I'm asking a serious question.
The GOP/Conservative/Talk Radio meme these days lately has been about the lazy unemployed American absorbing every free benefit, welfare payment, food stamp, free meal, and charity gift basket they can score before they reluctantly decide to go back to the plentiful jobs that are certainly out there waiting for them, begging for them, once they get off their fat butts and turn off the TV.
Pundits and pols are really hoping that this talking point will catch on so that "they" don't have to feel any guilt about voting against future unemployment benefits, which surely no one really needs anyway.
It's a pitiful effort. But what I wonder is, who do they think they are fooling?
I know that there are a lot of policy wonks here on Dkos who understand inside and out why "they" say what they say. But, I can't help wondering, who is their audience today?
- Other politicians? The ones getting crying phone calls in their offices back home from constituents who they consider friends and near family, no down to their last check, and fearful of being thrown out of the house next week? The same people who begged the Feds for stimulus money for dying towns and desperate local companies. Their fellow congressmen who all get the real numbers, the scary numbers in their reports. No, I don't think they are trying to fool each other.
- The nation's big employers, who know better than anyone exactly how many workers they have had to lay off, fire, downsize, and eliminate. Those CEOs know how many plants are working, what the same store sales are, what the circulation numbers say. They have a pretty good idea how many people they might be able to hire back next year, or if they will survive next year. They know very well how many people stand in line for job fairs and how fast the email resumes pile up.
- State and local governments? Governors and city managers who have had to cut budgets to the bone? Our city fired 25 people this year, some of them with two dozen years of seniority. Long-time beloved secretaries, whole departments. No one is hiring in local governments.
- Are they trying to con the old white people living on retirement? The ones with bedrooms full of adult kids coming home because of jobs lost and then houses lost? The proud grandparents of college graduates working at Starbucks because they can't break in. The aunts and uncles watching every boy and many girls in the family join the military because they have few other options? The oldsters who are themselves looking for jobs as greeters at Walmart? Really? These people watching daughters-in-law trying to make a few bucks selling Tupperware and sons-in-law advertising as handymen believe that everyone else is eating fried chicken and watching cable TV on unemployment income? I don't know anyone that dumb, do you?
- Anyone under the age of 30? Most people under the age of 30 have never had a job that would give them very much unemployment to start with. These young people dream of sharing apartments with three friends just so they don't have to talk to their parents every day at the breakfast table about looking for jobs.
- The rich? Do the rich really listen to Rush? Most of the rich people I know just live on the north side of my same town. They have bigger houses and bigger cars with bigger mortgages and bigger insurance payments. They work at (or own) firms that had to downsize. In my town, they want to save a local library branch and still can't quite believe that no one else has written the big check to do so. The rich people around here sponsor all the charities that are overwhelmed with need. They are digging deep in their own pockets to keep supporting the literacy centers, the opera companies, the youth service centers that have lost grants and funding. The rich, most of them are not as rich as they were a few years ago. I know where they shop, I know how many empty storefronts there are where they shop.
Who? Who are they trying to convince with this sorry line of reasoning about the unemployed?
Are "they" trying to convince me? Warm in my little cozy house, with a hard-working spouse who earned a bonus this year? Our son in community college? Our daughter who knows how to shop the sale racks first? Do "they" really think that we are fooled?
Help me out here, who do "they think they are talking to?