negative incentives stop working

I’ve been trying to figure out how to get this thing out of my head and onto paper (okay, computer screen), for a few days now. It’s about why I am where I am, why I’m depressed, and why I don’t feel understood. It might be kinda ranty, you’ve been warned.

Sooooo I’m unemployed “by choice” as in, I’m a somewhat able bodied American male, and right now not working is better for me than working. It’s a pretty common situation, apparently it’s been a demographic trend for decades only just now reaching a peak (people hope, if they continue with this approach they won’t be reversing it for me.) So I watch a fair amount of videos about it, trying to understand the other side.

Unavoidably, the question comes up; “How can these people AFFORD not to work.” and you see, I actually can’t, but apparently there’s only so far that threat goes. Yes, companies pay starvation wages and are shocked when employees leave the first chance they get. I made a deliberate choice the last time I left a job; being HOMELESS would be better than THIS. I still stand by it, no doubt at all in my mind that I could survive six months of homelessness easier than six months of that god awful job.

And that’s what makes it so hard to try and come back, knowing that there are people behind the scenes saying “if we can just kick up the misery of poverty a bit more…. people will come rushing back.” I don’t doubt that’s true, people are well conditioned to believe that employment is the only path to security.

My point is if you continue to pay them very little, lay them off the minute the winds change, and cut their benefits year after year….. there WILL be another economic disruption. It’s a known fact; stability is abnormal. The minute that happens, all those people who were just miserable enough to hold down a job will realize that their employer is more their enemy than the immigrant or the person that looks or thinks differently than you.

and I have a pretty good life, objectively anyway. Food to eat, shelter, games to play, wife and friends who care about me. The point is I don’t respond well to ultimatums. You know who threatens your family if you don’t comply? Criminals, that’s how criminals behave….. and apparently management is a criminal organization in this country.

We don’t really have organized crime right now, as in “the mob” like it was in the 60s and 70s, but INSTEAD, we have wage thieves in the majority of workplaces. Wage theft is so common workers are starting to share tricks of spotting it in an interview… and you can. If the company has employees and they look dead in the eyes…. wage theft. Probably other abuses too, but DEFINITELY wage theft.

and I just don’t get it, why anyone expects me to return? Oh yes please mr master let me get you a drink, write your reports, appear for you in court, and then on payday you can pay me HALF of what I should be earning just based on my agreed upon wage. I’m so angry about this, about my life, about how sick I am of being in a place where it doesn’t feel like I have a choice in the matter.

and the minute I try to explain this to working people….. crickets, they don’t get it. Because if they DID they’d QUIT.

I’m not really specifically homicidal, but just trying to work through this makes me wish I could kill somebody, somebody who has it coming, somebody who thinks this is “okay.” I figure if I do that, and so do a few more million, we might reduce the population of criminals sufficient that our society could right itself.

Okay, I’m still too nice to do that, but that can change… I used to be too nice to try and die, and that changed. If all you give me is negativity, all I can give you is the same back.