Ned has noticed something that has been creeping up on him like the proverbial thief in the night. It seems that more and more jobs in this country are being 'manned' by 'volunteers.' Ned has been long aware that there is a large contingent of geezers in his adopted home town that spend many hours a week 'volunteering' at one 'nonprofit' or another. Now comes word that more and more municipalities are trying to rely on volunteers to do the day to day tasks of running the cities that used to be done by professionals, like fire-fighting, or staffing the libraries, for example.
Mrs Ned has had many experiences of late where potential employers have told her flat out that she needs to 'volunteer' to be considered, eventually, for gainful employment, and Ned has long ruminated on the ethics, indeed, the legality of this practice, smacking as it does of involuntary servitude, which he seems to recall was frowned upon in some amendment to a major government document. But we digress.
Ned's point is this: if we try to fill more and more positions with 'volunteers', mainly retirees on 'fixed incomes' and wealthy dilettante housewives who are bored and looking for something to take them away from the Oprah Channel for a few hours a day, then who will pay the taxes to support the government services we all take for granted? Indeed, if these volunteers are taking jobs away from those who need them at one end, and many of the other jobs are being filled by desperate illegal immigrants who will work for peanuts at the other end, Ned doesn't see how this economy is going to survive. But then he is an awful cynic.
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