If you have never heard of Jason Greenslate, let me get you caught up by quoting the article that I wrote about him last year…

When he was asked if he ever had any interest in actually getting a job, his response was “not whatsoever“.  Instead, he says that his job is to “make sure the sun’s up and the girls are out” and he would rather spend his days partying.  Of course every American should be free to live their own lives as they see fit, but the problem is that Jason Greenslate is using food stamps to help support his lifestyle.  In fact, he took Fox News into the gourmet section of a local supermarket where he purchased sushi and lobster with his EBT card.  Sadly, he is just like millions of other young men in America today that seemingly have had the drive to succeed and to be independent totally sucked out of them.  But what is the future of America going to look like if we continue to produce millions upon millions of young men that have absolutely no desire to make a living, get married and start a family?

Just recently, Sean Hannity had Greenslate on his program and asked him if he felt bad that his fellow Californians are being taxed at extremely high levels in order to pay for his lifestyle.   Sadly, this does not appear to bother Greenslate.  The following is from a recent Fox News article…

Hannity pointed out that Greenslate rides around in a Cadillac Escalade and frequents strip clubs, all while receiving government assistance and not working at a job that actually pays.

When Hannity asked Greenslate who he thinks pays for his food stamps and free health care, Greenslate said, “Government, taxes, us, the people.”

“Not you, because you’re not paying taxes,” Hannity responded.

Hannity went on to point out that nearly 60 cents out of every working Californian’s dollar goes to taxes. “You’re taking their money and you just don’t seem to care,” Hannity said.

“Who says I don’t care?” Greenslate asked, adding that he was “thankful.”

Hannity even asked Greenslate if he would take a job as a truck driver for $80,000 a year, and Greenslate refused…

Hannity went for broke: “If I could get you a job that would pay you $80,000 a year driving a truck in North Dakota, would you take it?”

Greenslate paused for a moment to think about it: “No.”

Of course most Americans actually do want to work, and only go on government assistance if they really need it.  Unfortunately, however, there are a lot of “Jason Greenslates” out there, and their numbers are growing with each passing year.

And without a doubt, life is tough if you are trying to survive at the low end of the wage scale these days.  It is hard enough to take care of yourself, much less an entire family, on 9 or 10 dollars an hour.

For many, it is simply easier to give up on working for a living and depend on the government instead.

Not that it is easy to find any kind of work these days.  The percentage of low wage jobs in our economy has steadily risen, and the competition for those jobs can be very intense.  Large numbers of college-educated workers are now finding themselves forced to apply for low wage jobs, and this is forcing many less educated workers out of the labor force entirely.  The following comes from a recent CNBC article…

Today’s low-wage workers are also more educated, with 41 percent having at least some college, up from 29 percent in 2000. “Minimum-wage and low-wage workers are older and more educated than 10 or 20 years ago, yet they’re making wages below where they were 10 or 20 years ago after inflation,” said Mr. Schmitt, senior economist at the research center. “If you look back several decades, workers near the minimum wage were more likely to be teenagers—that’s the stereotype people had. It’s definitely not accurate anymore.”

But when many college-educated professionals start working these sorts of jobs, they find that they require extremely hard work.

For example, posted below is an excerpt from an article entitled “My Life as a Retail Worker: Nasty, Brutish, and Poor” by reporter Joseph Williams.  Let’s just say that he didn’t really care for his time working in retail after he unexpectedly lost his job…

It didn’t matter if it was at the beginning of my shift, if the store was empty, or if my knees, back, and feet ached from hours of standing. Park your behind while on the clock, went the unspoken rule, and you might find it on a park bench scanning the want-ads for a new job.

Another quick observation: Working in retail takes more skill than just selling stuff. Besides the mindless tasks one expects—folding, stacking, sorting, fetching things for customers—I frequently had to tackle a series of housekeeping chores that Stretch never mentioned in our welcome-aboard chat. Performed during the late shift, those chores usually meant I’d have to stay well past the scheduled 9 p.m. quitting time.

Mop the floors in the bathroom, replace the toilet paper and scrub the toilets if necessary. Vacuum. Empty the garbage. Wipe down the glass front doors, every night, even if they don’t really need it.

Yes, working in retail can be physically, mentally and emotionally exhausting.

I know this from personal experience.  In my younger years, I worked a number of retail jobs.

But nobody should be afraid of a little hard work.

That is what built America.

If you do have a job, you should be thankful.  The truth is that there are millions of Americans out there that would do just about anything for a decent job at this point.

