What is a Job?
Many at the moment lament the fact that the debt-ceiling “crisis” is distracting the government from its “responsibility” to create jobs. Many others assert that the high taxes in this country keep companies from expanding their markets and creating jobs. Still others are angry that the jobs they have do not pay enough, or do not have proper benefits, or do not provide sufficient hours of employment. And yet others have resigned themselves to long-term welfare or participation in the underground economy or even felonious activity because they find it impossible to get a job. The entirety of the modern educational system is predicated on nothing other than training children and young adults for the purpose of pursuing, obtaining, and holding a job. Does it not strike anyone as odd that no one has bothered to define just what a job is? Here are a few facts about the thing commonly known as a job…
A Job Is:
— Not yours unless and until someone else gives it to you
— Not yours if the person, people, or legal entity that gave it to you take it from you
— Not yours if the person, people, or legal entity that gave it to you lose their own jobs
— Not yours if the market ~ nameless, faceless, and impersonal — decides that your job is obsolete
— Not yours if the government — nameless, faceless, and impersonal — decides that your job is contributory to deficits, pollution, or negative trade balances
– In the modern economy productive of nothing tangible – In the modern economy offered by a person, corporation, or government funded by enormous debt
— In the modern economy accepted by persons whose employment is primarily engaged to service the payment of debt
— In the modern economy assumed by both employer and employee to be a temporary element of the economy, whose skills set and purpose will be rendered obsolete by technology, fickle market trends, and financial instability
— In the modern economy exported to provide employment in another country, without any consideration of the loss of employment experienced in the country where the job was first created
— Different from slavery insofar as the holder of a job can be set free without a new master being willing to place the slave under his yoke
– Different from slavery insofar as the American Constitution originally provided clear prescriptions for how slaves were a part of the fabric of the republic, but the founding fathers were utterly silent on the subject of the rights of job holders — American Constitutional tradition recognizes the existence of slaves, not of job holders
— Different from slavery insofar as the eventual elimination of the slave economy led in principle to the former slaves being given legal status as owners of land and other property (“forty acres and a mule”); whereas the elimination of jobs results in foreclosure on mortgages, defaults on credit-card debt, and the repossession of automobiles — all purchased at usury
—– Not desired by rich people
—-Not desired by the indigenous-peoples of any continent
—– Not desired by lazy people who game the system
—-Not desired by industrious people who wish to be rich people
—– Not desired by Saints who desperately seek holy poverty
—– Insisted on as the basis for establishing the communist workers’ paradise*
— Insisted on as the engine that makes possible the socialist nanny state
—– Insisted on as the foundation of the free-market capitalist state
—-What republicans and democrats insist they want to give to Americans
—-What local trade unions and multinational corporations insist they want to give to Americans
—What Americans insist they want
—-Universally acknowledged as inadequate to provide for a person in old age
—Universally acknowledged as inadequate to provide a person a meaning of life
—-Universally acknowledged as inadequate to provide a person a means to sustain a family — the two-income family is a given in modern economics
—–Unknown in Eden
—-Unknown in the Holy Family of Nazareth
–—Unknown in Heaven
Do you really want to create more jobs???
Father Smith.
26 July 2011: Saint Anne, Grandmother of God
All Saints House, Silver Cliff, Wisconsin