Millions Go Homeless. Business, Media Don't Care

The most emailed news story today at the New York Times was: “Millions of Unemployed Face Years Without Jobs.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/02/21/business/economy/21unemployed.html?em

The gist of the article is that people who were middle class all their days are now plummeting toward life on the sidewalk and there is no safety net to help them. Not only that, get this: the business culture in the U.S. doesn’t give a damn, and doesn’t even want them back:

“American business is about maximizing shareholder value,” said Allen Sinai, chief global economist at the research firm Decision Economics. “You basically don’t want workers. You hire less, and you try to find capital equipment to replace them.”

Let that sink in. How can any nation survive as a decent place for its citizens with that kind of dominant attitude?

Workers--that is, real human beings with families, dreams, and passions--are thought of as undesirable and disposable spokes in an upgradable profit machine.

Folks, this is one F$%#ed up world.

Here’s another unbelievable point. Hold onto your hat:

“If, as Mr. Sinai expects, the economy again expands without adding many jobs, millions of people ... will be dependent on an unemployment insurance already being severely tested.”


Translation: the rich get richer while the poor lick gutter piss. Come On! The top 1% have already hogged 90% of the total wealth. Don’t they have enough already?

Wake up, United States, GREED has infected your infrastructure like a bone cancer.

Please, someone, tell me this: how could we possibly be living in a legitimate democracy? Did the people vote to be F$$$ed over this way? Again, I futilely repeat: Something is seriously sick in the very flesh of our country.

How long can this go on?

No freedom exists in our "land of the free." Why? True freedom cannot co-exist with a straitjacket of economic inequality. Multi-millionaires living it up in the shadow of incipient Hoovervilles.

God, please wake up, folks!!!

Please!!

Okay. Let me take a deep breath and try to shake the sense that I’m in some kind of surreal horror flick. But the sad truth is stubbornly dismal: people are disappearing off the middle class radar and falling into an eerie “netherworld”:

“Some poverty experts say the broader social safety net is not up to cushioning the impact of the worst downturn since the Great Depression ... ‘You have very large sets of people who have no social protections,’ said Randy Albelda, an economist at the University of Massachusetts in Boston. ‘They are landing in this netherworld.’ “

Scary Scary Scary! What the hell is going on?

And what is the media doing about it? Let me turn on the TV and see.

(Click)

This is sad. Just tragic. While millions are disappearing into a netherworld, the airwaves vomit shallow escapism and, you guessed it, commercials--and we all know how empathic and spiritually soothing commercials are.

What could make a person without money feel even more isolated and unheard? Maybe a bought-off actor smiling fatuously from a screen, and explaining why Advair is wonderful for your asthma.

What? No health insurance? Sorry, this smiling idiot is not talking to you. You are irrelevant.

Next commercial: pimple medicine.

What? you’re middle-aged and unemployed? Sorry, this is an ad for teenagers whose parents have wallets. You know, kids with a future. You’re irrelevant again.

Next commercial: polish your chrome with our suped-up cleaner!

What? You’re about to be evicted? Get the F*&$ out of here. We can’t sell our snake oil to you. You’re a zero in our calculation.

Lonely it must be to feel down on your luck while watching TV in the good ol’ USA.

It’s as sociologically fascinating as it is ethically disturbing.

TV Land: fun, youth, love, money, excitement, luxury, thrills, fashion, cool people, victory--and you too can be a part of it, if you buy our sponsor’s stuff.

Real World: disposable, unheard, fired, broken, failing and nobody cares. Not the business set. Not the charimatic characters in the pat shows. Not the beautiful young sexy actors wiggling their hips for soap, drugs and beer.

Nobody.

Welcome to the underbelly of a greed-crippled Uncle Sam crawling on his knees.