Tomorrow night President Obama will address the American people and a joint session of Congress. He is going to present his jobs plan to the American people and the politicos on both sides of the aisle.
Why are we looking for the President to make a speech about jobs? Why are we waiting for him to create more jobs or at the very least, create favorable conditions to create jobs?
The only job the President can save is his own and I’m not even sure that is possible any more.
My issues are not with the President. My issues are with the American people who are waiting, like lemmings, for someone to put them back to work.
There was a time, not too long ago, when we were proud to be Americans. We made things, we built things, we invented things. We did great things and we were the envy of the modern and not so modern worlds.
Now we aren’t envied, we are hated.
And, we seem to hate ourselves.
Currently there are about 14 million people out of work who want to be working. That’s 14 million people collecting unemployment and looking for work.
Remember when we were innovative? Some of the best inventions came from Americans. We have created things that have changed the world. Bill Gates and Steve Jobs weren’t waiting around for the president to tell them how to find work, they went out and created jobs for themselves.
Along the way they changed the world.
What are we waiting for?
We have the internet, the great equalizer, why aren’t we creating all kinds of jobs?
It isn’t easy working for yourself but it is rewarding and you have job security. Of course, if you don’t make work for yourself the government isn’t going to send you a check. Those checks are for people who don’t have an entrepreneurial spirit.
If you have an internet connection you can sell all kinds of things.
The great thing about Americans is that we buy all kinds of needless shit.
Have you lost some weight recently? Write a book. The weight loss industry is not faltering at all during this downturn in the economy and Americans always…ALWAYS, want the easy fix.
Nothing has really changed in the weight loss industry – eat less, exercise more. That’s it and yet hundreds if not thousands of books are published each year about how to do it.
And we gobble them up.
14 million people ought to be able to come up with some new, innovative thing that starts the next revolution. You don’t need a college degree to come up with one of these beauties, in fact, some of our most innovative people didn’t have college degrees. On the other hand, it isn’t too late to get your college degree, you might just learn a new skill that could change the world.
Remember the Pet Rock?
It was a rock for crying out loud but it made some industrious man a millionaire. And he didn’t even have the internet to market with.
There is nothing we can’t do and yet we are waiting around for someone to tell us what to do.
If You Build It, They Will Come
Find your inner baseball diamond and built it. If you don’t know what I am talking about go to Netflix first (another awesome American invention) and rent Field of Dreams. Then, sit down and figure out what it is you can do and do it.
Take a risk.
How bad can it be to fail? Trust me, some will fail. But it is through that failure that we find great success.
Come on America, let’s stop waiting around for the government to find us jobs, let’s create our own.
It’s time to be proud to be American again.
We agree! Find a need and fill it. Build that better mousetrap. You’re on the right track. In the end we can only deend on ourselves.
Pet rocks, mood rings, chia pets – the list is endless when it comes to useless items for which we’re willing to fork over money. Amazing the things people buy. Ha, ha. An interesting concept of putting people back to work…inventing and making stuff that ultimately will increase the size of our landfills!
I wish I could think of something so simple and become a millionaire!
Yeah, I partially agree with you, Jen. People do need to take responsibility for their own lives. But it takes capital to start a business, not to mention training, and a lot of people don’t have either of those things. They simply don’t have the resources, not even basic support systems like relatives with money, to help them through tough times. So their best bet is to hunt for work in all the usual places — places that have moved to countries like China and India, where people are willing to work for what we would consider slave wages. In times like these, I believe one of government’s most important roles is to make the massive investments that are required to bring about change on a nationwide level. Historically in the U.S., that’s meant investing in infrastructure — roads, bridges and dams, for example. Today, it probably means we ought to diversify by also investing in education, and in new technology. For example, I can’t help but think that the government should be creating programs to retrofit every home and building in the U.S. with solar power. It would put people to work, free us from our reliance on foreign oil and, most importantly, give us more capital to make additional investments in other areas.
For the most part, individuals can’t make these sorts of investments on a large enough scale to make a large-scale difference to the economy. There’s only so much demand for pet rocks and beer-can hats. But government can do it. That’s why I believe the oft-repeated political analogy between government spending and personal spending is so deeply flawed. It’s true that households can’t run deficits for very long. But government, like big business, has to run deficits in order to make investments in the workforce, especially in times of economic crisis, because it’s the only agency with enough spending power to keep a short-term problem from turning into a long-term disaster.
“it takes capital to start a business, not to mention training, and a lot
of people don’t have either of those things. They simply don’t have the
resources, not even basic support systems like relatives with money, to
help them through tough times”
I totally agree with MWJ on that point.
Great article, Jen. You really gave me a lot to think about.
You make a lot of very valid points. One minute people are bitching about government being too controlling, and the next, they want government to correct what ails…resurrect a country that needs GOOD jobs now. I know a lot of college graduates who do not want anything to do with building roads or any other menial task with minimal wage. They have not spend four years in college and a possible master’s degree to shovel and spread. I totally understand that argument but can’t you see the world is changing. There are only so many corporate jobs to go around and if people keep waiting for their dream job and spending your welfare check, this country will go further down the drain. There are plenty of people with smaller egos who will gladly work as a bagger, gardener, maid, busboy…instead of collecting welfare because they refuse to be part of the problem and have decided that food on their table is the bottom line. America needs to get off our high horse.
[…] We are like children who don’t understand how good we have it and can only complain about the things we don’t have. Yeah, our economy sucks right now but we still have the ability to pull ourselves up by our bootstraps and make something of ourselves. […]