@Smokin Joe @Chosen Daughter
As much as it pains me to admit she is right,I THINK what she was writing about his people who hold jobs purely for economic reasons,not people who work because they love working and are working at jobs they love.
My father spent the majority of his life working as a carpenter,a job he disliked,if not hated. He did it because he had a family support,and that was the best-paying job he was qualified to get.
Someone famous whose name slips my alleged mind at the moment described lives like this as "Lives of quiet desperation".
I am one of those people who were lucky or stubborn enough to never do that. The closest I came was a couple of times when I was forced to take an office job out of desperation. This did not work out for me or anyone around me. The first time was in the army,when I was assigned to work inside a signal communications center. I damn near got kicked out of the army over that. Square peg,round hole.
Luckily,a kindly SGM talked with me when the process to boot me out of the army started,and got me assigned to an A team as a junior radio operator,and suddenly the sun came out and the world was a wonderful place once again. I was only 18 at the time,and incapable of recognizing what was going on,or the reasons behind it. Lack of life experience.
Sadly,there are still many people trapped in job or careers they hate due to circumstances they can't control. It's like serving time for a crime you didn't commit.
Low paying jobs with no hope or chance of ever doing any better.
I don't know about you,but it's hard for me to not be sympathetic to people living under those circumstances,and I can understand why they would choose to take the money and stay home.
Temporarily,anyhow. I SUSPECT that most of them who have never done anything BUT work will soon get bored and go looking for another job that pays better and is something they enjoy doing. With these checks as backup and the free time to look,some of them may get lucky and find those jobs.
At any rate,these checks must NOT become another form of welfare as a lifestyle. The government MUST make it plain these checks will be the last ones.
I like to work, admittedly. Between wells, I have held a wide variety of jobs, and each has its mindset, pet peeves, and things to learn. One thing I learned early on, is that there is a 'trick' to doing almost any task, and completing it well, if not stupendously, with the least amount of swear and misery, so every one of those different jobs, I picked up as many of those little tricks of the trade as I could. While an odd sort of hobby, it has stood me well. Never miss an opportunity to learn.
I have also learned that there are a lot of jobs out there I really don't desire to have for even a span of years, not that I would not do them again as a mercenary endeavour (to pay the bills), and that even though it may not have been my career goal, there are other people who are perfectly content to do them. Not everyone is cut out to be a rocket surgeon, and not everyone would be happy doing that either. But whatever I do, I do my best at it, learn all I can, even if that means at the time that I am the best sh*t shoveler in the stable.
I have been fortunate enough to spend most years working in an industry I had no intent of going into (my angle was toward mining, not petroleum, but I have enjoyed the vast majority of that time, worked around some interesting characters, (some of that might have rubbed off on me), and been and seen places I might never have seen otherwise. In front of my house are rocks, brought in from the wild (and no small number inside), the latter of which are good enough for modest cabinet specimens of minerals and fossils I have found. So, all in all, it has been a good run. And now I have the rare opportunity to work for a paycheck with my grandson, who had no desire to pursue the end of the oil industry I did. It is a wonderful chance to do some mentoring, and at the same time to pay the bills, and yes, I have even learned a few things doing this.
It isn't that I don't have plenty of projects about the house, I do. But I need the time outside, too.
Sometimes, it's about more than just money. This is a seasonal job, so come fall, hopefully oil will pick up again. If not, I have a pretty wide and varied skill set to draw upon, and either I will find something else, or If I end up on Unemployment, that will be the cosmic signal to end the bonus checks and go back to just the State rate, because that is how things seem to work out.
I agree, this should not become some morph of the socialist 'basic income' even for people who have been laid off.
If we can't find a job, it will be time to get creative and make one.
