#941 Exjobulating

The blowback from the cratering of the United States economy is destroying jobs at an alarming rate. Twice as many people as are unemployed are under-employed, forced to take jobs paying less to avoid not working altogether.
It’s a painful, demoralizing, and dehumanizing experience. Giving your all to a company for years, only to find them bought out, then yourself sold out, to the vultures of the financial world. Even worse, when an entire industry collapses because of a period of unsustainable growth—the housing market, burning hot and bright like a young superstar, but also too fast, a blue giant consuming all its fuel and going supernova.
Unfortunately, that supernova is affecting all the steady yellow suns in the vicinity too. So it’s time we recognized the human side of this whole equation. The Attack Dogs of the Extreme Right are already yammering about Obama taking us into socialism. What they seem to forget is it was their way of deregulation and ultra-greed, coupled with too much pork barrel and not enough taxes, which ignited this economic supernova.
All right. The human side. Losing your job has always been dehumanizing as well. Partly because unemployment has always been minimized by the words politicians use. “Unemployment” is a euphemism of its own.
How about “out of work” or “jobless”?
Remember when workforces were being “restructured”? Or you weren’t fired, your position was “realigned”? Maybe your category was “outsourced.” Either way, you were “laid off.”
“Laid off” sounds so much gentler than “fired.” Or even cast off. Laid off. Hardly sounds like an action at all. More like setting a piece of clothing gently to the side when you’re done wearing it.
Not stuffing something in the trash.
The newest euphemism is even more troubling. Obama said it in his inaugural speech. Companies are “shedding jobs.” The financial news articles say the same thing. So-an-so Corporation had to shed 1800 jobs.
My God.
It makes labor sound so unimportant, and certainly not like suffering people.
Shedding. It makes human beings sound like a skin disease. They’re shedding jobs. What, they’re exfoliating employees? Is there a lotion for that?
Introducing the new Obamalotion, now with added FDR!
We can only hope.
America, ya gotta love it.