can't we just skip to the huge revolt and riots? Those are soooooo much more fun then talking.

This describes my son and his girlfriend (or "my kids") to a T: “There’s this idea that, ‘Yeah, I don’t want to work, but I’m still going to get all the stuff I want.’ ... There’s an element of entitlement—they expect people to figure things out for them.”

As my kids say, "All I need is a laptop, a bed, a microwave, and a toilet. They can all be in the same room." My son claims that Steam already has enough decent games to last him a lifetime. This and other circumstances lead me to believe that one of the biggest problems with today's economy is a lack of demand for innovation.

Reading that article, specifically the sections about men slipping into despair as a result of unemployment and working-class kids adopting underclass-like anti-social behavior made me grateful for three things:

* That I've stopped drinking.

* That I spent years in therapy making myself a stronger, healthier, more mature individual.

* That I had a commie period in my youth that allowed me to distance myself from the whole idea of employment as a source of identity or self-esteem.

*That that commie group I was involved with back in the day required me to give up drugs. All things considered, it's been a nice habit not to have had and doubly nice not to have developed a pattern of using street drugs to deal with emotional problems.

Starting to sound like the Singapore of "Islands in the Net", eh?

I am "stupid" and "lazy."

And a carefully concealed statistic is the rise in bank robberies. (which may indicate something totally different that what you might think it does.)

I'm not seeing a whole lot of entitlement, just misery. I have a lot of friends out of work, most are near despondent these days. It feels like the situation really is hopeless.

It seems like a lot of my friends are completely lost now, they don't know what to do. Their parents are telling them "well, just take ANY job!" but don't seem to get it. There is no "any job." A girl I know who worked at a Burger King that closed can't even find a minimum wage job to replace it. And for the people who HAD a decent paying job it just seems crazy to give up $400 a week in unemployment for $300 a week from a fast food place.

I looked for work for a good nine months or so before the 599 paperwork came through. I was offered TWO jobs total. Both paid less than $1 over minimum wage. I had been making closer to $40,000 a year before I got laid off. What kind of option is that? Going from carrying a pile of IT certifications to telemarketing? Damn right I'll stick with unemployment if that's the alternative! It may sound entitled, but I DO deserve better than $8 an hour. That wouldn't even cover my rent and utilities now, nevermind groceries or anything else. I deserve better than wage slavery where I don't even make enough to keep a roof over my head, electricity running, and food in my kitchen. I can live very cheaply, I'm doing just fine on less than half of what I was making before. But I'm not a cloistered nun, I can't live in abject poverty because that is what the market demands right now.

I'm just getting frustrated because it seems like there are a lot of articles now about how people aren't taking jobs because they don't want to or feel they're above them, and that really isn't the case. It just feels like the latest trend is to blame the unemployed, like we'd all be fine if everyone would suck it up and go work at McDonalds.

The first goal of a ruling class is to get the other classes to turn on each other and blame them for their misfortune.