And freeloaders! And food stamps! And labour unions and their thuggish thugs! And workers’ rights! Oh, and clocks, too, don’t get me started on clocks!
I read, hear, and see a lot of neo-liberal, fiscally conservative, Republican, Libertarian, Ayn Rand worshippers and what-have-you bitching about the things I mentioned above. But I always think beyond what they say, and consider what they're really trying to prove. That's when a light goes off and I realize that they're just like everyone else; they're looking out for their own interests.
"Freeloaders" tend to be those poor saps sucking the government tit in order to get by, to some degree anyway.
If you're one of those belly-aching crybabies who babble about people collecting employment insurance and, with a straight face, berate them as freeloaders, then I can't take you seriously and you should get out of my face before I smack it. People on income assistance of some kind aren't exactly freeloaders either when they're not even able to pay their rent with those checks. Although like every story, there's a dark side to this one: there are plenty of definitive freeloaders who selfishly coast through life, living off handouts they didn't earn. But they're not indicative of all recipients.
Tell that to one of these "freeloaders everywhere" belly-aching blowhards and see if they don't blow up with rage. If any of them is reading this post so far, they're surely frothing at the mouth with anger right now.
Whether these crybabies realize that there are entities on the other end of the poor/rich spectrum who are freeloaders remains to be seen, personally.
The 2008 $700 billion stimulus was effectively a handout produced merely on a faith-based basis that "job creators" would create enriching work for thousands, even millions of Americans. Well, very little progress has come of that stimulus and in fact, billions of dollars from that stimulus was squandered and selfishly hoarded amongst greedier recipients, like AIG assurance for one. Oh, but you can't touch them rich folk can you? Right, because they at least have a voice in the good ol' U.S of A, unlike the poor who get walked on day in day out, and don't have a voice yet in the media.
Unions and their "thugs" is the target of ire and malicious intent by a handful of these self-entitled, hilariously envious whiners, especially when a trade or labour dispute comes about. It's no secret that unions often screw themselves and their image over by being just as greedy as power-hungry corporations, but that's par the course with humanity. When it counts, however, unions are a necessary backbone for the workforce.
Without them, there'd be no minimum wage, guarantees of hours and pay would be nonexistent, and workplace safety & health regulations would be but a figment of imagination as chemical plant workers everywhere die in horrible ways without falter. If only unions would stop engaging in gross self-entitlement issues, and compromised a bit more often they'd receive less anger from their detractors.
Taxes, nobody likes them. Heck, I
need to find a withholding calculator just to get my paychecks in line. Let's go flat across the board, that'll work! Or let's stick with the current progressive system and still have to deal with bad expenditures and a horribly bloated military budget. The rich pay the highest income tax rate and DEY CREATE DEM JERBS! So let's lower the taxes so they CREATE DEM JERBS! Meanwhile, immigrants continue to TAKE OUR JERBS while those same complainants neglect those same jobs DEM DARN FOREIGNERS take for lower pay, all while ignoring that those same companies they endorse CREATING DEM JERBS hire these JERB taking immigrants so that they can save more money for themselves. We all pay taxes and these damn freeloaders are propped up thanks to our hard work! Yet given that EI/UI recipients have to work a minimum period of time in order to be eligible and pay into the same system, they are clumped in with this group of good-for-nothing bums regardless. To this day the more self-entitled crybabies amongst them carry on with this BS line of unreasonable crap anyway.
Calculating New Income Tax, 02/07/1919 by Clifford Berryman. ARC Identifier 6011549
Yeah well, what about being your own person, independent and everything!? Say that to the companies that get tax breaks (sometimes ludicrous breaks at that), exploit loopholes in the tax system thanks to an ever-complicit congress and their hacking at regulations, were granted billions of dollars on the good faith that they'll create jobs and boost the overall economy, and thanks to their meddling have achieved preferential treatment by law (just look at the prison-industrial complex and how much they have to gain with increasingly stringent laws!). How about their easily-tempted idiot buddies in the political arena who grant company folk and their family members advantageous treatment through executive job placement, suck-up pay (you know, or else company folks blackmail such idiot politicians for their lists of dirty deeds), and "committee" oversight positions?
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eanwhile, the poor get more disenfranchised by the day, the middle-class continues to erode into either rich or poor territory (usually the latter), and the poor/rich gap widens ever so. Anger is sprouting, protests are mounting, saturated entertainment markets continue to placate the masses, and an increasingly irrelevant mainstream media continues to divide us based on the decoy premise that is the left/right paradigm. Those who penetrate our senses of dignity and ability with their proverbial shafts are laughing at us, expecting us to continue to bicker amongst one another while we blind ourselves to what’s really going on.
That's what these crybabies I've been talking to are falling victim to. There is the other side of the aisle that's arguably just as bad, but they're not as hilarious as those I've been tackling with this piece, so I dedicated this one to those of you who think of food-stamp recipients, income assistance clients, and other "freeloaders" as scumbags who should be thrown into the trash heap of society. Take your misanthropic views and shove them where the light doesn't shine. Wake up and smell the ashes for what's really going on, fools. We're all selfish pricks once in a while, but you don't need to be a misanthrope about yourselves being so.
Next up for a good grillin' is the flip side of this same coin; don't you go thinking you're innocent in this whole fiasco.
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