Unemployment as a Lifestyle

James Hall, Contributor
Activist Post 

All one hears is that the lack of jobs is the number one economic problem. Well documented are endless examples of systemic destruction in employment opportunities. The negative consequences of off-shoring corporate jobs are undeniable. Up until now, the little attention placed on the psychological mindsets that build the structural impediments for a healthy main street economy, keep a serious discussion on jobs, just going in circles.

The official attitude that government social agencies exist to mitigate economic distress is a staple ever since the New Deal era. Much of the state of mind that created the welfare society emerged from the “do gooders” in New York State. The result from decades of socialization and educational indoctrination left us with the entitlement culture.

One illustration supports the contention. The NYAPRS, New York Association of Psychiatric Rehabilitation Services provides conclusions from a 2009 survey taken from informants who were consumers of employment services, administrators of state agencies, and community providers.

This research revealed several systemic and structural barriers to employment:
Slow transition to a Recovery-oriented system: The public mental health system New York State continues to have a strong focus on helping people to survive with their illnesses rather than to recover and function with the rest of society. This system does not seem to fully embrace the belief that all people with psychiatric disabilities can work. Employment is not a priority: The policies and practice standards of the public mental health system, vocational rehabilitation and workforce services do not recognize the harmful effects of long-term unemployment. Therefore, supporting employment has not been a priority. Lack of a comprehensive system: The services and supports needed for employment are not organized into single system in which people looking for work can get all of the services they need to find and keep a job. Some of the signs of this ‘fragmentation’ include: Service providers have little awareness of outside programs and agencies; Limited inter-agency collaboration leads to complex, repetitive processes to obtain services (e.g., applications, assessments); Poor referral and follow-up practices; Limited ability to combine resources and use funding efficiently.

Charity for the unfortunate is a noble practice, but condemning vast segments of the eligible work force to government reliance only produces subsistent survival. Note the concept “psychiatric disabilities” that breeds the acceptance that permanent unemployment is the new normal. NYARPS’ solution is more and bigger government. 

The philosophical question that society refuses to confront is that work is essential to a healthy life. Most people deny this axiom. Their benefit lifestyle is based upon the tormented thought of actual work as an expenditure of energy and mental stress.

The simple reason why this criterion of torture — feared and evaded with earnest — is that public assistance for the middle class is an integrally important part of public policy. The myth that government services benefit citizens, based upon the false premise, of confiscatory taxation is mentally deranged.

Add in entire segments of illiterate and unassimilated renegades and the prospects of actually engaging in an honest day’s work and you have a national lifestyle that repudiates labor as a means of earning a living.

The parasitic culture is alive and well on its way to be the most vocal stratum demanding more government reimbursement to maintain unemployed status.

However, not all individuals share the futility of dependency. Some still soldier on to earn a legitimate sustenance through honorable work. The basic solution to quash the unemployment mentality cannot be found in sound bites like “creating jobs”. The cornerstone of government repression found in the fulfillment of government assistance programs, is the assault against the individual to keep the fruits of their commerce as a natural right.

The domestic economy has so radically denied the proper reward of conducting business that most citizens have clearly given up. The mental disease that permeates all aspects of government is that the State is the ultimate guarantor of the public welfare. 

The reason why there are so many underprivileged beggars on some form of a public dole, rests upon the theft of the effective ability to succeed at an independent business venture. The average person, beaten down for decades, is not willing to take the risk of entrepreneurship.

The black market is the real economy. The intrusive violation into our own business affairs by the encroachment of government restriction on the free market causes systemic unemployment.

The future forecast just grows worse every year. Food stamp dependency is now at an all time high. Capitulation of the long-term unemployed leave the job search. Raising the minimum wage just forces more employees onto the unemployment rolls. Most disturbing is that the underemployed, who are unable to meet their financial needs, suffer from bleak expectations.

The corporate monopolization of access to capital, as the ordinary borrower barred from loans, is the final tipping point for main street commercial enterprises. The top-down economy only benefits the corporatist and magnifies the suffering of the fading middle class. The poor will always exist, but soon the bourgeoisie will be added to the ranks of the wretched.

The psychiatric rehabilitation, desperately needed to restore the fundamental balance in normal commerce, needs to enforce anti-trust laws. Protection against crony criminals that steal from the true economy is imperative. The country is tilting on its axis because basic common sense is absent under the Corporate/State model.

Solving the unemployment dilemma requires a “single system” of rewarding work and phasing out government dependency. The sickness that saps the lifeblood from the economy requires treatment that restores decentralization and individual business initiatives.

America has an economy deeply afflicted with the mental ailment of futility. The symptom of economic distress is rapidly metastasizing into a culture of hopelessness. Only a revival of financial reward for meaningful work can regenerate needed confidence. The nanny state destroys self-reliance. Job creation is the natural function of the private sector.

It is time to get America back on track.