ARS on Twitter
RSS
Why Work?
Posted by Raven on February 23rd, 2009
Living off of savings and severance packages is all fine and dandy. We all need to save a good 6 months to a years’ worth of income to cover times of unemployment.
Using UNEMPLOYMENT benefits to live a life with perks is unacceptable however. What is this? Making the best? How about being lazy? How about taking advantage of those of us who have managed to keep our jobs? How convenient it is to use to bad economy as an excuse to visit museums and to pick up new or old hobbies…and since the government has expanded unemployment benefits to last 26 weeks now, how SWEET it must be.
Yesterday I asked, Why Bother Being Responsible? My question was based upon an article in the Boston Globe.
Today, the Globe gives us an example of people who aren’t even trying to be responsible, self sufficient citizens.
A few days after David Adler’s wife decided to leave her law firm in December, he was laid off from his job designing software at Brightcove.
It was shocking. And scary.
Until it wasn’t. Adler has quickly learned to appreciate some aspects of his unexpected unemployment.
The 42-year-old spends his days doting on his 6-month-old daughter, visiting museums with his family, and preparing for a possible exhibit of his photos at a local coffee shop in Dedham. Living off savings, unemployment, and severance packages, Adler knows he has to get a job eventually and has started the search. But for now, he’s cherishing every moment. “It’s our first child and I love watching her grow,” Adler said. “And it’s nice to have time off and get in touch with my old hobbies.”
As the ranks of the nation’s unemployed grows, more Americans are facing the reality of life without work. Despite the grim task of making ends meet (firing the nanny, bailing on Whole Foods, applying for unemployment), there is a newly forming society of people who are making the best of being laid off. They are rediscovering hobbies. They are greeting kids at the school bus. They are remembering what daylight actually looks like.
It’s too bad some have to fire the nannies and shop at Wal Marts, or God forbid, stand in a line at the state welfare-for-the-unemployed offices. A newly formed group of people making up a new society: UNEMPLOYMENT WELFARE WHORES.
And we can thank our government for this.
John Stephen Dwyer so far isn’t missing his job or former office overlooking Chinatown. The 41-year-old Boston native was laid off in November from his $40,000-a-year job as education coordinator for the Clinical Research Graduate Program of Tufts University Sackler School of Biomedical Sciences. And he hasn’t started seriously looking for new work.
Don’t get Dwyer wrong – times aren’t exactly easy. He has applied for unemployment and now takes the subway instead of taxis. But he has started doing things he enjoys: taking a class in history and ethics of biotechnology at the Harvard Extension School; cooking food for the homeless; and attending weekday Mass at churches around Boston.
Damn! Taxi rides were so…cool!
I always thought the money we save for just these times, would be ALL we used. But no. Obviously there are a great number of people who have and who will take “benefits” along with their own cash.
Fucking losers. Every one of them.
February 24th, 2009 at 1:17 pm
Fucking losers is right. How dare these people use the unemployment benefits they paid while employed to live a little and make the most of a bad recession while they look for new jobs. We don’t pay those taxes so we can enjoy being shit-outta-work now get back to being miserable you jobless assholes.