Senator Ron Johnson and the other Republican members of Congress from Wisconsin have asked Governor Tony Evers to suspend the $300 per month unemployment payments to state residents. Beyond the fat chance that that's going to happen, it's xeroxed out of the Republican playbook.
Let's haul the cliches back out again:
- You can't solve problems by throwing money at them;
- If you give people money, they'll just sit on their backsides and won't look for work;
- It's 'rugged individualism' (this one from the Great Depression, which failed for Hoover, too) that's made this country great.
Granted, the jobs report wasn't nearly as hopeful as the Biden Administration had projected it would be. By about three-fourths, in fact.
This isn't a good look. Biden was planning on businesses, and people, to have a bit more money to tide themselves over and get back on track. Which is to say, fill up some job openings that have been sitting there for as along as this virus has had us on hold, and in the meantime, pay some bills and get something to eat.
Like your Mom teaching you how to ride a bike, it felt great until you realized she wasn't pushing you anymore. In fact, I heard today that restaurants in the Milwaukee area are trying to hire new workers, but they haven't responded yet. Now, why is that?
The Chamber of Commerce, too, thinks it has this all figured out. As soon as the jobs report came out, it immediately recommended that the administration stop all handouts. That's not new thinking. It's tired Republican thinking, the thinking of those who run businesses and never got laid off themselves. It's rather automatic, rather knee-jerk. But those claims are true only if two things are also true:
- Those not working found no value in work;
- Those who can't earn any more money than the minimum wage, which is absurdly low and hasn't been adjusted for inflation for a ridiculously long time; and
- The dollar amount they got from the government allows them to sustain themselves (and if they have families, them, too) for the foreseeable future.
Take it from someone who's been unemployed more than once in his life: The first isn't true. Yes, I got assistance from a state government or two, and yes, it certainly helped. But sit there without doing anything, especially if I could be earning more money while gainfully employed? Nonsense.
People have pride. It takes a lot to beat it out of them. But sometimes a lot happens. If it takes a long time to get a job, people give up. They gave up often during the past recession. I know I nearly did.
But I also knew that if I did, the original people who thought they should let me go would win. In the twisted minds which cut me loose from Cedarburg in the first place, they would justify it far more easily. (And no, I have not forgiven them nor will I ever. I'm not that big of a person. My removal had to do with unexplained vindictiveness because the obsequious superintendent told me with others around, "It's not about the money.") It was my goal to make it to the age of Social Security, one way or another, working until I could retire.
Could I start over, outside of education, at age 57? Uphill all the way. I didn't try to get back into anybody else's classroom. Who would take someone that old, with jobs that scarce, especially someone who had been a big union guy? Who would take on someone with that potential for organizing trouble?
Age discrimination was a major roadblock. It is sometimes not even subtle. People tell you that you're too old. They find ways to do it that avoid lawsuits. I got good at reading tea leaves after a while.
Usually you don't even get that far. Just get me in the room, I'd tell myself and by implication tell someone who could hear me only through my resume; you'll see.
There are sites that profess to know, really, really know, the trick to writing a good resume; all you had to do was pay a couple of bucks, if you had it, and they'd tell you. But it's mainly done through algorithms now, and they hook your paper to a computer which wrings out the humanity from all of it and treats you like the machine it is. And it's no guarantee of anything.
Previous prestige meant zero. Even my colleagues back in Cedarburg had no idea what I'd accomplished, no clue as to where I'd really been and what it had taken to get there. It was absurd to believe that anybody else did, either. And prestige achieved in another profession meant little to that which you aspired. That took a while to absorb. I'd had enormous success, but it was all inside a bubble.
It got so that actually getting a response, even a bad one, was a victory. At least they thought I had a chance, I'd say to myself, and I was good for another three or four days.
I'd come close, here and there. Interviews were like gold. Some of the work was far off and they didn't want to pay to get me in the room, where I knew I would knock them dead, so some did it by phone. I got better and better at phone interviews; I had one group in Nevada eating out of my hand, laughing at my jokes. I thought they were going to not only hire me, but adopt me as family. But I came in second.
I could hear the voice delivering the bad news; I really had come close. They really were sorry. It was genuine. But the results were the same: still unemployed.
It would fill me with both hope and despair together. I felt like the dogs chasing the rabbit around the track: Always close, never quite there, and feeling a little dumb about it. But there was no one who would just give me a job, at least not one at the level at which I believed I deserved.
That's the other issue: Do you sweep floors instead? I chose not to. I let my savings dwindle. I spent through one IRA, but not the second: I drew a line there. But what if I did take a menial position? With the minimum wage what it is, and was, would it have made that much difference?
Instead, I plunged into debt. It took years to climb out. But I got there, just in time to retire. I had to give up the place I'd bought more than a decade ago, to which I might have gone and buried myself in withdrawal; living in rural Wisconsin was cheap enough, and I could have survived on my teachers' pension alone. But I couldn't do it. I knew I had more to contribute, and considering where I'd been, I had to try. And there was still Cedarburg. I would not let them celebrate upon my demise.
Yes, it cost me in time, money and emotional stability. But I have that victory. They snubbed me but they couldn't bury me. I endured.
It grinds away at your self-esteem, though. You know you're worth something to someone, but you can't prove it. You have to be invited first. You're out there on an island with no ship passing by. No one can help you.
And yes, the thought does occur to you: Maybe I should quit. And once re-hired somewhere, the enthusiasm for working isn't quite what it once was; too much energy and emotional juice has been spent getting there in the first place. The longer it takes, the deeper it gets. You can only get beaten down so far when it starts to matter.
I made it, but the struggle was enormous. I'm sustainable now. Unless inflation overtakes us--and you never know about that--I can live just fine on what's coming in. Had I simply quit back in 2009, though, my Social Security payments would be much less per month. The gamble paid off.
And--surprisingly, but a sign of economic recovery--I just learned that my monthly stipend from the state retirement system, after taxes, jumped some eight percent in the last couple of months. Not bad.
So the Chamber of Commerce, in their fine, stylish corner offices, can say what they want: The reality isn't quite what they project. Work brings pride with it, but if it was that easy to get, that problem would be solved almost immediately.
And no, extra money to keep one in their homes and fed for a little while longer won't cause, by itself, an inclination to use the public trough as a permanent source; nor will it collapse the entire economy. We're some ways from that yet.
But that pride has a limit, too. Withdrawing that stimulus money and "letting the system manage itself" only works for those doing the philosophizing; they don't have to suffer the daily anxiety of being without a job, nor do they need to manufacture hope from whole cloth.
It's real easy for Ron Johnson and Republican members of Congress to urge that people take away the safety wheels; they have well-paying jobs that, in my view, they don't deserve, either because people here are deluded or they've had the skids greased for them by gerrymandering, where all they have to do is show up and they get 60 percent of the vote without trying.
Obviously, they didn't get sick, either. That might be followed with genuine compassion. Outside of lip service, that's a little too much to ask. That isn't in the Republican playbook.
Be well. Be careful. Wear a mask inside. With some luck, I'll see you down the road.
Mister Mark
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