Earlier this week, I turned on my laptop to get the daily headlines from Democracy Now’s web-based news broadcast. Suddenly, I heard Amy Goodman reporting on the status of American employment nowadays in light of the nation’s recent economic downturn. She began her story by reciting a recent statistic that says one in every six Americans is either unemployed or underemployed. Along with that, she reported a story of a recent shooting that occurred and, while speaking of the gunman, inserted the fact that the gunman recently lost his job insinuating that the source of his rage is his disgruntlement with being laid off. Of course, these two pieces of information – the unemployment and underemployment statistic, and the gunman’s recent loss of his job – were mentioned in the broadcast because the information matters. Amy Goodman would not have mentioned it otherwise. In consideration of those two reports, this is what immediately came to my mind:
We are financially weak. How come?
Because of our dependence on being employed by a company to sustain our living and, for some, our sanity. Without getting hired by someone else, the majority of us employed could not survive. If we were to lose our jobs there are likely three predicaments that’d come to light:
1) We would have no passive income to rely on
2) We would have no accumulated savings to rely on for six months or more
3) We would have no idea how to create our own money and be
financially self-sufficient
If we all had self-generated income sources other than our jobs to sustain our living it wouldn’t make much of a difference if the impact of unemployment and underemployment reached one in six Americans and the fact of the gunman recently losing his job would most likely not be mentioned. The fact that we don’t is a sign of our financial weakness, our financial dependence, and our general lack of financial education. We need to learn how to make our own money.
Many of our financial destinies are in the hands of the employers. This fosters over-dependence and weakness since, without employers’ pay, we’d have no financial vitality whatsoever. The extent of our education and self-education in creating our own economic opportunities and determining our own financial destinies is limited or non-existent. It’s evident since, as demonstrated in a wide range of economic news broadcasted reports over the last year, the moment that employers start laying off employees there is a frenzy about how we will sustain our living needs (i.e. utilities, mortgage, food, transportation). Just think the following questions for a moment:
1) Would that type of discussion exists if we knew we could create own
money and our economic opportunities?
2) Would broadcasts, such as the one on Democracy Now, feel as
inclined to recite statistics of unemployment, underemployment, or
point out a gunman’s recent job loss to insinuate it being causal of his
rage?
The answer is no!
If we felt that we had total control of our financial destinies we would care less. Instead of reciting statistics about the percentage of Americans unemployment and underemployed or insinuating connections between job loss and a crazed gunman, we’d be better off reciting ways on how to get our own money irregardless of a job so that we can be more financially autonomous and gaurded from the dire impacts of job loss.
Although being unemployed or underemployed unsatisfactory for many, I bet that most of us would care much less about losing our jobs if we knew we could make our own money.
