I want to work. Why won't anyone let me?...

I want to know exactly what I'm supposed to do.

I came east to look for work almost a month ago. I started putting in job applications even before I started the journey out here, and I've put more applications in since I got here. Nothing.

Well, not much. I've got a meeting scheduled on Tuesday with someone about some editing work, but as I understand it, that's a one-off deal, not actual ongoing employment. It's a good thing, but not nearly what I need right now, which is a steady job.

I've also not had any luck finding a place to live, because everyone wants to rent only to students or people who've already got work, even if they have enough money to move in. I'm in a motel right now, but I can't afford to do that for too much longer, and could soon find myself out on the street.

Except, you know, how am I supposed to look for work and go on interviews from the street? At minimum, I need a safe place to sleep and a place to shower and wash my clothes and hair on a regular basis. Yet, apparently, those kinds of places do not exist for people who cannot provide it for themselves.

Oh, and a phone. Don't forget the phone. Have you ever tried to look for work without a phone? No? Well, let me tell you, it's impossible. In fact, these days, it's well nigh impossible to do a job search without reliable access to the Internet, since that's the way most businesses take applications now - even fast food joints now often require job applicants to fill out an online application. Yet, I see and hear comments from people all the time to the effect that people who are poor don't deserve to have a cell phone or internet access, usually right after compaining that "those people" are too lazy to go out and get a job anyway.

What's the message I'm getting from all this? Plainly, that anyone who does not already have a job, how has fallen on difficult times for whatever reason, does not deserve a job.

This is making me very angry right now, especially since when I was growing up I was told over and over and over again that if I did the right things - got an education, stayed out of trouble, honored my parents, and remained ambitious - there would be a job for me and a roof over my head and at least enough food on the table to keep me healthy.

Apparently I was lied to. I resent that because, you know, I'm intelligent, I have a college education, I gave up my life for several years to take care of my dying mother (which was a 24/7 job in itself, but I also worked in a work-at-home job, and a good one, for the entire time my mother was ill and for nearly three years afterward, until I got laid off due to the poor economy), and then when I couldn't find another paying job I started doing volunteer work so that I would feel like I was contributing something to society.

But I guess that isn't good enough. I guess I'm supposed to just quietly go off somewhere and starve to death, or get sick because I don't (or soon won't) have a roof over my head, or fall victim to violence on the street, or just fall over from exhaustion because those with nowhere else to go are apparently not even allowed to sit down, much less have a place to safely lay their head to get a few hours sleep at night.

That is not the culture I grew up in. The culture I grew up in helped people get back on their feet and into productive work. Those in positions of leadership didn't attempt to game the system so that once people are down, they are denied a chance to get back up again, which is what seems to be happening now.

You know, I want to work. I don't want to die, cold and alone out on the street. But it looks very much like there are powers in this country who think that's all I deserve. Many of those folks, at least the ones in positions of power and influence, who are on the news and in the papers all the time, spend a lot of time standing up and proclaiming what good Christians they are. Well, as far as I can see, they never read their own scriptures, because the Jesus in the Bible I grew up with was all about helping people be the best they can be, and not putting a foot on their neck so that they have no chance to get up again.

This is my declaration to the people who don't think I deserve another chance, most of whom don't even know me, that I am not going to go quietly along with their program. If I can't find work because I can't do the minimum necessary to be a successful job hunter and then employee, I will kick and scream and let the world know exactly how hypocritical these folks who already have everything they need are when they praise God out of one side of their mouths and curse or ridicule those who don't have much (if anything at all) out of the other side of their mouths.

There is a scripture in the New Testament, in the Gospel of Matthew, chpater 25, verse 40, which says, "And the King shall answer and say unto them, Verily I say unto you, inasmuch as ye have done it unto one of the least of these my brethren, ye have done it unto me." In other words, Jesus said that whatever you do to the members of society least able to help themselves, you have done the same to him.

Well, I've got news for the people I described above: If you consider yourselves such good Christians, how do you justify calling the poor and the unemployed the names you do? How do you justify just assuming that anyone who needs help getting back on their feet are drunks or drug addicts or lazy or stupid. Because, if Matthew 25:40 is true, then you just called the one you claim to worship a drunken, drug-addicted lazy idiot.

