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The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed
SimuAndy writes "David Dvorkin, a programmer and writer of some repute, has published an essay on The Surprising Benefits of Being Unemployed. Well worth the reading time as a small break in a busy day."
The article runs the gamut, from the mildly amusing:
Some of those benefits are obvious, and I could have anticipated them even before a supervisor tapped me on the shoulder and said he needed to talk to me about something. ("Do you have a minute?" he asked. What would have happened if I'd said no, that I was too busy?)
To the not at all funny but trying really hard (Snuffy Smith! Egads):
There was a character in the Snuffy Smith cartoon strip of many years ago who retired but would still get up at the crack of dawn and go down to the mill every morning just so he could thumb his nose at the place as the get-to-work whistle blew.
It does include a few good, creative ideas useful even for the gainfully emplyed:
Back in the glorious paycheck days, I used to think about telling [telemarketers and salespersons] I'd just lost my job. Actually, sometimes I really did tell them that, because I'm a cowardly kinda guy and it's easier to fib than to be firm. Now I don't have to fib. When I tell them I'm unemployed, they hang up or back away quickly, terrified of infection by the job-loss virus.
As well as a few really stupid comment that make me wonder about this guy's sense of self:
My Beard It's still growing! Well, of course it is, you say. Let me explain that, on an emotional, irrational level, I still feel relieved every morning when I realize that I still need to shave. It's still growing! Despite the way I frequently feel, I haven't really been unmanned.
But, it also has quite a bit of offtopic, annoying, and really rather insulting partisan political nonsense:
These [fake-job advertising scammers] are rotten enough to be members of George W. Bush's cabinet. Encountering them has taught me something about the depths of human nature.
But perhaps the greatest benefit of being unemployed is this. I now feel absolutely free to despise George W. Bush. Oh, of course I despised him before I lost my job. But now I know I'm not alone.
And it closes with a really stupid anti-Bush link. Sigh. Bring a salt shaker if you're going to read it all.
everything in moderation
if you are the curious type and glanced around his site, traversing the links to the other pages, it becomes obvious. I could not help sending him an email,part of which I copied below: (About your Bush vs him page) ....but I can see who is the doofus and who is not. And as you guessed, my opinion on the doofus coefficient between the you two is totally opposite of your views.
As a side note, Clinton era was not the most prosperous era because the womanizer "jerk" had any capacity or capability to find and pick out a black cat out of a pan of milk, let alone managing the prosperity of world's largest economy, he was just having a plain freeride from the Reagan era economy. He, as any liberal leader does, eroded off whatever wealth accumulated for getting re-elected. Now, you and most blind liberals are blaming the economic downturn, over to the republican administration.
If you have not had any economy classes in your extremely crowded education, according to your resume, let me crack you the news here : any economic measure taken today, needs 7 to 9 years till its results can be observed.
I am sick and tired of the blinded liberals like you. I have been in the same jobless trenches for longer than most probably you will ever be, but never blamed it on others. If you can just look around, I am sure you can see too many menial jobs that you can do, but I am sure your "high" standarts will dictate you to spread crap instead of doing something which is really useful. ...
__________
The more I know people, the more I love animals
What about - working on that interesting open-source software project. Good for the resume as well
Speaking as a hiring manager who reads through a fair number of resumes every month, I have to say that I typically chuck the ones that talk about open source projects. I'm looking to hire someone who will put in the effort to grow our business and boost our stock price. I'm *not* looking for some hippie programmer who's going to bide time in their day job and spend his best effort writing P2P code for the great unwashed.
Of course, that's just me. Your results may vary.
-a
1. Capitalism sucks as bad as communism. It just takes a little longer to realise...but you realise it well when you are fired and you can't find a job.
...but a revolution will not start, because we are all sucked into our little everyday reality...the system has managed to create a different reality for each one of us. (I hope the FBI doesn't read this.)
2. People high up in the ladder get all the money. Their profits have increased vastly in the last 20 years.
3. Companies sell their products with up to 90% profit, especially those that outsource production. And the profit fills the pockets of their owners.
4. Job = self-respect.
5. The modern way of life is not humane enough. There is not enough time to get in true contact with your own people.
6. Poor people in India living in a cardbox are happier than average Joe that has a loan and a house to pay and sleeps and wakes up with the anxiety of when the next brick is coming from.
7. If you ever realized how good rich people live, a revolution would be started in a minute.
8. If you ever realized how richer rich people have become, a revolution would be started in a minute: 90% of the US' wealth is owned by 5% of the people.
9. If you ever realized that the rich people got rich by stealing, and no one descent has ever been rich (there maybe a few exceptions), a revolution would be started in a minute.
And he should note that the recession is not Bush's fault, but Clinton's, and that the recovery is doing as well as it can, given that the public sector is as large as it is (the public sector acts as a deadweight on the economy: not too bad when it's strong, but terrible when it's weak).
One might not blame Bush. But one might blame the ideology of his party. Or the 1996 Republican Contract On America, which gutted the SEC, and signalled to all the fraudster's out there. . . LET'S GET READY TO RUMBLE!
Additionally, the biggest responsibility for the economic decline goes to Hugo Chavez, who got Opec to cut supplies in 1999, causing an energy price spike. For those who believe high taxes causes the economy to slow down - high energy prices also do the same thing. For those who call it Clinton's Recession, recall that Clinton attempted to tap the Strategic Petroleum Reserve to mitigate the price spikes, and the Republicans tried to stop it. Then the Largest donator to the Republican party and George W Bush, Enron, used the crisis to fraudulently fix markets in California to bilk consumers out of billions. The dotcom crash was a side-effect.
Then when you look at the Republican tendency to reduce rules, and the Bush record on lax enforcement of white collar crime, and his political appointments (Poindexter?!), and the conflicts of interest evident in each one, and add that to the Bush S&L scandal in 1990, Iran-Contra of the 1980's, a pattern emerges.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.