Don't Redistribute the Wealth - Redistribute the Work!

The poor don't need handouts or even to move as I have suggested before. The poor simply need to get off their asses and get a job, just like the rest of us have.

What kind of job you ask? Well for starters, every city probably needs more garbage men. A quick check of the DC jobs pages shows that DC is in need of garbage men.

Job Title: SANITATION WORKER TASK GROUP (Read: Garbage Man)

General Job Information
"Pay Plan, Series & Grade: RW-3501-05
Salary Range: $16.44 - $21.58 Per Hour
Opening Date: October 21, 2008
Closing Date: November 3, 2008
Tour of Duty: 6:45 a.m. - 3:15 p.m., Monday - Friday
Area of Consideration: Special Area (Solid Waste Collection Division)
Promotion Potential: None
Number of Vacancies: Several

Brief Description of Duties: Incumbent serves as a member of Waste Collection Crew providing trash and recycling collection services. Picks-up or roll cans to rear of the compactor and deposit trash in hopper of truck. Pushes buttons on rear of packer truck, or orally signals driver when refuse is in place, and crew members are clear of truck. Uses care to avoid injuring other employees and self. Cleans refuse spilled in performance of duties. Performs other related duties as assigned.

Qualifications

Element #1: LIKELIHOOD OF SUCCESS IN ASSIGNMENTS WHICH REQUIRE INTEREST, MOTIVATION, AND READINESS TO DO SIMPLE WORK

Job Element #1: Ability To Handle Weights and Loads;
Job Element #2: Ability To Follow Oral Directions; and
Job Element #3: Dexterity and Safety
--- DC Jobs listing

There is nothing wrong with being a garbage man, especially at over $16 an hour and especially if it is a choice between that and unemployment/welfare. The city also has job openings for garbage truck drivers starting at $18.57 an hour. That's over $36,000 a year excluding any possible overtime and on top of that you are done by 3:15 in the afternoon. How is it that these jobs are unfilled while at the same time DC has loads of unemployed people, many of whom are not qualified for any other jobs, kicking back collecting unemployment and welfare? (While others have to go and collect their garbage!)

Don't want to be a garbage man? There are many more jobs available on the city pages. Hell, DC's mayor was just in the news for getting rid of hundreds of unfilled city jobs as a budget-saving measure, many of them for the police force, which also happens to have many unfilled positions and is also a group that actively trains applicants. (They also actively recruit from other cities since they have such a hard time filling openings from the pool of locally unemployed. Just why is that???)

Of course many of the available jobs require skills that the unemployed don't have. However, that is not an excuse especially since millions in Government aid has supposedly been spent on training and re-training the unemployed. Not only that, but shouldn't they have all sorts of free time to get this training...

This country is full of jobs that the poor and unemployed can do. Some of them are in their own backyards. Sure, many of these jobs suck, but be that a lesson to the children, that an education is important, because without it you will have to rely on other abilities to earn a living as in the case of a sanitation worker, strength and the ability to follow directions. (Not meant as a put-down on those who are doing those jobs now. I bet many of them are well-educated and do this work by choice.)

Not for anything but Christmas is coming. UPS is looking for all sorts of seasonal help. As a bonus, you won't have to deal with smelly garbage and they will also hire part-time help, in case you don't see yourself pulling a full-time shift. It is these jobs that should be the welfare that the poor should be getting, not redistributed money from jobs that other people are working.

--------------------

P.S. Here is a small part of an open letter to Senator Obama (and Democrats in general) that fits in with what I have said before, that Democrats need the poor, to stay poor:

America was made great by people who embraced the one-time American culture of self reliance, self motivation, self determination, self discipline, personal betterment, hard work, risk taking. A culture built around the concept that success was in reach of every able bodied American who would strive for it. Each year that less Americans embrace that culture, we all descend together. We descend down the socialist path that has brought country after country ultimately to bitter and unremarkable states. If you and your liberal comrades in the media and school systems would spend half as much effort cultivating a culture of can-do across America as you do cultivating your entitlement culture, we could see Americans at large embracing the conviction that they can elevate themselves through personal betterment, personal achievement, and self reliance. You see, when people embrace such ideals, they act on them. When people act on such ideals, they succeed. All of America could find herself elevating instead of deteriorating. But that would eliminate the need for liberal politicians, wouldn't it, Mr. Obama? The country would not need you if the country was convinced that problem solving was best left with individuals instead of the government. You and all your liberal comrades have got a vested interested in creating a dependent class in our country. It is the very business of liberals to create an ever expanding dependence on government. What's remarkable is that you, who have never produced a job in your life, are going to tax me to take more of my money and give it to people who wouldn't need my money if they would get off their entitlement mentality asses and apply themselves at work, demand more from themselves, and quit looking to liberal politicians to raise their station in life.

You see, I know because I've had them work for me before. Hundreds of them over these 25 years. People who simply will not show up to work on time. People who just will not work 5 days in a week, much less, 6 days. People always looking for a way to put less effort out. People who actually tell me that they would do more if I just would first pay them more. People who take off work to sit in government offices to apply to get free government handouts (gee, I wonder how things would have turned out for them if they had spent that time earning money and pleasing their employer?). You see, all of this comes from your entitlement mentality culture. - Link

Go read the whole letter. Its all good stuff and all true. Not only that, I too have had to deal with these people who just do not want to work. It is such a problem that we find permanent employees by first hiring people through a temp agency, this way we can just not call back the ones who are not qualified to hold even a simple clerk's position. We have even had some walk out on us before lunch because all they wanted to do was answer the phone, despite knowing that the job they agreed to fill was a clerk's position. And silly us even tried to convince them to stay, pointing out how willing we were to train them to do the job that we were asking them to do. But no, even that was too much for them, because as one lady put it, she didn't need the job.

Previous:
Don't Redistribute wealth. Redistribute the poor. - 29 Oct 08
One Fact Not Mentioned About All Those Factory Jobs Moving Overseas - 10 Sept 08
Failed policy - Rent 'Control', Causing Poverty? - 22 Sept 08

-------------------- --------------------