Why we can't have nice things

I'm surrounded by young people trying to get the jobs they trained for. Or trying to get any job at all. And not just the very young: I have folks around me who are closer to forty than thirty, well-educated, well-trained, successfully employed in the past, who can't get work in their field or any other. Even the terrible jobs are ridiculously hard to get. And they are getting more terrible, as well. Wages are falling, conditions get ever more grueling, workers' rights are lost in the courts.

Is it any wonder I have taken my creaky old self out of the job market?

So what happened? I've seen automation take the blame. But it's just not true for the jobs my young friends are looking for. In many cases they are looking for jobs that will not be automatable until we have human-replacing artificial intelligence. Robots can do a lot of things, but they can't do these things.

What's happening is two things: work that needs to be done is not being done, and work that is being done is being done by people who are working too hard. People who work eighty hours a week (and like as not get paid for thirty), people who have to attend to too many tasks at once.

Roads are going unmended, schools are being allowed to deteriorate, hospitals are understaffed, inspections are not being done. How come? Because these are all public functions, publicly funded for the public good, and all the funds are being diverted to private hoards. While West Virginia's water supply went unprotected (and may be permanently damaged), the money was being shoveled into Scrooge McDuck's swimming pool.

it's really truly raining

I decided not to buy and install a rain barrel this year (they are only 45 dollars from the city water department) because there wasn't any rain.

I believe that today I could have filled the whole thing.

I am filling what I can, but I won't be able to save it for long.