There's another scripture, one that I used to puzzle over, again a passage from the Gospel of St. Matthew: "And again I say unto you, It is easier for a camel to go through the eye of a needle, than for a rich man to enter into the kingdom of God." That's Matthew 19:24, and I never could figure out why it would be so difficult for a rich person to go to heaven.

I get it now, after watching the behavior of certain leaders and opinion makers in this country who claim to be followers of Jesus but who appear to instead be following the Gospel of Gordon Geckko, the character portrayed by Micahel Douglas in the film "Wall Street", who famously said at one pont in the movie: "The point...is that greed, for lack of a better word, is good. Greed is right, greed works. Greed clarifies, cuts through, and captures the essence of the evolutionary spirit. Greed, in all of its forms; greed for life, for money, for love, knowledge has marked the upward surge of mankind."

Funny, that. I don't remember anything that sounds remotely like that coming out of the mouth of Jesus in the Gospels. It also says in the Bible, in Matthew 6:24, that "No man can serve two masters: for either he will hate the one, and love the other; or else he will hold to the one, and despise the other. Ye cannot serve God and mammon." With mammon, of course, being material wealth, otherwise known as greed.

And one other Biblical admonition, as long as I'm going there: In Matthew 7:12, it is stated as "Therefore all things whatsoever ye would do that men should do to youm do ye even so unto them." Then, in Luke 6:31, it is said this way: "And as ye would that men should do to you, do ye also to them likewise." In less Elizabethan language, "Treat people the way you want to be treated." This has been known as the Golden Rule, a term that appeared in the late 1600s but was a part of ethics and morality for much longer.
Only, too many of those same politicians and opinion makers seem to follow the other Golden Rule - "Do unto others before they do it to you." In practical terms, what that seems to mean to them is, take everything you can from everyone you can, even those who can least afford it, before they put you in a position of not being able to gather more and more material wealth for yourself, in some cases more than you would be able to spend in several lifetimes.

I apologize for turning this into a scripture-quotation frenzy. And I apologize, too, for sounding as if there are not generous people in the world, Christian and non-Christian. I'm living proof that there is a lot of generosity out there, and I'm grateful that I've been gifted with some of that generosity, which I intend to pay back or pay forward, or both, at the first opportunity. But the fact remains that people - espeically the people I know - don't have much to give, and shouldn't have to give it anyway, because in many cases, they're just barely getting by and have troubles of their own.

My argument is with the people who try to stand in the way of other people's prosperity so that they can have more for themselves by making it more and more difficult for those who have fallen on hard times to return to prosperity, and who try to justify their obstructionism by waving their religion around for all to see, another concept that the Bible I grew up reading did not recommend.

Honestly. All I want is a job so that I can take care of myself and not have to ask family, friends, or the goverment to help take care of me. My family and friends cannot afford it, and some of those same people I was criticisng earlier want to fix it so that the governemnt won't be able to afford it, or be able to do it even if it can afford it, either. I don't want to "start at the top", and I don't want a palace to live in and a fancy car to drive. But I think every human being deserves a roof over their head and enough food on the table to eat, and a job to earn those for themselves if they are capable. Even me.

We're all equal...right? Right?

With the economy being what it is these days, there is a lot of talk about what is fair and what isn't. Everyone from President Obama on down are addressing the issues of income and jobs. A particularly interesting aspect of this discussion is the subject of income equality. I was looking at an article posted on CNN's website today that talks about the idea of whether income inequality is moral or not.

There isn't much questions that incomes in the United States are becoming more and more unequal. The CNN article quotes Mr. Obama, from a speech the other day, where he said that the "average CEO has gotten a raise of nearly 400 percent since 2009, but the average American earns less than he or she did in 1999." Of course, the Republicans are going to argue with the President's numbers, but I'm not about to. From the things I saw when I was writing finance news for several online sites based in the UK (a job which I lost, not so coincidentally, due to the crappy economy), the numbers sound about right to me.

