Visualize Whirled Peas

Closed. Gone. Kaput. Favorite businesses of mine, ones I've patronized for years, have fallen like timbers in a tornado.

That's bad enough, but Diane, the Contrarian, wonders...what happens to the employees of these ma-pa businesses that have blown away like barns in a twister's path? Sure, some get better jobs. But, in today's job market, with piles of "dime-a-dozen" employees, I suspect some go job hunting and some try to turn to what's left of welfare.

One of my contrarian mentors, Barbara Ehrenreich, offers a perspective on the plight of white collar unemployed workers,

"Is it any wonder there's no time left for lobbying for universal health insurance or reading Marxist tracts on the 'reserve army of the unemployed'? It's all a person can do to keep up with the relentless pressures of an imaginary job."

"Retraining" is the glib response from bureaucrats and barons alike, hoping to stave off the revolutions of the ever-growing masses of people with time on their hands. Ehrenreich writes,

"Even two or three years ago, when the economy was apparently healthy, average layoff victims 'landed' in new jobs paying 17 percent less than the old ones - if they landed at all. Today, with the country losing more than a half-million jobs a month, both white-collar job searching and blue-collar retraining are becoming surreal exercises in futility."

If the person lacks a safety net--a roof over their head, access to health care, resources to pay for child care, food for the family, etc.--then the big problems hit. Some have family to turn to and some don't. Those who without family teeter on the ever-present edge of homelessness. Woe to the parent that needs to turn to welfare, which was handily dismantled last century.

Back in the 90's boom-time, when talk centered around "ending welfare as we know it," we nay-sayers knew the faux prosperity would erupt like a baby eating whirled peas. And it has, splattering mess all over those standing below the bottom rung of the ladder to success.

At a recent high level poverty conference in DC, attendees pondered the dilemma of rising joblessness in a recession economy that has devastated public and private support systems. They heard Robert Greenstein of the Center for Policy and Budget Priorities point out, "A budget tsunami is coming,” he said. “That threat should be taken a hell of a lot more seriously than it is now.”

This threat is not new; it was, is and will be centered around the system that holds little regard for impoverished families who don't vote. I wonder--are the people discussing the problem and making the decisions on possible solutions at all clear on the concept?

Seems to me that we've lost the concept:human beings--families and individuals devastated by our lack of warning system for this perfect storm--recession, state budget crises, job market smashed to smithereens, inaccessible health care services, inadequate safety net, (I could go on and on)--they are human beings, not storm debris. I'd give the safety net task to a group like the Poor People's Economic Human Rights Campaign that focus on preserving quality of life for the growing number of people joining their ranks.

photos by the author