i-rant

Time to rant again – this time about another inconvenient truth. I love the environment and work to spend my leasure time there in the woods or garden. And I want to see us make it better but what about our social environment and changing that behaviour.

Unemployment and our lazy poor, I wrote this once before. Its not that all poor are lazy or that all lazy are poor but the latter is closer to the truth. I read the paper. Its our Atlanta Journal and Constitution and its not the best paper in the nation but its reasonable. Two articles in our business section:

Job Growth Slower Then Predicted

Deadbeats or Hard Luck

The Unemployment Rate is at 4.6% the lowest in 13 months. Its a fantastic historical rate and it means we are at virtually full employment. The article on job growth points this out but doesn’t quite get to the point I’m about to make.

The Deadbeats article is about people in Houston from New Orleans who aren’t working. Houston has an amazingly low unemployment rate for a huge city. The article meanders around the point that these people don’t want to work. Maybe its the fact that some of these jobs are “beneath” them.

With so many “illegal immegrants” in our country who are working, such a low unemployment rate and people not even looking for the past 10 months it is clear to me that our National psyche is simply broken. I grew up with a privledged life, I know. I had nice things and for the most part didn’t have to work as a kid. But I did. I cut lawns, I pressed cloths, I put together little model trains, I sold coupon books door-to-door. And it all payed enough to get me where I needed at the time. In fact, I didn’t do that great in my last years at U of Maryland so my job choices weren’t fantastic. My first job had a base sallary below what most high-school graduate friends were making. It was a commissioned job though and the more I learned, worked – the more I made money. More importantly, I took it seriously and it allowed me to move onto a more lucrative job after prooving myself. Something is missing in these poeples psyche and our culture at the bottom. Its is dangerously close to the socialistic and passive people of Western Europe.

Socialistically Democratic countries with 10% unemployment like France and Spain are what they are. Born from Medieval Feudalistic states where people expected the worst and assumed only the rich were to have what they have and if something nice happened it was luck or divine intervention. Our country was founded on the opposite idea. People took crappy jobs knowing there would be a chance and to see that chance was the key. Or they are poeple living in the country that don’t want much, work for the next meal and are satisfied with that life – key word, satisfied.
Poor people started here as Indentured servants, later others worked in the cities under horrible conditions. Women had it the worst, they went west as cooks and whores as they were either connected to a man or cast aside. Many of these women became stronger and passively powerful. Their children even stronger. Chinese as RR workers and butchers, indentured servents broke away to farm a small piece of land or work on someone elses farm. Their children even stronger. Sure there was desperation but a these people’s children had more and thier children had more. It is no different with my relatives.

My Great Grandfather Basil Capizzi came to America as a pumice miner from Sicily and worked construction and hard labor here. He discovered the boom in telecommunications and dug trenches for underground cables. His sons got in the the same company and worked in middle management. His oldest didn’t but instead went to work in the shipyards another boom but not an easy job, this was my Grandfather Anthony Capizzi. He worked hard and also moved up to become a “Snapper” or forman and was recognized as a committed, hard and smart worker. He went on to help his men by organizing labor and getting better working conditions. His sons and daughters also worked hard and had even more opportunity. The story is similar on my Father’s side with my Immigrant Grandfather from Greece who got on a boat at 14 with his little brother to come to America.
I’m ranting I know, but anyone who thinks our Country is faltering is missing the point – its not our country or our government – its our people that have to change.

JimmyC.