I’ll summarize this ABC article really quickly: the economy’s bad, which means that any company that’s actually hiring has a larger-than-average pool to draw from. The economy’s so bad and the pool’s getting so large, in fact, that companies are finding that they can get away with explicitly stating that they’re not interested in hiring the unemployed (as Hot Air notes, long-term unemployed individuals are historically more of a risk than the employed). This is upsetting a bunch of people, because it’s not actually illegal to do this. What’s not explicitly said in the article is that the young are the ones who are really going to take it in the chin, since a lot of companies are taking a blanket “no-unemployed at all” policy in order to keep this simple.

And those are the people who I wish to address directly.

I’d like you folks to contemplate something, as you’re sitting there with a congealing smile as some HR guy tells you that you can’t have a job because you don’t have a job:

• Remember the 2008 election, when you were in college? How your buddy, we’ll call him “Bob,” got your floor or shared house together and out there stumping for Barack Obama?
• Remember that warm, happy feeling that you got from going out there and getting Obama elected?
• Remember how Obama promised you that if the stimulus got passed, unemployment wouldn’t go above 8% – but if it did[n’t], it would go above 9%?
• Remember how right after the stimulus passed the unemployment rate went up to 10% and hung around there for a while? And now it’s sticking around 9%?
• Remember that aforementioned warm, happy feeling?

Well, tell me: is that warm, happy feeling filling your belly? Or filling your gas tank? Paying off your insanely high student loans? Getting you out of your parents’ house? Is it in fact doing anything useful for you right now? No? Well. Try to remember that when Bob (who turned out to like this entire ‘political organizer’ thing, to the point where you kind of wish that he’d stop talking about it quite so much) calls you up later this year to talk about ‘putting the band back together for 2012.’ Or, to quote your favorite lefty professor from school – you know, the one with tenure, which means that he’s got a guaranteed salary until the entire academic system collapses – YOU NEED TO START THINKING IN TERMS OF YOUR CLASS INTERESTS HERE, SPARKY*.

Because no-one else will.

Moe Lane (crosspost)

*I know that use of the Old Enemy’s terms can bother some folks, but if you want to convert people, it helps if you can speak their tongue.