Working Hard or Hardly Working? |
 Surely
someone has greeted you with the trite line, "Working hard or hardly
working?" It used to be funny enough. Chances are you are working hard,
but nowadays the likelihood that someone is hardly working is growing
greater every day. The real unemployment rate (U6)
in the U.S. is around 14% per the
BLS website. About half the population pays no income taxes
(yet receives the most benefits), and a
huge number of people are receiving food stamps. My county of Erie,
PA, is at 19% (find
your area's rate here). Have you seen the stories of
SNAP abuse? Probably not if all you watch is mainstream news.
Immigration Reform (a misnomer) is
about to exacerbate the problem. A smaller portion of us are pulling
the wagon while more are piling in for the good ride. We have become
the United States of Greece (apologies to hard-working
Greeks).Posted May 2013 |