Unemployed People: Lazy? Irresponsible? Spongers?

Are unemployed people lazy?


Long-term unemployment and poverty are nothing new in America.

Long-term unemployment and poverty have always been with us in America, this great USA, but it's usually been a "life style" on the fringes of society; tucked away in the "bad" neighborhoods of the inner cities or in trailer parks and ramshackle homes in ex-urban and rural areas. 

People who have struggled with long-term unemployment, poverty, and/or homelessness in our country are usually seen as the same people who have struggled with drugs, alcohol, criminal records, mental health, disability, or lack of education and skills, perhaps lack of self-control or too many kids.

The Stereotype of the Long-Term Unemployed:

This is the vision of poverty and unemployment that has plagued our country and has often kept poor people from getting the help and support that they need: 

The Poor: Lazy Loafers or Hard-Working Wheeler Dealers?

Continued from America's Poor: People who have made "bad choices" and "didn't work hard". 

Some say that the "New Poor", not to mention the "Old Poor", need to learn "personal responsibility" and stop sponging off of those rich "job creators". The rich job creators threaten to move all of the jobs offshore unless the poor start pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and stop sucking on the gub'mint's teat and asking for higher taxes.... 

We've been introducing some of the "New Poor" (and some of the "Old Poor" as well). We have been watching them as they suck on the government's teat while they laze on the couch.

There is nothing unusual about these stories. I personally have met all of these people, and I know enough about them to trust that their stories are basically true. There are millions of people like these people, people who came from middle class backgrounds, or people who worked themselves up from poor backgrounds, who worked, sometimes for decades, who have found themselves on the sidelines, empty and depleted, in this economy. 

Many have bright, cheery profiles on LinkedIn highlighting their current mini-business endeavors. You can't see their struggles on LinkedIn or even Facebook.

I don't know how many of these people would now fall under the official poverty level, but all of them have needed government assistance; many of them have had to move, a few have been in foreclosure, some have not had health insurance or health care, others have had utilities turned off. 

Some have had cars either break down or been booted due to parking tickets that couldn't be paid. Some with kids have qualified for the earned interest credit and/or Pell grants to get through college.

These people are of all races and ethnic backgrounds, though most of them are white. I'm not going to say which person is of what ethnicity.

I know the defenders of the rich will say that these people are exceptions; that most of the poor are content to laze around on the couch, eschew "personal responsibility", let the government take care of them, and have more kids than they can afford.

I'm sure there are poor people lazing around on the couch, but I wouldn't be surprised if they are a minority of the poor.. except for those who are seriously disabled and really can't move from that couch.

Since our family has started struggling in this recession, I have paid more attention to how the "poor" live, and, quite simply, many of them are more resourcefu­l and work harder than the still-midd­le class or the upper classes. They sell things they don't need, they scour garage sales and thrift stores, they do odd jobs, they do temp jobs, they barter, they learn how to fix things. Some seem to be constantly wheeling and dealing.

And here's a final story about someone I didn't know:

Lazy Sponger Number 6:  Disabled Wheeler Dealer

"My brother, who passed away 2 years ago, was disabled and received about 10K in Social Security a year. He did all of the above (selling stuff he didn't need, doing odd jobs, fixing stuff up, etc.). Wheeling and dealing was a way of life. Possession­s came and went with necessity. He did odd jobs as his health allowed. He cultivated friendship­s and would always help a neighbor because he knew at some point he may well need that neighbor's help. He searched thrift shops for hidden treasures, frequented yard sales, and ran many of his own yard sales.

Many of my friends and family either are poor or live right on that edge, not quite poor but not doing much more than barely getting by. This is a way of life for a large subsection of people and most others are completely unaware.”

And yet the rich will insist that they don't want to pay a dime more in taxes to support these lazy, useless deadbeats and welfare slobs.


Shame.

The Poor: Lazy Loafers? or Hard-Working Wheeler Dealers?

Continued from America's Poor: People who have made "bad choices" and "didn't work hard". 

Some say that the "New Poor", not to mention the "Old Poor", need to learn "personal responsibility" and stop sponging off of those rich "job creators".  The rich job creators threaten to move all of the jobs offshore unless the poor start pulling themselves up by their bootstraps and stop sucking on the gub'mint's teat and asking for higher taxes.... 

We're introducing some of the "New Poor" (and some of the "Old Poor" as well).  We're watching them as they suck on the government's teat while they laze on the couch:

Lazy sponger Number 4:  Grandpa Cuts Grass

The young man grew up in a dirt poor neighborhood on the "wrong side of the tracks". He was very bright, did well in school, went to college on a scholarship, and graduated with honors. Vietnam started up just as he was finishing school and he was drafted. When he left the Army and came home, he struggled to "find" himself, which was the story of so many vets who returned from Vietnam in the 60's and early 70's. 

After a series of odd jobs, a broken marriage, and a stint in graduate school, he got a job as a computer programmer trainee, and quickly rose through the ranks. Back in the early 90's, he was making a six figure salary, owned property, was married and had children. But he was 50; his company was preparing to sell itself, and he was pushed out the door. 

He decided to use his savings and some of his pension fund to start a business, as he had always wanted to work for himself. It just didn't go well for a number of reasons, and he poured good money after bad into it..

He became more and more depressed, things weren't going well with his wife, who was working while he was often sleeping night and day, letting his employees run his business. Not a good idea. 

He tried to find a "regular" job, but with qualifications as a business owner and a corporate manager (not to mention being over 50), he was "overqualified". He did get a real estate license, and was able to make a little money doing that. He finally closed down his business; taking major losses, and he and his wife sold a property.  But they did wind up in divorce court.  He still did not have any regular income; they had been living off of equity from the property they sold, and that didn't last that long.

During the divorce, he lived in several places, each one smaller than the last, and was homeless for a few nights here and there.  There was little left for his wife and he to split. After he divorced, he moved in with his new girlfriend; she basically supported him while he tried to find steady work... for two years. He did make a little money selling real estate.  He "tried out" for a job selling insurance but was let go. He did the training for preparing income taxes and did that for a couple of springs. It was not a lot of money, however, and clients were few and far between as more and more people were using online programs to do their taxes.

Finally, through a friend, he got a lead on a job in another state.  He got the job, initially on a temp basis, and he moved there.  His girlfriend (now his wife) followed and got a job. Both of their jobs were in construction-related fields, and things were going well for a couple of years. But we know how that ended. He lost his job, then her job was cut back to part-time, then she lost it altogether. They had bought a home for cheap after the real estate crash, but they didn't expect that prices would continue to decline so acutely. A year later the house was worth only a fraction of what they paid for it; the entire subdivision was empty; they were both out of work and couldn't pay the mortgage. They walked away from their home.

They had started selling stuff on eBay during the early 2000's; they decided to ramp that up. They both have worked odds and ends, done "projects" for pay; they've bartered, they've "wheeled and dealed". He took early Social Security; but her unemployment ran out, and they are working an incredible number of hours a week just to keep their heads above water with the eBay business. They are up at dawn a few days a week to get to the garage sales and the thrift stores early.

He's now in his mid 60's but he mows grass for a few neighbors, some younger than he is, to make a few bucks. He is grateful that he finally qualifies for Medicare and can again see a doctor regularly. His wife won't be eligible for early Social Security for 5 or 6 years. 

Lazy Sponger Number 5:  Wounded Vet Wanting Work    

  

Another bright young man, from an upper middle class background found himself alienated and not doing well in high school. He barely got through high school, and, as Vietnam was calling, he enlisted before being drafted.  He thought he might have more options.  He did go to Vietnam and was wounded, though not seriously. 

After getting out of the service, he struggled, worked odd jobs, tried to get himself back together; again, the story of so many who were in Vietnam in the 60's and 70's. Finally, after living here and there, after a marriage that didn't work out, he went back to school and got a nursing degree.

Lazy Sponger 5: Wounded Vet Wants Work

Poverty in America: She Left her Bootstraps on the Bus

Continued from America's Poor: Lazy, Irresponsible, Dependent?

Introduction HERE

Some say that the "New Poor", not to mention the "Old Poor", need to learn "personal responsibility".  They need to stop sponging off of those rich "job creators"!  

Meet some of the "New Poor" (and some of the "Old Poor" as well).  We're watching them sponge off of others,  show no "personal responsibility", and demonstrate how little they value money and how dependent they are on the government:

Lazy Sponger Number 3:  She Left her Bootstraps on the Bus

A young woman had two children out of wedlock at a young age. It created a life of struggle for her, but she vowed to work hard and not pass a life of struggle on to her kids. She worked for a large retailer, but pay slightly above minimum wage doesn't go that far when you have two kids to raise.


She realized she would have to go back to school to get some kind of skill, and she went to school on the weekends and worked during the week. That didn't go over well with her retailer employer which insisted that full-time staff work on the weekends. As a result, her hours dropped down to 34 a week, the fewest that one could work and still be considered "full-time". The automatic scheduling system often scheduled her for difficult hours, a few hours in the morning, then several hours off, and then a few hours in the afternoon. As she traveled by bus, it added hours a day to her working day, and working a split shift was just something she really couldn't do.  Her boss would try to fix her hours, but he often got grief from his boss, as the automatic scheduling system was to be left alone.

