There are people who just want a free ride, one way or another.
And there are those who'll settle for whatever shitty handout they can get, but firstly, there's not a huge number of them, and second, by removing them from the work force, what we have left is a better talent pool, so we spread the cost across a much wider cohort, which stands to benefit any given business owner by not making them carry the burden of those shitty performers all by themselves.
Workers Aren’t Lazy, Your Workplace Just Sucks
Complaints about people not taking low-paying jobs are based on bizarre logic and reveal the cruelty of conservatism
Tohear some tell it, employers are currently struggling to fill job openings because unemployment insurance and pandemic relief funds have been far too generous. As such, people can make more sitting at home than getting off the couch, putting down the Cool Ranch Doritos, and punching a clock.
This is, of course, bullshit.
When unemployment benefits expanded last year, there was no independent effect on the labor market beyond the pandemic itself. Employment fell because businesses closed for health reasons, and there was a steep drop in consumer demand, not because employers couldn’t find workers due to generous government aid.
Then, when relief was cut after the federal add-on to state benefits expired, there was no measurable boost in job-seeking by those who had been relying on it. If benefits had kept people from work, the reduction should have pushed them back into the labor market, but it didn’t.
Just because there are more openings than people out of work doesn’t mean folks are refusing jobs out of laziness.
In case you’ve forgotten, we’re in the middle of a pandemic.
If the job you’re offering would force people to put their health at risk from unvaccinated or unmasked co-workers or customers, it’s not a shock that many would balk at the prospect.
Likewise, if the job might require the employee to deal with MAGA-cultists screaming at them for being asked to mask, don’t be surprised when people aren’t lined up around the block for such abuse.
If people aren’t applying for available jobs, it also could be that the pay and benefits are lousy, such that those out of work would rather keep looking than jump at the first possibility out of desperation. In which case, rather than complain about the supposedly coddled working class, perhaps employers should start asking themselves some hard questions.
Like, what does it say about your job offer that folks would rather hustle piece work on Fiverr or sell feet pics online (yes, this is apparently a thing) than work in your call center or retail establishment each day?
Whether it’s monetizing their Instagram or convincing gullible teens to give them money to watch them play video games, these seem more appealing to lots of people than whatever you’ve got to offer.
The irony of thinking workers are lazy and yet, demanding they “get a job”
But here’s the fascinating thing about complaining that people would rather collect a few hundred dollars a week in unemployment benefits than work.
For the sake of argument, let’s assume this were true.
If such relatively paltry benefits were capable of eviscerating one’s work ethic, what kind of employee would that person be anyway?
Would you hire them? Would you want them working at your company?
Of course not, right? Because they’re lazy.
People who insist these folks should get a job are saying that although they would never hire them, someone else should and then suffer when they do shitty work.
How magnanimous.
This is why I’ve always found arguments against larger safety nets or some form of Universal Basic Income so absurd. The most common criticism you’ll hear is some version of this — that it will disincentivize labor.
Aside from the fact that many economists suggest that’s not true, again, let’s imagine it is, at least for some.
Let’s imagine that if people were guaranteed a UBI, or some form of entitlement to health care, shelter, and food security (as I advocate in my book Under the Affluence), some would drop out of the labor force.
So what?
What kind of people would do that?
In most cases, it would be the least productive workers — people for whom a small income guarantee, basic health care, food access, and subsidized housing would suffice to make them say, “That’s it, I’m retiring!”
Most wouldn’t respond this way. Work is something people seek for meaning and fulfillment as much as income. That said, would it be disastrous if some did quit working — especially if they were low-productivity workers taking spots away from people who would do them better?
If there are people like this, who cares if we, the taxpayers, have to support them? Isn’t that more ethical than foisting them on employers who need workers to do a good job?
The only reason people recoil from this suggestion is that they think if people can survive without working, they’re “getting one over” on the rest of us. But what are they “getting over,” exactly? Would you rather trade places and sit around surviving on subsidized housing, expanded SNAP, and maybe a small UBI?
I doubt it.
This is why large percentages of people who get various benefits now still work, contrary to popular belief, and would likely continue doing so, even if they were expanded.
In fact, there’s reason to think that given an actual safety net, people would explore new opportunities, maybe even start their own businesses, or engage in other socially valuable endeavors, freed from the concerns of day-to-day survival. They could take chances they aren’t free to take now.
But again, assuming the people in question were that shiftless, why would you want an employer to be burdened with them?
Whether through more generous safety nets, or a UBI, it would be more ethical to support people that way — spreading the cost of presumably lazy individuals around, assigning that cost to millions of taxpayers — than to saddle a given employer with an unproductive employee.
The right hates workers and has normalized cruelty towards people who struggle
The desire to make people work, even though you’re convinced they won’t be very good at it, is about using labor as punishment.
It’s about thinking that low-income and out-of-work folks are of bad character by definition (that’s why they’re broke). Thus, on principle, they should be forced to take a job they hate, even if this would produce nothing of value for the employer and might lower workplace productivity.
The same thinking once led people to argue that recipients of so-called cash welfare should have to “work off” their checks rather than receive them for doing nothing. People often advocated this before cash assistance was slashed after 1996, not thinking about the proposal’s absurdity.
First, those checks averaged less than $300 a month in most states and as little as $168 per month in Louisiana, where I was living when welfare reform was passed.
So, if you forced recipients to work, say, 30 hours a week, you’d have been paying them around $2.50 an hour, on average, and only a bit more than $1 an hour in Louisiana. This would have not only exploited their labor but would have undercut workers previously doing those jobs for at least minimum wage, if not more.
Given a choice between paying $5, $7, or $10 an hour — even then, hardly a livable wage — or paying next-to-nothing, it was apparent what employers would have chosen.
Right-wingers would have gladly disemployed millions of folks supporting families on low wages, just to punish a statistical handful on public assistance — all to teach poor people a lesson or some such shit.
Well, here’s the lesson: the right is comprised of people for whom mean-spiritedness is the point of their politics — people for whom Ebenezer Scrooge is a moral avatar, the hero rather than the heel of Dickensian fiction.
Their politic is one of cruelty, not only to Black folks (although there is plenty of that) or women as women (that too) or immigrants of color and LGBTQ folks but to all low-income workers who struggle in an economy created for the owning class.
Amid the horrors of this pandemic moment, at least there is one silver lining in the array of awful storm clouds. Namely, an increasing number of Americans are beginning to recognize how rigged the game is and has always been.
Rather than condemn them for that recognition and for demanding something different, we should be applauding them.
Rather than asking them to bend to the economy as it has been, we should be working for one that doesn’t force people to make choices between their health and their bills or expect them to work 40 hours a week while still not being able to afford rent in most metropolitan areas.
We can do better and must demand better than this.
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