Not every job is recession proof. That doesn’t mean people who work them deserve to suffer.

The answer cannot just be that, “life doesn’t guarantee anything.” We need to do better.

“You’re not entitled to a job,” doesn’t make sense because if this is true, then why do we give employers tax breaks, bailouts, loans, and subsidies? We all put into this nation to keep it going. We should all get something out of it. No income group deserves the benefits of this country more than another.

America is losing its service jobs. America is losing its working mothers. And given the hypocrisy surrounding employment gaps, we may never get some of these people back.

“What have you been doing during COVID?”

Why are we expected to do anything more than survive right now?

Stop patronizing people and give them jobs. Good people who are suffering, are being held to standards that don’t reflect their income.

Are you going to pass on a great worker returning from unemployment because they didn’t learn any new skills?

Did they have child care? Could they even afford to learn a new skill? Did they have sick loved ones? What if someone died… Do people really have to apologize for taking care of their lost loved ones because they didn’t take advantage of quarantine and learn a new language?

If corporations are taking emergency loans from the government, they should not be laying off workers. Why do the poor workers get laid off in a recession, and the rich ones don’t even suffer a pay cut? The rich get richer is not just a saying, it’s a fundamental fact of life supported by statistics, but for some reason it is not a priority. Before COVID-19 hit, the income gap in this country had reached a severe situation. When we as a nation bailed banks out in 2008 with our own money, CEOs and corporate higher-ups gave themselves raises and bonuses while laying off as many as 30,000 employees at some institutions. We cannot leave our lowly fate in the hands of the high-society.

The growth upper-income earners experienced since 1970 equates to over 400% of what low-income earners were making. To put things into perspective, upper-income earners grew 165%. Middle-income earners grew 150%. Low-income earners grew 144%. As of 2018, the upper-income earners dominate nearly half of the wealth in this country, and considering how the current job market is fairing, it is safe to say that the upper-income earners have far exceeded their previous portion of the aggregate income in this nation. Meanwhile, everyone else is getting poorer, even the middle class individuals who believe they’re above stimulus handouts and are against unemployment wages.

I think it’s time we ask ourselves why we as a nation are so okay with the rich unnecessarily consuming the majority of our hard-earned money and at the same time, not okay with poor people living at a decent standard of life.