Down and out in jobless America

There aren’t enough jobs for everyone. There are jobs out there but getting one is frustrating, menial and mostly impossible. But I have a suggestion for you if you follow me to the very end of this diatribe.
I know this from applying for a job as a census enumerator this Spring. Unfortunately, there were 20,000 applicants for 4800 openings in Nevada. Premise No 1: there are way more applicants than jobs.
Then I went to my first (and last) Career Fair. There were huge lines waiting to get in (see Premise No. 1). A girl came by with a large cardboard box collecting resumes. The booths inside featured franchise “opportunities”, Army recruiting, and real estate positions (puhleeze!). Premise No. 2: there are lots of people selling and nobody buying.
What about the jobs section of the newspaper? Surely there must be plenty of openings there. Perhaps I should let the philosopher Louis Jordan explain it in
“Choo choo ch’boogie”.
“Take the daily paper from the top of the rack,
And read the situation from the front to the back,
The only job that’s open needs the man with a knack,
So put the paper right back on the top of the rack.”
Premise No. 3: the classifieds are full of openings if you’re a forensic financial expert in ground sirloin, a nurse for the midnight to dawn shift, a cabdriver, and commission work in a cubicle.
If you go online you’ll see ads promising $7000 a week for licking postage stamps. Avoid these people like bedbugs and don’t ever give them your credit card number.
So what can you do? You have no voice in Washington, you’re facing a financial firing squad and all you want to do is make some money and keep solvent.
Let me offer a lesson from literature. There is a short story by Somerset Maugham called “The Verger”. Albert is a verger, a church functionary who helps a bishop in England. He is called in by two churchwardens who have discovered that he can’t read or write. They are horrified, and as a consequence he is fired.
He had saved a tidy sum but not enough to live on without doing something. While walking home he looked for a tobacconist but couldn’t find one. He thought, “I shouldn’t wonder but a fellow might do very well with a little shop here.” He found a shop to let and it was a success. In the course of ten years he had acquired ten shops and was making money hand over fist.
One day at the bank, the manager called him while he was making a deposit. He had over 35,000 Pounds in his account (a fortune then or now). The manager said, “Do you mean to say that you’ve built up this important business and amassed a fortune without being able to read or write? Good God, man, what would you be now if you had been able to?”
“I can tell you that sir,” said Albert, a little smile on his still aristocratic features, “I’d be verger of St. Peter’s, Neville Square.”
Premise No. 4: Employ yourself. Reach your own conclusions and don’t let anything hold you back.