Brother can you spare a dime?

Here is Lance Manion writing about the new movie The Soloist, which is about LA Times reporter Steve Lopez's friendship with homeless Nathaniel Ayers:

"It's the nature of the business," we hear a nameless, faceless suit tell a reporter who's being laid off and who is also, appropriately, now nameless and faceless. And in the suit's earnest, practical, condescending and scolding tones we can hear the voice of the Times and the times. The human being losing his job is expected not just to understand but to approve. The nature of the business has become the nature of our society---we are all expected to understand that we are each expendable and replaceable, that our sole (soul's) purpose is to be at the service of the business and we should appreciate it when we are expended and replaced because aren't we lucky to live in a society where our being expendable and replaceable so improves the common good? Stock prices go up, someone else gets to keep his job---probably the guy telling you you've just lost yours---money's being made and spent and somewhere someone will eat well tonight because we have served the business by accepting that we are no longer of use to it.

Today the news is all over the blogs about the significant increase in the long-term US unemployment rate and how half a million people in the States will have exhausted their unemployment by the end of September.
Food banks will be the new growth industry.
This song keeps running through my head: