I Hope They Starve In The Streets

Broken Quanta

My contempt for these guys knows almost no bounds. A man who chooses not to work despite the fact that he could work and needs to work isn't fit to scrape the scum off the bottom of my shoe. He certainly doesn't have any "dignity" to speak of. For those who won't click, or who don't want to go through the Times' tedious registration process, here's the drift of the thing:

Alan Beggerow has not worked regularly in the five years since the steel mill that employed him for three decades closed. He and his wife, Cathleen, 47, cannot really afford to live without his paycheck. Yet with her sometimes reluctant blessing, Mr. Beggerow persists in constructing a way of life that he finds as satisfying as the work he did only in the last three years of his 30-year career at the mill.

That "way of life" is being a jobless bum. And apparently, this worthless layabout is not the only guy too vain and slothful to take his ass to work. The article reports on three guys of different backgrounds, all of whom have decided that they just can't stand the psychological strain of gainful employment. Apparently, this is some kind of trend, reflected in various workforce statistics that the author reports on. Strangely, though, the piece seems sympathetic to these losers. The exact reason we ought to feel anything but contempt for them is unclear, presumably because no such reason actually exists.