Desperate times call for desperate measures. That is the phrase that entered my mind when I watched a story unfold on the news about a man who robbed a convenience store while his 9-year-old daughter stood beside him.
It is reported that the man has been unemployed for a while and needed the money to support his daughter. Is he the victim of the economic recession or is he just stupid?
Whether Robert Daniel Webb is a victim or stupid really isn’t what I am concerned about. What concerns me is how many other seemingly regular people will turn to crime in this economic climate.
News of lay-offs, businesses closing and soaring unemployment rates are reported daily, so what are people to do who has worked at a certain job their entire life and all of a sudden find themselves without a job? Many of these people do not have the skills to find other employment.
Let’s say, for example, one of the big automakers does go bust. Thousands of people around the country will find themselves without a paycheck. Some people would say they deserve it because of the way they ran the company, but the executives are not the ones who will suffer. The men and the women who work on the assembly line every day are the people who will be affected the most.
A lot of workers in factories have worked at that factory since they were young adults and the only work experience they have had is on the assembly line. These are the people who will feel defeated when they lose their job because they cannot make the house payment or support their families.
These are also the people who will resort to desperate measures during desperate times because they feel they have no other options. Their lack of job skills will not help them find a job that will allow them to support their families in a way to which they are accustomed.
I would even argue this affects men disproportionately because our society labels them as the breadwinners of the family. Yes, I know most women work to help support the family and there are a lot of single moms doing it on their own, but whether we like it or not men are still viewed as the head of the household. And when a man can no longer support his family, it can take an emotional and psychological toll on him.
The easy answer to this situation seems to be to seek help from the government through some type of welfare assistance or job training program, but food stamps don’t pay the bills.
Not to mention married people have a harder time qualifying for assistance than do single parents. Another option is to return to school and earn a degree, but that too is not quite so simple. You still have to work to pay the bills and earning a degree does not guarantee a job. By the way, there is a little thing called tuition.
Some may have family members they can turn to, but not everyone does and many families cannot afford to support their own, let alone someone else’s family.
This is when people turn desperate: when they have run out of options.
As empathetic as I feel toward Webb and his situation, I do not agree that turning to crime is a viable option for supporting your family.
I have no idea what it is like for my child to go hungry and cannot imagine how it pains a parent not to be able to give your child the basic necessities of life.
I don’t claim to know what the answer is and it seems no one else does either. I do think, however, we will begin to see more people in the same situation as Webb — running out of options and seeing no other way out of their situation.
Desperate times call for desperate measures, right?
Amy Stallings
Editor
akstalli@ius.edu
