OPINION: There's too big a gap between the haves and have nots

Anne McCarthy Strauss lives in Smithtown.

Three weeks ago my unemployment benefits ended, dropping my income from $435 a week to zero. This is the first time in my adult life I haven't received a check from either a full-time job or unemployment. I'm a 50-something unemployed public relations professional with 30 years of outstanding PR experience and highly-developed current technical skills. To say I'm terrified doesn't even scratch the surface.

To add insult to injury, my husband has also been out of work for 18 months. Our house is for sale and has lingered on the market for five months without a single offer, despite a total of $71,000 in price reductions and $20,000 in improvements.

Ironically, at the very same time I'm wondering if I'll ever again earn a penny, the state of New York is offering long-term workers incentives to retire early. They're sweetening the pot by offering higher pensions if they leave the workforce sooner rather than later.

This is another stab in the heart regarding the dichotomy between state and federal workers, who retire young with a pension and health care benefits, and those of us who chose corporate life.

Many of us in the latter group got kicked out in our 50s. Presumably we were considered to be too old or too expensive. Instead of a pension, we left with nothing.

My own firing came in the summer of 2008, six weeks after I'd been released from the hospital after developing a life-threatening blood clot. My employer sent me flowers when I was in the hospital. Six weeks after I returned to work, and having had no previous complaints from human resources, I was told that my performance wasn't up to par.

Why did they fire me? Because, unlike government workers, I could be fired.

Now my husband's and my own unemployment benefits are exhausted, and so are we. I spend 14 hours a day applying to jobs via the Internet and telephone, spending money I don't have to network. And while I wonder how we're supposed to survive, government pensioners are frolicking in their pools, with the cash to visit their grandchildren and buy them gifts, to take vacations.

I'm not saying they're not entitled, but why them and not us? Right now, I'd settle for a few bags of groceries and a tank of gas.

Anecdotes about people who've exhausted their unemployment benefits taking their lives are multiplying. Calls to the National Suicide Prevention Lifeline increased by 36 percent in 2008, and another 15 percent last year. The dichotomy between the haves and the have-nots mystifies me.

The phrase "liberty and justice for all" comes to mind. America, this isn't justice.