A couple months ago I applied for a job at Marine base in San Diego that paid $10.00 an hour. You would have to wait at least half a year before health and life insurance benefits would kick in.
On the second interview, there was a panel of three with a list of questions and after each response (and even during), they would be busy jotting down notes. I remind you, this was a clerical, data entry, accounting position, on a Marine base in San Diego, that paid a whopping $10.00 an hour and offered no health benefits until after six months! Hardly a corner office on the 80th floor.
One of the questions I was asked was what were my goals for the next five years. I am a college grad. I went back to college 10 years later and earned a K-12 teaching certificate. I taught in America’s urban schools for six years. Today, I am 51 years old, and I am unemployed. My five year goals are to be:
(1). alive. John Kennedy, Jr. didn’t live to see 51. Diana, Princess of Wales didn’t. Eddie Kendricks didn’t. Billy Stewart didn’t. Kurt Cobain, Marilyn Monroe, Phyllis Hyman, John Coltrane, Martin Luther King, Jr., Bobby Kennedy, John F. Kennedy, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, Jimmy Hendricks, Janis Joplin, River Phoenix, Donny Hathaway, those four little girls, Heath Ledger, David Foster Wallace, none of these people, not one, lived to see 51.
(2). able to support myself (pay my bills) and not be a burden to my only child
(3). able to care for my English Bulldog (EBD) ThatOne
(4). able to have an EBD companion for ThatOne.
(5). employed; to still be doing an honest days work; drive home; love my son; support my dogs. Live a balanced life.
Alive. Able. Employed. That’s it. These are my simple, basic, unglamorous goals.
I don’t need diamonds and pearls. I desire to remain content. If ThatOne needs a hip x-ray I want to be able to afford that. When I run out of Bare Minerals, I want to be able to afford to replenish that. I like to go to the movies. I love Asian cuisine.
I need access to the Internet. I enjoy my iTunes. That’s it. All I want to do is live until I die.
I have no delusions of grandeur. My needs and my wants are simple. I just want to feel content, just like I do now, only without the fear and anxiety. All I want to do is live until I die.
I have never been arrested. I have never committed a crime. I am a Christian. I love God’s word, the bible. I don’t smoke, do drugs, drink to excess or indulge profanity. I love to dance. I love film. I love music. I appreciate writers and their writing. I love NPR and Public television. I enjoy Merlot, a good book, good news, Stephen Colbert and a good joke. I am the Queen of Pop Culture and yet I don’t watch The Bachelor or American Idol. I believe Ellen DeGeneres and Michelle Obama must be among, if not the most fortunate people on earth right now.
You would like me. I know I do.
There is a slovenly, bearded man who walks up and down Hwy 76 here every day, undoubtedly toting everything he owns. Every time I pass him by, I wonder: Where is he going? Why is he homeless? What’s his story? Who was he? Who is he now? Where did he come from? Why is he homeless? How did he come to be homeless? Why does he scare me?
Where do I want to be in five years? Ask me where I don’t want to be. I don’t want to be homeless, wandering up and down Hwy 76 or any other Highway in America. I don’t want to be pushing a shopping cart full of all my belongings up and down East Vista Way or any other Way in America. I don’t want to go to bed hungry. I don’t want to have to go without my Bare Minerals, or a shower or toilet. I don’t want to be afraid every day, or utterly and completely alone. Invisible. YOU (Employers; EE’s), YOU have the power to affect the course of a fellow Human Beings’ life. Think about that. YOU have the power!!!
Wow.
Who are You? I really want to know.
Don’t you?
http://www.barackobama.com/displayer/pages/econ-stories.php
Back during the Jewish system of things, every 50 years there was the Jubilee Year. The Hebrew word yoh-vel or yo-vel means “ram’s horn.” The sho-phar would be sounded during the 50th year to proclaim liberty throughout the land. Le 25:9. The Land was to have complete rest. This meant freedom for Hebrew slaves, the return of all hereditary land possessions sold because of family financial reversals, and individuals returned to their families who had been sold into slavery.
“No family was to sink into the depth of perpetual poverty. No one should come to be poor among you.” Le 25:8-10, 13; De 15:4, 5.
“The Jubilee law, when obeyed, preserved the nation from gravitating into the sad state that we observe today, where there are virtually two classes, the extremely rich and the extremely poor. The benefits to the individual strengthened the nation in that none would be underprivileged and crushed into unproductiveness by an economic crisis, but that all would contribute their knowledge, skills, talents and abilities to the national welfare. The law was read to the people during the Festival of Booths (De 31:10-12).*“
It would be great if the stimulus money was funneled directly to each and every American with an income under $250,000.00. These families know how to stimulate themselves (https://killinmesoftly.wordpress.com/2008/12/11/so-president-elect-obama-if-yer-lissnin/).
These families would pay their bills off. Their paying down their bills would infuse money into businesses, money every American could all see and account for. This revenue infusion would stimulate business and perhaps extinguish layoffs.
The economy would be stimulated the old fashioned way: by honest-hearted people happily paying their bills, and businesses happily investing in their businesses, encouraging competition, promoting Laissez faire (from the French, meaning to leave alone or to allow to do is an economic and political doctrine that holds that economies function most efficiently when unencumbered by government regulation. Laissez faire advocates favor individual self-interest and competition, and oppose the taxation and regulation of commerce).
Adam Smith, father of classical economics, maintained in Wealth of Nations (1776) that Britain’s goal should have been the promotion of the welfare of individuals, rather than centering on national power and prestige. Freely functioning economies were capable of bestowing benefits to all levels of society**.
I wish President Obama publicly endorsed this more far-reaching, more historical grasp of economics and history. We could learn a lot from looking at the original, pre-Christian model. The Jewish model failed because it was ahead of its time, and the people then did not support it as it should have been supported. Its legacy, however, lives on as a lesson for us today.
When I listen to the political shouting heads in the news, I am astonished by how unknowledgeable, naïve and utterly disinterested the House and Congress are in the financial machinations of Wall street and the Hamiltonian 
system. We have already “loaned” billions to companies that cannot account for how they spent this money.
Clearly, this infusion of cash during the last days of Bush 43’s administration did absolutely nothing to bolster the current economy. I want to know what happened to every cent of that initial bailout money. I want to know what happened to every cent of that initial bailout money. I want to know what happened to every cent of that initial bailout money!! Will I ever? Will the country?
Obama’s stimulus bill has already passed now. Can we learn lessons any from the old, pre-Christian Jubilee Year? Yes we can.
*Insight On The Scriptures |Watchtower Bible and Tract Society NYC | Vol II | 1998
**http://www.u-s-history.com/pages/h844.html
Moodz4Modernz 