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Used Once, Thrown Away

By VVAW

Labor Department figures put out at the beginning of 1982 show a total of 616,000 veterans unemployed. While earlier figures showed a large unemployment rate among young vets—those who were just getting out of the service—the latest figures show that some 450,000 unemployed vets are thirty and over.

Clearly it's no fun facing unemployment in the weeks and months after discharge from the military. But for vets over 30, many with families to support and with GI Bill benefits having run out, unemployment can well be a catastrophe.

Of course there's the government that was so willing to send us off to fight their war in Southeast Asia—and will gladly scarf us up again to fight their next war wherever they decide to fight it. Under Reaganomics, unemployment is a necessary evil, which is fine for the politicians (and for Reagan's well-heeled buddies) who don't have to try to fee a family on nothing. And so training programs have been cut along with almost everything else that would keep the poor alive. According to the government, the solution is to wait until Reagan's benefits to the wealthy trickle down to the rest of us. Our solution is to fight!