So why aren't those lazy people working?

I'm Just Thinking Out Loud Here

If anything gets up under my skin, it’s people that say folks aren’t working because they’d rather be on welfare or unemployment. That’s just plain stupid. Yes it is, and if you feel that way, or even if you don’t, read on.

What the Numbers Are

If you don’t like numbers, just skip down to the heading “What the Numbers Mean”. If you don’t mind thinking about numbers, here are some to chew on. Currently in the United States of America, unemployment is just under ten percent: 14,000,000 unemployed people as of June, 2009 (people receiving unemployment benefits). Also, lets consider people who are working part-time but want and need full-time work: 9,000,000 as of May, 2009. There are another 2,200,000 people who want full time work and have looked at some point in the last twelve months.

Now lets look at some poverty rate numbers. The newest information I can find on-line is from 2007. In that year, it was reported that 12.5% of Americans were in poverty. That’s 37,500,000 people.

What The Numbers Mean

These numbers tell us that there are at least 62,700,000 people in the United States that are either receiving unemployment, are under employed or receiving welfare of one sort or another.

Some of you might want to say “Fuzzy Math!! Fuzzy Math!”. Okay, to make my point, I’ll cut the number in half: Lets say the numbers really add up to 31,350,000 receiving unemployment and/or welfare. Fair enough? Great!

Now in order to say that these people are lazy instead of working, there would have to be at least 31,350,000 vacant job openings in the United States, right? Think about it. In order to say people are making a choice there has to be more than one thing to choose from right? If you are saying people are lazy instead of working, working has to be a choice, right?

Now prove to me people are lazy and would rather be poor: show me where the imaginary 31,350,000 job vacancies are.

What?
What do you mean, you can’t?
What do you mean there aren’t that many job vacancies in America?

So why aren’t people working instead of collecting unemployment and welfare subsidies?