The last safe place

A few years ago, some people acted like they were horrified when a poll showed that a lot of high school and college students wanted to work for the government when they grew up.

“No ambition, these little punks,” grumped people who would soon be voting for Donald Trump, the working man's friend. “They just want to work for the government because they don't want to get a real job.”

By the way, in America, a real job is the job you have, not the job someone else has; you work for your money, but the other guy doesn't. Also, you have a “real job” if the pay stinks, there's no pension, it's non-union, you can get the job without a high school diploma and the work is dirty, dangerous, boring or all three. The only exceptions are picking vegetables or working in a fast-food restaurant. If you do either one of those things, people with “real jobs” hate you very much and hope you never get a raise for flipping burgers or pulling salad out of the ground.

If you work for a big company, your immediate boss is called a “manager” and you hate her very much because she doesn't have a real job, but you love and cherish the owner of the multi-trillion-dollar corporation you work for because he's a “job creator.” Also, he just bought a rocket ship and will be vacationing on Jupiter next year. How could you not love that guy? In addition, he is the son of a millionaire and literally worked his way up from the top.

Those kids who wanted to work for the government weren't lazy or stupid. They picked government employment as a goal because that's where the unions are, and the pensions and the seniority and the health care. You used to get that stuff making steel or tires or toasters or cars, but ask 'em in Ohio where the steel jobs went. They'll tell you the government's the best job you can get.

And they're right. For working conditions, union representation, pay, benefits and longevity, you're better off being a janitor at City Hall than a janitor in a bank.

The lazy, video game-addicted kids they polled picked government work because, with just a few rare exceptions, government was the best employer.

That couldn't last. As the gold toilet and rocket ship capitalists crushed unions, looted pension funds and torched whole industries just to buy another yacht, you knew they were giving the side eye to those well-paid, pension-sucking, unionized government employees whose middle-class paychecks are an affront to millions of Amazon warehouse workers who are buying groceries with government benefits.

As Trump's jackal Elon Musk goes trampling through the government, remember he's not just firing $275,000 a year “directors”; he's canning office workers making much, much less, and beginning the process of breaking a dozen or so unions.

Trumpism doesn't care if you're poor, as long as you work hard to be poor. I've known high school janitors who were able to buy their own home. That can't be a “real job.” It pays too much

I never heard of a job that didn't make me ask, “What does it pay?” All working people ask that question about any job that gets mentioned in a bar or coffee shop.

Government employment is and was the last safe place for working people, and now that's going, too. Don't worry, though. The military is hiring, and maybe you can go earn your pension in Gaza or Winnipeg. Just remember, the more limbs you lose, the bigger your benefits. Try to step on a mine.

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