Some of us started working as kids over half a century ago. We worked and earned our way through college without trust funds, allowances, or gifts. The campus was for learning, not partying. So the other day when the President told students in Richmond, Virginia, to "Hit the books!" I thought "It's a start."
Back in the 1950s and 1960s, with our nation at war, some of us signed up with the military, and even stayed in beyond our "obligated service." So I have a problem today when most upper class and middle class kids see no purpose for themselves in national service.
Now that the earned benefits from my lifetime of labor - social security and medicare - play a major part in my security for the declining years of life,
I get pretty angry at politicians who attack them as "costly entitlements."
Time was when the credentials I had gained through education and experience could help me find new work when an employer eliminated my position, or when I saw a better career path. I overcame such job crises in 1968, 1971, and 1977.
In recent months I wrote in a blog that "Hard work and hope" were essential in digging out of today's jobs crisis. Today it is only getting tougher for at least
14 million Americans who cannot find any work. Having been unemployed, but never filing for jobless benefits, I have some feeling for the daily depression that can overwhelm the long-term job seeker.
The President went before a joint session at the Capitol last Thursday with a legislative proposal he calls the Jobs Bill. Now that Congress is back in Washington after more than a month away I hope that finally they will get to work and pass something for those without a job.
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