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Marc2b -> RE: Is "employment" a right? What should be done to help the long term unemployed? (5/18/2011 8:00:28 AM)
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Here we go with another case of “let’s declare something a right and that will make the problem magically disappear!” Good lord. The notion that employment should be a right is even more dangerous than the notion of health care being a right. It has no basis in workable reality. Sure, I’d love for everyone to be gainfully employed but reality doesn’t work that way. I can run off of a rooftop, flapping my arms and screaming “It’s my right to fly!” But I’m still going to go splat! I think that people who think that a job should be a right (besides giving themselves an ego stroke off over how wonderfully caring they are) fail to understand how a job comes into existence.
To those who believe that a job is a right: I am part owner/operator of a gift shop. We have three full time employees and two part time employees. If some one comes in and says, “I need a job,” does that mean we are obligated to give them one? This, despite the fact that we:
A) do not need any more employees at the current time or
B) could not afford anymore employees?
If I have to give them a job (it’s their “right” after all) and end up going out of business because we don’t have the money to pay them… how are they (or the current employees) helped?
Another question: If we do need another employee and we are obligated to hire the first person who applies (as some people around here seem to think is “fair”), what happens if (for whatever reason) that person is unsuited to the job? If we end up going out of business because we are paying out more money for no return (from the unproductive employee), how then is that employee (or our other employees or us) helped? I think screwing with the lives of several people just so someone else can sit on their couch and say to themselves, “I’m a good person because I’m against discrimination,” is too high a price to pay. I see no logical nor moral reason why I or anyone else should be sacrificed for someone else’s ego.
If you want to help people on a national level the best thing we can do is get more money into the private sector (or, rather, stop taking so much from it… yes folks, I’m talking about… cue the ominous music… TAX CUTS!) so that the demand for product and services goes up… resulting in the expansion of current businesses and the creation of new ones to meet that demand. Phony baloney government programs don’t do a god damned thing except help politicians get re-elected because it shows that they “care.” Exactly how spending other people’s money and trampling on their actual rights in order to benefit themselves makes someone caring is beyond me… but, apparently for some people, it is gospel.
If you want to help those who are suffering in this current economy the best thing you can do is get involved in the local level. Donate or volunteer at the local food pantry or clothes closet. Don’t have one? Start one! Do you have a useful skill? Consider offering free lessons to people. Of course the best thing you could do is create jobs by starting your own business but if you go that route, be prepared… you will have to jump through innumerable government regulatory hoops and even if you succeed there will be whole groups of people out there who will automatically hate you because you are now one of the “rich.” Which in their minds will also mean that you are greedy, discriminatory (“how dare you not hire that drug addict!”) and uncaring.
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