It's expected that someone else come to your rescue, offer you the bootstrap, hoist you up, and nurse you back to health.

I recently mentioned to someone that "God helps those who help themselves." Their response was to tell me God never said that. That is true by the way -- it's not actually in the Bible. But they missed my point. For many generations we believed that. It was a philosophy our grandparents, our great-grandparents, and those before us lived by. People didn't look for handouts, sue someone when things didn't go right, and wallow in their own pity waiting to be rescued.

And that is why our joblessness won't get fixed with job skill training. That's why we have so many unemployed workers who can't find jobs despite millions of job vacancies.

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Who are we trying to kid with sweeping generalities like these?

I can speak from decades of experience, relentless dedication, hard work and hard knocks that it's not about how many times we fall or get kicked to our knees, and get back up, smile as if it didn't hurt, and keep moving forward inch by inch.

It's about being deliberately shut out by the society of haves around us that doesn't want us, the have nots to prosper!

In fact, the haves prefer that we grovel far beneath the national poverty level while they smirk and gloat and make us hoe a tough row from their lofty positions of superiority and financial security.

How convenient it is to point the finger of blame at the unemployed for having to barely exist on the crumbs "tax funds" of the working class. Who complain about giving us a hand when we're down, while also making sure we stay this way, humbled and helpless.

For decades I've stood alone amongst a society of oppressors who didn't and still don't want to associate with me, or let me get ahead in life unless its on my knees broken and begging.

But I don't let my bruises and scars stop me from continuing my struggle forward that they make so much harder through their subtle bias and hatred of everything I stand for.

To be treated with equal respect and dignity.

Instead, those with the power and authority to let us get ahead under our own steam look down their noses and scoff, while plotting and implementing actions against us.

All while we talk and document everything in our own ways.

Because we're tired of the blatant and provable hypocrisy. The haves putting on their innocent airs of superiority as they stand together blaming us for their culpability.

And so should everyone who is down for the count with the boot of oppression placed squarely in the middle of our backs to make sure we don't get up again.

Stand up and make your voice count even if your vote doesn't!

I am totally surprised, not at the tirade at the end but that Huffington Post would actually post that article. While it still had some liberal slants, most liberals would frown on the overall thrust of the article. But it definitely got kicked out of the progressive stable, imagine someone having to be responsible for their own actions. I mean just look at the following quotes:



Just this should have caused the author to lose his liberal card. But then he partially redeems himself: