Every day, I receive at least one Email from a clergyperson or lay leader whose synagogue, church, or mosque is in serious financial trouble —- because the congregants are hurting. Some have lost jobs, others are frightened.
It’s not “just” anecdotes, of course; the national numbers bear this out, and the anecdotes put flesh and blood upon the numbers. The official unemployment rate is now over 10% — the worst since before World War II.
If you include those would-be workers who have been turned down for jobs so often that they have given up looking, the unemployment rate in the USA is more then 17%
One family of every four has suffered a job loss in the last year. These losses damage everything — nutritious food, adequate health care, pursuing an education, even religious life — as thousands of synagogues, churches, and mosques are finding when contributions from their congregants dry up. And the job losses continue.
I have been using the official word for this — unemployment. But that sounds like somemebody stubbing their toe on the way to the job and ending up, by accident, “un”employed. In actuality, someone’s decisions destroyed those jobs. DISemployment is a more honest word.
But official Washington (including President Obama) and official Big Business don’t care.
They are operating according to a bitterly sarcastic teaching by the poet Carl Sandburg:
Stocks are property, yes.
Bonds are property, yes.
Jobs are property?
No, nix, nah, nah. Read more »
