Let’s Work! (Part 1)
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| Mary Wakefield Buxton |
Urbanna, Va. — It hit me recently what’s wrong with our economy. Too few people are working these days, paying income taxes, and making contributions to Social Security and Medicare.
I realized this when I showed up recently on a Friday night to a church dinner dressed in business attire after a day of work at the office only to enter a room filled with 100 pairs of Bermuda shorts! Nothing wrong with this scenario; after all, Middlesex is a retirement community, but I had the impression the only people working in a tax-withholding job in the room was the priest and me.
Is this a microcosm of what is happening around the nation? If so, our government may be spending more in benefits than it’s receiving in workers contributions, and the system is cracking under the strain. I fear my generation may be responsible for approving this imbalance.
But why worry over who’s to blame for this predicament? Politicians may have ruined our once-vibrant economy with multiple benefit programs, but we are the ones who voted them into office. Thus I blame us for the nation’s staggering debt and corresponding slumping job market.
If my generation created the problem, we could quickly solve the problem by simply having everyone start up a small business and hiring someone today. Our generation knows a great deal about work as we worked most of our lives. We can go back to work now and help our children and grandchildren pay off the national debt.
So… let’s work! Up, grandparents! Out of that rocking chair! Throw down your shawls, knitting needles, canes, garden tools and kick off your house slippers! The clarion call of trumpets has sounded! They are blowing the horns for us, old shoe! We old folks will save America! Let’s work!
I suppose some nay-sayers will scoff at my sudden burst of patriotism, not to mention imagined reservoirs of energy. I, with every ache imaginable plaguing my aging body, who goes to sleep each night with a wrap around my wrist to alleviate carpel tunnel pain (from years spent at the keyboard) and who takes more pills than I would care to admit… I will return to work? I will pay more taxes? I will forego all the fun of retirement and start earning a paycheck again? Yes, ma’am!
But how will I get a job? The bad news is the public sector has run out of money (alas!), the private sector isn’t hiring either, and there are few jobs available. So, our generation must start new businesses and provide others with jobs. Then we and our employees will pay more taxes so our government will have more funds. Our efforts multiplied by tens and thousands of other senior citizens across the nation will replenish government coffers.
The trouble with being a writer is one can easily fall for his own schtick. What business could I possibly start so as to provide someone else with a job? What skills do I possess, like rows and rows of growing green corn are just waiting to be harvested?
Surely I must have in my great repertoire of recipes some special pie, marmalade or a succulent sauce that my employee and I could bottle up in my kitchen and offer for sale to the public?
How about a child-care center where you could take in dozens of lovely, well-mannered children and care for them each day as their parents work? The backyard could house swing sets and slides and Lord and Lady could round the children up when it was time for snacks. I could teach them proper grammar and my charges would never end a sentence with a preposition.
Or how about a cleaning service? I could be the next white tornado in Middlesex County and go door-to-door leaving each house as clean as a whistle?
How about starting Miss Mary’s Academy? I could teach Shakespeare and English poetry, leaving my students armed with lifelong quotations of the very finest iambic pentameter giving them instant entry to the very finest anglophilic societies.
How about starting the “Dog and Poet Pub” in downtown Urbanna? Lovely dogs would loll about the pub in various positions whilst poets would recite their idylls and odes. Only tea would be served in reverence to my English roots and maybe some wine (in reverence to the Greeks).
As a last resort I could write fascinating books and stand on the corner with my employee and hawk them to passersby. “Save America!” we might shout. “Buy a book!”
(Next week Mary explores if she has what it takes to start a business in today’s high tax, high-regulation and anti-business environment.)