These would be the same Republicans, I should add, who have in the past and are still arguing that the minimum wage should be abolished so that businesses can pay whatever they want to their employees - and I can pretty much guarantee that "what they want" would not be higher than the federal minimum wage now, which is $7.25 per hour. That's $15,080 per year before taxes, assuming working a 40 hour week all 52 weeks in a year, with no vacations and no holiday pay. Assuming Mitt Romney's 13 percent tax rate (quite an assumption), that would mean that take-home, not including other deductions, would be around $12,818 take-home. Being as there are, of course deductions for things like Social Security, Medicare, and Unemployment Insurance, the employee making federal minimum wage would probably actually be taking home more on the order or somewhere between $10,000 and $11,000 per year. For an individual, that is slightly below the poverty line as defined in 2012. For a family of four that is substantially below the poverty level.

So, basically, these particular Republican politicians are arguing that it is fair, or moral, for people working full time to still be living in poverty while other people, who don't work any harder than those folks, make many times more simply because their jobs are seen as more "prestigious". They would argue, I would bet (because some of them have done so and continue to do so), that it's really the fault of the people who don't earn much, because they just haven't shown sufficient ambition, and that if they want to earn more, they should just pull themselves up by their own bootstraps and get with the program.

Which brings me back to the CNN article. One of the most interesting arguments about income inequality that the author of the article writes about is the argument that income inequality is moral so long as opportunity is equal. The problem with that, as is pointed out in the article, is that opportunity isn't equal, and never has been. Not even here in the land of the free and the home of the brave. In fact, I would argue that in some ways opportunity is less equal, at least for some people, than it has been in quite a while. This is because it isn't just that people from the lower-middle and working classes have less opportunity open to them for a variety of reasons that are beyond the scope of this post and that, as much as we would like to think that it isn't so, that opportunities for people of color are still not as great as those for whites. Those are serious problems, clearly. But today, you also have the very shallow requirement that you have to have the right "look" in order for certain opportunities to be available.

By "look", I'm not just talking about wearing clean clothes and combing one's hair and brushing one's teeth. No, today your opportunities are limited if you weigh more than society likes, if your teeth aren't white enough and straight enough to be perceived as attractive, if you can't afford clothes that look expensive, if you have any gray hair, or if you don't have the smooth skin of a 25-year-old. If you don't look young and thin and prosperous, there are just some (make that quite a few) opportunities that are not open to you. If you can do the job, it seems in many cases, is irrelevant if you don't have the right look.

And then there's education. Of course education is important. The problem is that opportunities for education are also constrained depending on a number of factors. Not the least of these are moves by some in Congress to reduce or eliminate grants for those who cannot afford school past high school and attempts to raise interest rates on student loans. And, even if the student from the lower economic rungs can get to college, every time the economy suffers, the first thing that happens is that public colleges and universities cut class offerings and limit the number of students they accept into school. There are, of course, private schools that can sometimes avoid these cuts, but those schools are much more expensive to attend. The biggest issue here is that, despite testimonials that this or that person barely graduated high school but still made millions, having a two or four year college degree is what having a high-school diploma was a generation or two ago. No, seriously - there were stories in the media just a little while back about fast-food restaurants (in New York City, I think, but I could be misremembering) that had made a college degree a requirement to be hired to flip burgers.

The point of all this, I guess, is that I'm really starting to resent those who complain about "takers" as opposed to "makers", and yet do all they can to keep both incomes and opportunity unequal in this country. I know too many competent people who really want to work but who can't find a job for reasons that are completely irrelevant to whether or not they can do the job. Of course, the politicians who argue to eliminate minimum wage, to cut or eliminate financial aid for students, continue to take money from the corporations who won't hire based not on ability but on whether people present the proper "corporate image" and vote for laws that work, in practice, to keep their contributors wealthy at the expense of those who actually work for a living, are the same ones who don't seem to have any trouble insulting as "lazy" and "stupid" the same people their policies would hurt the most.

There is a lot more to the article I linked to at the beginning of the post. Go read all of it. And, understand - I'm not arguing that everyone should make exactly the same amount of money, no matter what job they do. All I'm saying is that there is something wrong with a society in which advocates for the richest people in the society work actively to cut the pay to and further limit the opportunities available to the poorest people in the society. Which seems to be where were are in this country today.