But with fewer hours and ever-decreasing pay (due to changing pay policies of her employer), she did qualify for food stamps, housing, energy assistance.(In other words, the government was subsidizing her employer who didn't pay her enough on which to live.) 

She did not do well in school; she feels due to the pressure of kids, work, and school, and she has not yet been able to finish her program. She finally found a different job, still just a bit above minimum wage, but without the pressures of her old job. She's still not getting ahead, but at least this job seems to be less stressful, and the hours aren't as capricious.


Lazy sponger Number 4:  Grandpa Cuts Grass

The young man grew up in a dirt poor neighborhood on the "wrong side of the tracks". He was very bright, did well in school, went to college on a scholarship, and graduated with honors. Vietnam started up just as he was finishing school and he was drafted. 

When he left the Army and came home, he struggled to "find" himself, which was the story of so many vets who returned from Vietnam in the 60's and early 70's. 

After a series of odd jobs, a broken marriage, and a stint in graduate school, he got a job as a ...

Lazy Sponger Grandpa Cuts Grass Continued HERE

The Poor: Lazy, Deadbeats, Welfare Slobs?

Continued from America's Poor: Lazy, Irresponsible, Dependent?

Introduction HERE

Some say that the "New Poor", not to mention the "Old Poor", need to learn "personal responsibility".  They need to stop sponging off of those rich "job creators"!  

Meet some of the "New Poor" (and some of the "Old Poor" as well).  We're watching them sponge off of others,  show no "personal responsibility", and demonstrate how little they value money and how dependent they are on the government:

Lazy sponger Number 2:  Busy with Businesses

Another man, now in his early 60's, grew up in the "projects." He worked his way through school, got a job programming computers in the 70's and worked in IT for several decades. He did reasonably well and worked steadily. 

He had a son, but that marriage didn't last. Other family members struggled, and he was always generous with them, with his sister and his mother, in particular. He remained very involved in his son's life and always paid his child support. 

He married again and had children in the mid 90's. His wife was a college-educated professional; they bought a modest home and things were going well.

He worked during the late 90's as a consultant on several Y2K projects. After the dot.com bust and the end of the Y2K fixes, assignments became harder and harder for him to come by as many companies off shored their IT people, and as "new technologies" replaced the older technologies that he knew. 


He started a small home-based business selling insurance. He made an income and he was able to be home with his kids. Eventually his mother's health went downhill, and they took her in. Her social security check did help the family meet their bills. 


Then the recession hit. Overnight, almost all of his customers just went away. He looked for temporary or full-time work and couldn't find any. He was hired for the Census, but, after they did their background check, a 40+ year old arrest record (not a charge or a conviction) came back to haunt him. He couldn't work until it was straightened out, and by the time that happened, the Census work was over. 


Meanwhile, back in late 2009 or early 2010, his wife (now in her 50's) lost her job. She worked in a construction-related field. They are both trying to find jobs; both developing small business ideas; she's written a couple of eBooks and has a couple of online businesses going. They are trying to keep their heads above water and pay the bills. 


Grandma's dementia, however, got worse last winter and she could no longer stay in their home. She is now in a nursing home. So there went Grandma's social security check, which was helping them to pay their bills.  The wife's unemployment will run out soon, and they are desperately trying to get some income regular going before it goes away. He will soon turn 62 and will probably have to take early social security. He's still completely healthy and he would much rather have a job. 



Lazy Sponger Number 3:  She Left her Bootstraps on the Bus

A young woman had two children out of wedlock at a young age. It created a life of struggle for her, but she vowed to work hard and not pass a life of struggle on to her kids. She worked for a large retailer, but pay slightly above minimum wage doesn't go that far when you have two kids to raise. 


She realized she would have to go back to school to get some kind of skill, and she went to school on the weekends and worked during the week.


More here:  Lazy Sponger Number 3:  She Left Her Bootstraps on the Bus

The New Poor: Lazy Spongers Pizzas Don't Pay

We're examining the new face (or perhaps the same old face) of poverty in America.  We're watching many of the New Poor and some of the Old Poor as they sponge off of others,  show no "personal responsibility", and demonstrate how little they value money:

Introduction HERE:  Are the rich different than you and I?  Are the poor really lazy slackers? 

Lazy Sponger Number 1:   Pizzas don't Pay. 

A man now in his late 30's grew up with a welfare mom who was ill and rarely worked during his childhood. He struggled as a young man, dropped out of high school but eventually got a GED. He worked a series of low-wage jobs, but did take classes and managed to get a real estate license. He wasn't particularly successful in real estate, unfortunately, and left the business. 

