I’ve noted lately there are a number of “help-wanted” signs and it appears there are more open jobs than people to fill them, not just here, but everywhere I’ve been.
Yet, there is still unemployment?
Why?
We have a state agency — a large one, too — whose sole purpose is to get jobs to people. At the same time we have a larger bureaucracy to give people free stuff — welfare, food stamps and all the rest of it.
Maybe we’re not doing the right things anymore and should rethink what we are doing?
I grew up poor with three siblings, but my widowed mother managed to put some kind of food on the table every day with little more than a box of basic staples from the county — powdered milk, powdered eggs, cheese and oatmeal.
Later, when she married my stepdad, it was better. He worked in the woods, which in the winter was shut down for snow, and the summer for fire, he took any job he could get to feed us, including shoveling chicken manure out or stacking firewood. He wasn’t alone. That was generally the mindset then.
There was no free school breakfast, or lunch or summer feeding program. Our summer feeding program was a garden, which we were expected to weed. I remember whining on Facebook to my friends about how unfair this was —oh wait, there was no Facebook or any other platform to whine over.
I don’t remember seeing anyone standing on street corners begging either. I do recall a couple of times someone knocked on the door and asked to work for food. He’d work a little bit and get something to eat.
But things are different now. Almost every corner has someone with a sign asking for money and at the same time there are help wanted signs everywhere.
What’s changed?
I read a column in our local paper a while back by Brittany Voie (I think) that prompted me to act and find out more.
In the past, I would drive by these guys (mostly guys or in some cases guys and gals with dogs) and only wondered what their story was. Why are they on the curb and not in school or at work?
So I decided to occasionally ask them.
A warning though; I’m not suggesting you try this because as that great philosopher Forrest Gump once said, “Life is like a box of chocolates, you don’t know what you’re going to get,” or something like that. The point is you don’t know who you’re approaching, so I’m not suggesting you try this.
My first contact was in a parking lot in Reno, Nevada as I walked out of a fast food restaurant. A young couple asked me for money and instead I handed them my dinner in a bag. After a few steps, I came back to ask them why they were asking strangers for money and not working?
They just walked away — with my dinner.
I used to occasionally see signs reading, “will work for food” and offered them some work. Of the three or four I asked, no one actually wanted to work for food. They basically told me it would be easier for us all if I gave them cash.
I encountered several who I could see had mental issues and could use help, and a few who got pretty testy — even angry — with me as I asked them some questions.
In Brooking, Oregon a few weeks ago, I encountered a young man I just needed to better understand. I’d seen him skateboarding, jumping and gliding down stair railings earlier (on a weekday) and now he was sitting on a curb with a sign that read, “need money for weed.”
He was not more than a few feet from several help wanted signs.
I offered him local fast food but he was a discerning young man preferred cash, even pointing at his sign and asked me if I could read. When I said no to cash and pointed out there were help wanted signs nearly next to him, he lost it.
I don’t think I really learned anything I didn’t already know; some people need help, and want to help themselves — we should help them. Others who can help themselves should be expected to and shouldn’t be rewarded for not trying.
The system we’ve let politicians and bureaucrats create has it backwards.
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John McCroskey was Lewis County sheriff from 1995 to 2005. He lives outside Chehalis, and can be contacted at musingsonthemiddlefork@yahoo.com.
