Arguing with memes: It's a sad day

In 2019, after 28 straight years of employment (minus graduate school) I was laid off, and I collected unemployment for the first time. Given my income level at the time, I qualified for $1500 a month -- a greater benefit than about half of all Social Security recipients. (The average Social Security benefit is $1543 a month)

Quite literally -- I was getting paid more to sit on my butt (which is how searching for a job works these days) than half of the senior citizens who had worked hard all their lives.

I have no problem with this, for the following reasons:

1. Social Security recipients don't typically have minor dependents at home. I had two. And while most Social Security beneficiaries have typically had 40 years to pay off their homes, most of us who've been on unemployment have not.
   
   
2. Unemployment benefits are paid only to people who've had jobs and lost them through no fault of their own. They are not given to those who quit or are fired.
   
   
3. There's a time limit to how many weeks of unemployment a person can claim in a year. It varies by state (16 in Arkansas), but qualified senior citizens can continuously collect their entitlement from the time they turn 62, up to the time they die, and are almost guaranteed an annual cost-of-living adjustment.
   
   
4. I have been a retail clerk, a restaurant worker, a teacher, an office worker, and an Army officer. That said, I don't feel an unemployed person should have to accept a position they're overqualified for because of some imagined moral responsibility to those on Social Security. COVID has been rough on a lot of people. I think it's OK for workers to have some time to re-evaluate their lives.
   
   
5. The kinds of people who benefit most from the CARES Act are teacher, medical assistants, janitors, and food service workers.. By federal law, the minimum wage for tipped employees in 2021 is $2.13 an hour, a figure that hasn't changed since before I was working as a server in 1994. And given that tipped employees are -- essentially -- reliant on the tips of the customers they're required to enforce COVID restrictions on, that's a terrible position to be in.

So with all due respect to those who've worked hard all their lives, I don't think that makes them better than those who've worked hard for all of theirs too.

While I realize that the person who shared this on Facebook almost certainly didn't have me in mind when they shared it, without having stipulated any exceptions, it absolutely applies to me, as well as many other people I know who've been affected by COVID.

Instead of it being a sad day when people get more by being unemployed than by being retired, I think what we've seen is forty years straight of sad days, given it's been that long since we've seen any increase in real wages.