Finally he discovered he had a knack for computers. He took some classes, and created a small business for himself with 5 or 6 regular small-business clients. He was doing reasonably well, adequately providing for himself, when the recession hit. One by one, his clients stopped calling him due to their cutbacks, and, one by one, most of them closed their doors. He had no unemployment insurance to fall back on, so he returned to one of his earlier gigs:   Delivering pizzas. 

Things had changed, though, in pizza delivery land since he had delivered pizzas a decade or more earlier. He says that he used to be able to make as much as $500 a week delivering pizzas, due to an hourly wage, tips, and a stipend per pizza delivered. But now most pizza places were paying their delivery people as 1099 contract workers, paying them very small hourly "on call" stipends and, other than that, the delivery person only gets tips. And tips are down these days. He was lucky to make $200 most weeks.

Last summer he had a stroke. Undiagnosed and uncontrolled diabetes and hypertension contributed to his stroke as he hadn't had any health insurance or health care for several years. He couldn't pay the medical bills, even though he had been treated in a county hospital, so he had to declare bankruptcy.

His car broke down just as he was recovering and he couldn't afford to fix it. Finally a family member helped him out with the purchase of and repairs to another older car. He did find out that he was eligible for food stamps and energy assistance, and he found a doctor at a free clinic to treat him for his medical conditions. 

Now he is delivering pizzas, but he doesn't make much doing it, and he got a job working at McDonald's part-time on their clean up crew. He's trying to resurrect his business when he has the time, but he isn't having much luck. And many potential clients want to pay half of what they were paying a few years back for similar work. On top of it, he now badly needs dental care and that doesn't help when he is trying to make an impression meeting clients. 

Lazy Sponger Number 2:   Busy with Businesses    

Another man, now in his early 60's, grew up in the "projects." He worked his way through school, got a job programming computers in the 70's and worked in IT for several decades. He did reasonably well and worked steadily. 

He had a son, but that marriage didn't last. Other family members struggled, and he was always generous with them, 

Read more here:

Lazy Sponger Number 2: Busy with Businesses

America's Poor: Lazy, Irresponsible, Dependent?

Update 9/21/2012:  This series of articles was written in August 2011, over a year before Mitt Romney's infamous comments about 47% of the American people who don't pay taxes, don't take personal responsibility, and who are victims became public.  We start with a study that shows that the rich are indeed different from the rest of us, and jump to stories of people, most of them college educated, of all races and ethnic backgrounds, who have found themselves now poor or near poor.. and how they are coping.

Verbal Class Warfare has started in the U.S., and it's not pretty.  

From Sott.net

Verbal class warfare has actually been around for awhile but it's getting more heated as the issues surrounding taxes and government spending become more heated. "The poor are lazy, they don't work hard; they eschew "personal responsibility", they've learned to be dependent." That's a fairly common line from those who believe that the well-off already carry too much of the burden.

A recent study seems to suggest that the rich are different:  That they are less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

From an article about the study on the rich from MSNBC:

Now psychologist and social scientist Dacher Keltner says the rich really are different, and not in a good way: Their life experience makes them less empathetic, less altruistic, and generally more selfish.

In fact, he says, the philosophical battle over economics, taxes, debt ceilings and defaults that are now roiling the stock market is partly rooted in an upper class "ideology of self-interest"

In other words, rich people are more likely to think about themselves. “They think that economic success and political outcomes, and personal outcomes, have to do with individual behavior, a good work ethic,” said Keltner, a professor of psychology at the University of California, Berkeley.

In the comments to this article, someone objects: 

"...and this isn't true? Individual behavior and a good work ethic don't help one succeed? I don't see anything wrong with that.

When you are given something that you didn't earn (welfare), of course you don't place the same value on money that someone that worked hard and earned it does.

The way I read this, the wealthier are driven toward personal responsibility, and the lower class looks to others to be responsible for them.

Maybe if the lower class started learning a little personal responsibility we wouldn't have this gap."

Could he be right?  Is the problem that the poor, both the "New Poor" and the "Old Poor" need to learn "personal responsibility"?  Perhaps they do need to stop sponging off of those rich "job creators"  and "earn their money"?  

Here's the face of the "New Poor" (and some of the "Old Poor"). 


Let's watch them sponge off of others,  show no "personal responsibility", and demonstrate how little they value money:

Lazy Sponger Number 1:   Pizzas don't Pay. 

A man now in his late 30's grew up with a welfare mom who was ill and rarely worked during his childhood. He struggled as a young man, dropped out of high school but eventually got a GED. He worked a series of low-wage jobs, but did take classes and managed to get a real estate license. He wasn't particularly successful in real estate, unfortunately, and left the business. 

Finally he discovered he had a knack for computers. He took some classes, and created a small business for himself with 5 or 6 regular small-business clients. More here:


Lazy Spongers Continued here:  Pizzas Don't Pay