Is Jimmy Carter back in charge? Handouts rule the day
Have you noticed that some products you used to be able to buy in stores have disappeared from the shelves?
Have you noticed that some products you used to be able to buy in stores have disappeared from the shelves?
Have you also noticed that every employer in the nation seems to have a large “HELP WANTED ALL SHIFTS” sign hanging in the front window?
Could there possibly be a connection between these two dismal phenomena?
Supposedly, some relief should be on the way, because the $300-a-week federal handout to millions of layabouts because of the Panic has now ended.
So, theoretically at least, some of these 10.1 million unfilled US jobs should be filled by the 8.7 million “unemployed” Americans.
Maybe. The problem is that most states are still sitting on billions in free federal money. And Dementia Joe Biden, who has great sympathy for the gainfully unemployed since he’s been one of them his entire life, is urging the states to keep the handouts going to his shiftless Democrat constituents.
Businesses are hoping that now that the dole is sort of, perhaps, maybe, ending, even the most loyal Democrats will have no choice but to return to work.
I have my doubts.
See, I worked at Boston City Hall (as a reporter) during the Jimmy Carter malaise. Back then, the feds had a similar, if much smaller scam going.
It was the Comprehensive Employment and Training Act (CETA). It should have been called CUTA, because in fact it encouraged comprehensive unemployment rather than employment.
In Boston, some of that CETA grant money was used to set up something called the Youth Activities Commission. Another acronym – YAC. It became a recruiting ground, a boot camp, for then-Mayor Kevin White’s political organization.
YAC was supposed to train them for jobs, but all it did was make the yutes permanently unemployable. We called them YAC hacks.
The point is, most of the YAC hacks never again held a real job. Because once you go hack, you never go back.
At an early age, they got used to … gainful unemployment. Most YAC hacks never worked another day in their lives. Oh sure, they got “jobs” – maybe they bought one at the MBTA (where in those days you could retire after only 22 years). Or they took “early retirement” in some hack buyout (as if they hadn’t already retired when they first went on the public payroll in 1979).
Or best of all, some YAC hacks went out on … disability (tax-free!).
I’m getting that same YAC hack vibe from the millions of 2020-21 vacationers who now may have to go back to work after 18 months on the couch, enjoying free money, free rent and no student loan repayments, not to mention “child tax credits.”
The sob stories have already begun. What about their … COVID fears? Child care? What will they do for lunch? Who will sign for their afternoon weed deliveries?
Don’t forget the new puppies they bought during the Panic to keep them company — who will take their adorable little golden doodles out for their midday walks now?
Why can’t they just … telecommute? Come to think of it, the YAC hacks are way ahead of their time in that regard. They loved to telecommute. Especially on Fridays and Mondays. But YAC hacks had to show up at City Hall at least one day a week — payday.
Direct deposit was the greatest boon ever to the no-shows in the hackerama. Until the Panic, of course.
A typical tear-jerker story last week in the Globe quoted local freeloaders worried about losing their $300-a-week handouts. Three of them were from, respectively, Morocco, Guatemala and Nepal. They were, as you might imagine, terribly disappointed that Uncle Sam might now actually ask them to work for a living.
You might say they’re assimilated. They expect to be taken care, from cradle to grave. Just like Americanos — not to mention, the hundreds of illegal immigrants swarming across the Rio Grande, none of whom seem to have found work since Biden reopened the US as a Third World flophouse last January.
The problem is, once you get accustomed to grifting, it’s hard to break the habit. Scheming becomes your job. If you can’t get the $300 a week anymore, maybe you can transition into “job training.”
God forbid you ever get an actual job, you just want to get that “training.”
The job-training scam has been going on since the War on Poverty. (Spoiler alert: Poverty won.) Tom Wolfe wrote a famous essay about job training in San Francisco — Mau-mauing the Flak Catchers.
Gov. Mike Dukakis’s much-touted national model “job training” program became a small scandal during the 1988 presidential campaign — about 10,000 deadbeats kept training for maybe 50,000 “jobs,” over and over and over again.
The beauty is that as long as you’re training for a job, you don’t have to get a job. You can remain on the dole.
So job training is one option to keep the loyal Democrat voters on this glorious, permanent vacation that began last year. The other alternative is to shut down the economy yet again, under the guise of a new COVID emergency. Maybe that’s what Dementia Joe has in mind for his upcoming big speech.
As for the rest of us, we’ll just have to keep on working. Millions of 21st century YAC hacks are depending on us. Once you go hack, you never go back.
