A nation of sluggards

Saab isn't doing so well, as we all know, and the government isn't going to take over, thank heavens. I don't feel like paying for a company that has been making losses for 20 years. I understand that a lot of people will be affected and that as many as 15 000 people might lose their jobs, and now they're all expecting the government to solve all their problems.

And my question is this. Why is it only people working at big companies who demand and receive all this help? What about people who get laid off a small agency that nobody has ever really heard about? Or what if like me and many of my friends, you return to Sweden after some time abroad, and you look for a job for almost six months before you find one? Why don't we receive any help?

And why do people always ask what the government can do for them, but not what they can do for themselves? Why are Swedish people so helpless? Yesterday I read about a couple who both worked at Saab and they had both been doing so for years and years. They had two teenage children, and now that they were probably going to lose their jobs they said that they obviously can't move because their kids have all their friends where they live now.

Excuse me? How is it ok to cut your income almost in half and live off of tax payers money because you don't want to take your children away from their friends? If you can get a job somewhere else, something that pays at least somewhere close to what you made before, how can you even hesitate? Of course you move. And how to do you expect to get a new job in a town where one of Sweden's biggest companies just went bust?

I do understand that older people who've worked at the same company all their lives need more help than younger people. But when a 20-year-old on TV is asking what the government can do for her now that she's lost her job at Volvo, I just want to punch her face and tell her to think for herself for a change. Go to university, move abroad, move to a different city in Sweden if abroad is too scary. But for the love of god don't just stand there like some pathetic loser, completely unable to manage your own life.