My company just laid off about 20% of their workforce, and I was one of the causalities. Now I get to go job hunting in an economy that’s sinking faster than Palin’s image as a folksy soccer mom. Oh joy.

This is the reality of working in IT. For every IT worker who has been in a job for a long time there are a dozen of us who skip from one job to another every year or three. It’s not that we want to – it’s the nature of the business. When big companies cut back IT is usually first on the chopping block. Startups are the best source of new jobs, but they’re notoriously risky, and often make just one or two big mistakes that kill them as soon as things get tough. In my last IT job the mistake was having one client. A big huge mulit-billion dollar client, but still, just one, and when they hit a rough patch and needed to cut expenses we were one of the cuts. I had just received a great performance review and a nice raise and them Bam! A solid kick to the nuts. I spent a couple of years barely getting by at lousy paying non-IT jobs, and was exploring new careers, when this job came along. They had plenty of clients, (that was one of the first questions I asked in the interview) but made other expensive mistakes I’m not at liberty to discuss. And now it’s a year and a half later I’m back on the streets.

I like working in IT. I like support. I like ferreting out solutions to tricky problems and turning frustrated customers into happy clients. I like training people to use complex products that ultimately make their business more profitable. I like discussing marketing and SEO and web design with my clients. But damn, I do not like looking for a new job every year or two or three.

When I was younger it was a bit of an adventure – an annoying one, but still, an adventure. On more than one occasion I was out of work for less than a week. But now jobs are much scarcer, and I’m competing with young puppies who are willing to work for less, foolishly believing that their fate will be different.

I honestly wish I had chosen a career as an electrician, or plumber, or carpenter – jobs with a constant demand. When was the last time you heard of a plumber going out of business?

And what makes it even more aggravating is seeing my tax money being used to pay enormous salaries to “experts” who are largely responsible for the rapidly dwindling value of my rather pathetic 401k. We, and by that I mean you and me and our kids and our grandkids and probably their kids, are paying more than a trillion dollars to schmucks who continue to make more money in a year than we’d make in several lifetimes.

Hey congress, what about me? Give me a million bucks. That’s all, just one million, and I won’t ask for another dime, ever. I’ve got about another twenty years or thirty years on this planet. I’ll make it last that long. I’ll live off the interest and just a bit of the principle each year, and supplement it by working at jobs I like that don’t necessarily pay that well. You don’t have to pay my medical bills. You don’t have to pay me unemployment. I won’t get food stamps or go on welfare. You can even keep the IOUs you’ve got in “my” social security account. You spend more than that every second. Just give me one lousy second’s worth of the national expenditure and I’ll be happy. I’ll even stop bitching about your waste and stupidity and greed. Such a deal!

A million bucks, just once, that’s all I ask.