Unemployment

I've got a bone to pick with you.

Yes, you.

Or should I say us? Should I say We the People. Yeah, we all like to be referred to as a group when we're conquering evil or winning wars or fighting the "good fight".

But unemployment hit 9.3 percent today.

Are you sitting in an office? Look to your right. Look to your left. Count out ten people. You're the unemployed one. You're the one that has to work at a convenient store or a Wal-Mart stocking shelves to feed and cloth your child. You're the one that has to listen to a hungry baby cry at night because the only thing you can afford is the house to keep him sheltered.

Why? Why you? Why all of us?

Here's a better question: Why is it that you have to scroll halfway down the Google results for "unemployment" just to see the current employment rate? Why is it that the only reason I heard that nearly 1 in every 10 Americans is now unemployed is the fact that AP Mobile on my iPhone told me. 40 or 50 years ago, people would've taken to the streets if they knew that on their little cookie-cutter block of ten houses, one of their neighbors had just been laid-off and "the bank" was going to take their home.

It's not like nearly 10% of this nation simply sat on their ass and thought, "hmmmm... You know what'd be nice? A day off. Nah, a week off. How about a whole year?" It's not like we all just fell into a vegetative state and now everyone is too lazy to work.

I'll tell you what happened. Wal-Mart pays 9 to 20 cents an hour, 87 hours a week, for labor in Bangladesh. Global Horizons, a LA-based labor recruiter, gets their labor for free, violating human trafficking laws and enslaving more than 400 Thai citizens. Oil rigs in the Atlantic and elsewhere lack plans in case of a major disaster such as, oh I don't know, a nearly-$14 billion dollar oil spill. Or maybe it's the war we're fighting in Iraq where we kill innocents just for the hell of it and commit new, unimaginable war crimes everyday.

(But that's for another post, trust me. )

The next time you find yourself thinking, damn, I don't want to go to work today,

think of the millions (27 to be more precise) that would give up anything to take that job from you.

The next time you're driving down the street and see "foreclosure" lining the sides of it, pull over and pray.

Because it's me and you next. It's me and you that will join that long line of unemployed.

Please, sir, can I have some more?