To unemployment : A part-time solution - Gene Lyons

[Cassandra]

http://moose-and-squirrel.com/GeneLyons/GeneLyons.html

"Everybody says that Johnny Paycheck’s 1977 hit, "Take This Job and Shove It," is one of the great country songs, an anthem of workingclass defiance.
But what people forget is the bitter realism behind songwriter David Allan Coe’s lyrics. See, it’s not so much a tough guy’s boast as a working stiff’s fantasy :
"I’d give the shirt right off of my back," the song goes, "if I had the guts to say, ‘Take this job and shove it. I ain’t working here no more.’ "
But he hasn’t got the guts and that’s the whole point. His woman’s crying and he’s got bills to pay, but he can’t afford to confront the bosses who have made his factory job miserable.
In 2004, the same guy would count himself blessed to have a factory job at all. As everybody knows, the U.S. has been "outsourcing" high-wage manufacturing jobs to low-wage Third World countries for years."

Lots more here.