June 10, 2020
There are very few good times to be unemployed.
Most are pretty bad, yes.
Capitalism frowns upon it, but America is outright hostile toward it. Unemployment is, at best, an uncomfortable thing to be swept under the rug. Perhaps if they just disappear, no one will care, right? At worst, it’s seen as a moral failing. People who are unemployed have fucked up, and it’s a wonder that being unemployed isn’t illegal.
An interesting thought, given how much work felt like prison.
Right.
So there’s never really a good time to be out of a job, but there are degrees of badness. There are some particularly awful times to be unemployed.
Was it the looming threat of world war three that tipped you off? Or perhaps the slow erosion of rights and protections? Ah, or perhaps it was the global pandemic. The volcano? The murder hornets? The slow simmering of racial tensions hitting a flash point and causing riots in every state in the country, and sympathetic protests around the world?
The first six months of 2020 have been the longest decade of my life.