Of course the U.S. economy should be doing better that it is right now.  I truly wish that it was like the good old days when any hard working person could easily find a decent job.  Thanks to decades of incredibly foolish decisions by our leaders, those days are permanently gone.

And if you think that things are bad now, just wait.  The U.S. economy is already heading toward another recession, and the next great financial crisis is rapidly approaching.

So let us enjoy this period of relative stability while we can.

Very soon, millions more Americans will be losing their jobs and the number of people that actually need government assistance is going to go even higher.

The post 29-Year-Old Welfare Parasite Would Not Accept An $80,000 A Year Job Driving A Truck appeared first on The Economic Collapse.

As I write about so frequently, unemployment is an absolute nightmare in most areas of the country right now.  But in North Dakota there are plenty of jobs and they pay really well.  Just check out what a new CNN article is saying about what is going on in the state….

Believe it or not, a place exists where companies are hiring like crazy, and you can make $15 an hour serving tacos, $25 an hour waiting tables and $80,000 a year driving trucks.

You just have to move to North Dakota. Specifically, to one of the tiny towns surrounding the oil-rich Bakken formation, estimated to hold anywhere between 4 billion and 24 billion barrels of oil.

CNBC also recently ran an article about the jobs boom up in North Dakota.  According to CNBC, there are “help wanted” signs all over the place in little towns such as Williston….

Unemployment is a national problem in the U.S., but you wouldn’t know that if you travel through North Dakota.

The state’s unemployment rate hovers around 3 percent, and “Help Wanted” signs litter the landscape of cities such as Williston in the same way “For Sale” signs populate the streets of Las Vegas.

“It’s a zoo,” said Terry Ayers, who drove into town from Spokane, Wash., slept in his truck, and found a job within hours of arrival, tripling his salary. “It’s crazy what’s going on out here.”

If you are desperate for work and you are looking for a “reboot”, North Dakota may be an option for you.  According to CNN, there are a significant number of families that have already changed their lives by heading out to North Dakota….

McMullen now works as a nanny in exchange for housing. Her husband, who worked on behavior management programs for a school system in North Carolina where he took home about $1,600 a month, found a job working in the oilfields where he makes that same amount of money in one week — adding up to an annual salary of about $77,000.

“We want to be debt-free, so we came here to play catch-up,” said McMullen. “But when I came here, I thought I was on Mars. It’s just so crazy that the rest of the country has no jobs, and here’s this one place that doesn’t have enough people to fill all the jobs.”

So is North Dakota for everyone?

Of course not.

First of all, it gets bone-chilling cold in North Dakota in the winter.

If you cannot handle really cold weather then you should not go up there.

Secondly, there is not nearly enough housing in the boom towns and the housing that is available is really expensive.

So you may either have to commute a long way or deal with accommodations that are less than stellar.

North Dakota is very flat, the geography is not very pleasant, there is not much to do there, the “boom towns” are very far from major population centers and moving there would entail major sacrifices for most people.

But there are good jobs up there.

So if you are looking for some good news, you just got some.

Look, it is better to try to do something than to sit around waiting for Barack Obama to save you.  As I have written about previously, the Obama jobs plan is a bad joke and even if it got through Congress it would do very little to create jobs.

The truth is that Barack Obama simply does not know what he is doing when it comes to jobs.  He continues to push for even more job-killing “free trade” agreements that will result in millions more American jobs being shipped overseas.

Barack Obama continues to run around the country talking about “infrastructure jobs”, but according to ABC News, thousands upon thousands of those jobs are actually going to Chinese workers….

In New York there is a $400 million renovation project on the Alexander Hamilton Bridge.

In California, there is a $7.2 billion project to rebuild the Bay Bridge connecting San Francisco and Oakland.

In Alaska, there is a proposal for a $190 million bridge project.

These projects sound like steps in the right direction, but much of the work is going to Chinese government-owned firms.

The sad truth is that the U.S. economy continues to slide even further down the tubes and the vast majority of our politicians have no idea how to fix things.

When Barack Obama first took office, the official U.S. unemployment rate was 7.6 percent.  Today it is 9.1 percent.

There are less jobs in the United States today than there were a decade ago, and the number of good paying jobs continues to shrink.

In 1980, 52 percent of all jobs in the United States were middle income jobs.  Today, only 42 percent of all jobs are middle income jobs.

So don’t sit around waiting for the economy to fix itself.  There is no reason to have blind faith in the system at this point.

We live during unconventional times, and many of us are going to have to find unconventional solutions to our problems.

There are lots of good jobs in the western part of North Dakota.

If you need a job, you might want to look into it.

The post Go West, Young Man (To North Dakota) appeared first on The Economic Collapse.