either way the market moves

cash rules.

consider this the hundredth draft…

It has been a while since I’ve updated this Advent series, and indeed Advent is quickly coming to a close. I haven’t updated for lack of topics, rather it has been because of the trouble I have had addressing one particular topic.

I’ve had trouble collecting my thoughts, writing anything coherent, putting the pieces together in a meaningful way. I’ve had trouble talking about this because it hits close to home in many ways.

Most troubling, though, is the difficulty I’ve had in imagining any meaningful way forward. With each entry I have not been happy merely to discuss something that I am waiting for an end to; I have always tried to include something I am waiting on to begin as well.

This post is about jobs.

I am part of the generation that graduated from college near the end of the 2000’s. This is the graduating class that faces such a lack of jobs that we may comprise the next “lost generation.” Many of us worked hard in college and really gave ourselves over the idea that our energy, will and skill could help create a better world.

Call it naive.

We’re not the only one’s facing uncertainty, though.

Many people who have worked for a long time live with the daily threat of layoffs and no discernible job in the thereafter.

Let’s not forget to remember that I am a white, male. I don’t even have to deal with systematic discrimination when it comes to finding a job…

Let’s not forget that some psychologist see our need to exhibit our competence is one of our greatest needs. Indeed, good jobs are important to reinforce our self-worth, as well as provide for ourselves and family.

Given the importance of jobs, this high unemployment rate it troubling.

It feels heavy. As a friend of mine said one night, “it feels close to a breaking point.”

Over and over again we find ourselves at the mercy of employers.

and I think many of them know it, too…

What I mean is, whenever we talk about taxes that would benefit and strengthen the middle class everyone present it quick to coddle employers. If we establish a progressive taxing policy (on corporations of wealthy individuals), these, so-assumed, “benevolent patrons” will leave and take their jobs with them.

Instead of trying out a “new deal” policies that create public sector jobs, we’re trying on old deal over and over again. The deal is to put the responsibility on the private sector, and to reward the sector for creating these jobs we deregulate the market so the sector will have an easier time creating jobs.

That is the logic anyway.

Never mind it isn’t playing out that way, at all.

So, at the expense of the middle class and poor, we cater to the “needs” of employers. We deregulate, we erode public accountability, we erode public space, we erode a sense of the “common good.” All in the name of creating jobs.

But it feels like such a bad joke, doesn’t it?

Look at this whole mess over extending the payroll tax. (And it is a mess, I am not going to analyze the whole thing, but focus on what was attached to this bill.)

This tax cut benefits the middle class to the tune of $20 a week (on average), this measure would also extend unemployment benefits and extend a sustainable rate of reimbursement for doctors who treat Medicare patients. All of these are good things for an economically depressed middle-class.

Although none of this necessarily does anything that would create jobs. (Do not get the point of this bill confused, it is not explicitly about creating jobs.) The Senate republicans, however, had a plan. To even get this bill through the Senate an expedited decision on the Keystone XL pipeline had to be added.

Never mind that this pipeline would do little to alter the global route to a hot earth. This pipeline needs to be approved; after all it is this is the great solution to creating jobs! And this pithy answer to job creation just doesn’t play out. The Washington Post recently analyzed how many jobs it would actually create; not 100,000 but (MAYBE!) 13,000 construction jobs over two years.

Here we are, catering corporations, and even citing their convenient statistics! We need to serve these corporations so jobs will be created, unless they aren’t…

In our headlong hurry to shower corporations in adoration we destroy laws that empower the middle-class when corporations renege.

this world we’ve created raises all this anxiety in my chest.

I mean I think I would be willing to pay taxes, taxes that create jobs, taxes that strengthen my community. I think I would be willing to vote for policies that create the world I want to live in, one where we’re not subject to corporations but our sisters and brothers.

I’d gladly live in that world…

We don’t talk about this world anymore, though.

We talk about our messed up political system.

We talk about how every politician is a crook.

And, we don’t talk to our neighbors.

We don’t believe in our officials.

I say I would gladly live in this world, but there are so many voices telling me I can’t, telling me that I actually don’t want to live in this world.

i afraid we’ve all forgotten how to dream…

We feel trapped in this world. We’ve lost our long-term imagination.

We’ve lost the ability to imagine something different. We’ve lost the imagination that lead people to write a declaration of independence, begin the suffragist movement, fight for desegregation, fight for gay-rights.

We’ve all capitulated to a hell. The best we hope to dream for is the ability to ignore our nightmares.

I’m waiting for prophetic imagination.

I waiting to shake off this fear and step out. I don’t think I would be the only one…