Saturday, July 14, 2007

That is, indeed, the point

Darling little Desert Cat finally acknowledges the Elephant in the Room:

The one thing that working for an employer has going for it is that it is often easier, sometimes far easier than grubbing for one's paycheck one sale or service at a time.
Yes, indeedy. Indubitably. Hugely so. By a few orders of magnitude.

Do you, my darlings (Pretty Lady is speaking now to the World At Large, but most particularly to those with an Ingrained Assumption that Jobs with Benefits are an Inalienable Right) understand that statement? Really truly? That no matter how unreasonable the boss, how stressful the position, how frenetic and challenging and demanding the task at hand, that nevertheless you have it easy??? That at the end of the day, and for the foreseeable and thus plannable future, you do what you are instructed to do and someone hands you a preordained paycheck?

Have you really, fully, truly apprehended the basic, baseless, unearned security of that position, and on the inescapable ramifications of not being in that position, never being in that position, of not knowing what the next bit of Financial News might be, EVER???

Pretty Lady pauses to get her breath for a moment, and to allow you darlings to ponder the ramifications of that statement, from within your cubicles.

Because you have No Idea. You do not know Faith until you have been self-employed for an extended period of time; the interconnectedness of all things, and the trust that the ground under one's feet will not suddenly give way, are merely wispy, inconsequential abstractions until one has been forced by circumstance to test them in dire practice. Political philosophies, health insurance plans, and Cultural Integration are unaffordable and somewhat risible luxuries, when one is in this position. Another person's preconceived notion of your competence or lack thereof is unimportant; what is desperately important is your actual competence.

Pretty Lady surprises herself by her agitation on this subject; she did not know, herself, the extent of her own opinions. Because Pretty Lady has been too preoccupied with mere Survival to get all exercised (as she sees other, employed persons doing) about the extent of the responsibility which is or is not handed to her. The notion of waiting around for someone to give her some responsibility is frankly ludicrous; she's got it. All of it. Whether she wants it or not.

It is important to understand that Pretty Lady is not complaining. Far from it. Complaining is what people do on their off hours, and Pretty Lady hasn't got any of those. Pretty Lady is On all the time, even when she is sound asleep, and most of the time she likes it that way. It causes her to genuinely live life to the fullest, as a person cannot do when jumping through hoops.

But Pretty Lady is tired of the random bits of Envy she perceives, coming her way; ditto the snarky Resentment, the self-righteousness, and the knee-jerk anti-Employer diatribes. If you perceive any Responsibility lying around on the ground, she respectfully suggests that it is yours to pick up.

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

".... but most particularly to those with an Ingrained Assumption that Jobs with Benefits are an Inalienable Right...")

First job I ever had with benefits was the U. S. Navy. After that, many jobs with no benefits.

When a job offers you no benefits, it must provide enougb pay so you can handle your own medical expenses, your savings for retirement, your nest egg for college and unexpected mishaps, etc., etc., etc.

Medicaly speaking, the problem always has been that large groups get a good price break for medical insurance, while the individual gets hammered.

So, if you - as an employer - are going to eliminate a benefit such as medical, better made certain your compensation is high enough to accomodate the medical costs your employees will most assuredly confront, the unexpected setbacks that will most certainly occur, or expect a work force that won't give a damn about you or your company.

Actually, we see a lot of that already, where business owners are hell-bent on stashing away enough to live in comfort, in the process bleeding their own work force dry.

It used to be a trade-off, until the medical community and the insurance companies raised the cost of having good health through the stratosphere. This - of course - allows insurance company owners and major stockholders, and doctors everywhere to retire with golden golf carts, yachts tied off down at the Marina, while those who made it all possible are shunted off into poverty.

Here's the real problem with medical coverage... neither the average employer nor the average employee can afford medical care - or medical insurance - anymore.

The average pay for the vast mob of Americans(not working in places like skewed New York) is around around $350 week, before all the deductions. Try to absorb a $600 + a month medical policy with that sort of wage. Try to put away a realistic amount for retirement with that sort of wage. Try to save for your kids college expenses with that sort of wage.

I have heard many glib comments about going into business for yourself. Try to imagine the resulitng total collapse of everything if the majority of underpaid Americans did exactly that.

That's why 40 million Americans are uninsured, and a sure-fire recipe for future disaster, when a poorly educated and penniless mob of retirees hit Social Security and Medicare age, along with those twenty million illegals Bush has refused to contront.

This system IS going to collapse.

But... you know what? Those scumbags that are making vast fortures in the here and now - actively engineering the upcoming collapse - will be gone... skipped out of the country with their ill-gotten gains... laughing all the way.

Pretty Lady said...

So, if you - as an employer - are going to eliminate a benefit such as medical, better made certain your compensation is high enough

Er, Bobert? To whom, exactly, are you speaking? Pretty Lady has not so much eliminated her Medical Benefits, so much as failed to attain them.

She has written elsewhere on her notions regarding 'health insurance'; it is her fixed opinion that the entire concept is meaningless and unworkable. In her view...well, in her view another extensive post on the topic should be forthcoming.

Anonymous said...

I read recently - can't remember where - that we are about to get hit with a massive wave of people with bad teeth who have not been able to afford proper dental care.

Estimates are that up to 150 million Americans are due for some heavy and serious tooth problems, because even the best dental coverage is not near enough to cover what the dentists are charging, so most people have not purchased dental insurance, pitiful as it is. It is an added expense that most just cannot afford.

That number may be unrealisticly high - I don't know - but I do know that everyone I talk to has dental issues, right now, today.

I recently went to a local dentist with a toothache. Turned out to be a major cavity under a capped tooth. The dipstick wanted over $4,000 to fix it(just that one tooth), and he had the balls to send me an estimate of $13,538 to fix all my teeth, after an examination that he charged $156 for, in which he did nothing but look around in my mouth.

I went to the Baylor Dental collage and had some students pull the tooth for $60.00. Even that was pricey for just the yanking out of a tooth by a couple of students, a tooth that offered no problems in removal and took only thirty seconds.

You have a solution? Tell us all.

Anonymous said...

For these inflated medical/dental/insurance costs, I blame the legal establishment. I'm sure those bottom dwellers come in for at least some responsibility. The Bard gave Dick the Butcher the most currently relevant line from any of his plays: "The first thing we do, we kill all the lawyers." Yeah, baby!

Desert Cat said...

"Darling little Desert Cat.."

Mew!
*ahem*

...finally acknowledges the Elephant in the Room.

Oh, I don't know if "finally" applies. I've been looking for alternatives to a J-O-B since before I graduated from college with the degree I needed to do this one (and years before that even). I keep coming back to the conclusion that, while it is certainly possible to earn one's keep without a job, it is everything else you said about it too.

Thanks for confirming all that.

Anonymous said...

Good teeth do not require professional care.

They just require proper brushing and diet.

I would rather not pay for the repairs to the teeth of those people who refuse such simple common sense things.

Those working for a paycheck have earned the somewhat reliable, fairly stress-free income by the fact of turning themselves into someones wage slave. It is a chosen trade off.