You Are Worthless, You Are Invaluable

Let's take a moment to look at the rhetoric involving those on unemployment and that concerning job creation.

On the one hand, we have the popular conception of people on government assistance: the black (let's be honest) woman with 15 children who has them for no other reason but the government check, driving a Cadillac and shopping at miraculously fancy grocery stores between bonding time with her dealer.  The lazy person on welfare who got laid off from his job and never bothered looking for a new on.  The asshole who just wants to live off the state.

At the same time we talk about unemployment.  We have to create jobs, we have to employ people, we have to hire, hire hire.  We have to get people back to work.

I ask you, people of America, people who espouse the idea that we must hire people and shove their noses to the grind stone: who do you think stands to be employed?

Shockingly, it is the people you spend your time villainising, those you accuse of being lazy, those who supposedly go through the dangers of pregnancy for shits and giggles and food stamps.  At the same time, some of you rail on about how those who wish for more of life should look for better jobs which provide for their needs and wants.  You are basing our recovery on the ability of those downtrodden and demoralized to brush over the vitriol you have sent their way, the malice you use in your discourse, and the sneering disenfranchisement you spew with every slam on those on welfare to ignore your slander, your libel and your frank hatred to gather the strength and will to apply for you jobs and re-enter the workforce under the auspices of people who clearly hate them.

Perhaps you should think of that before the next time you assail them and accuse them of hating America.

"Here and now I want to make myself clear about those who disparage their fellow citizens on the relief rolls. They say that those on relief are not merely jobless—that they are worthless. Their solution for the relief problem is to end relief—to purge the rolls by starvation. To use the language of the stock broker, our needy unemployed would be cared for when, as, and if some fairy godmother should happen on the scene. 

You and I will continue to refuse to accept that estimate of our unemployed fellow Americans. Your Government is still on the same side of the street with the Good Samaritan and not with those who pass by on the other side."

 FDR, 1936