Just a reminder of the impact unemployment benefits have for the millions of Americans who are out of work:
There’s absolutely no denying Congress needs to take action when it comes to unemployment benefits, because millions of Americans will be dramatically affected by the expiration of their unemployment benefits due to Congressional inaction – largely due to Republican obstruction:
The typical household now receiving emergency unemployment benefits would see their income fall by a third should they lose their checks, according to the report. Among the roughly 40 percent of households in which the person receiving a check is the sole breadwinner, income would fall by 90 percent.
The existing emergency unemployment program, which extends benefits for nearly two years, expired on Wednesday. Without an agreement to extend the program, the economy will lose about 600,000 jobs, as the spending enabled by continued unemployment checks ceases. National economic output–which expanded at an annual pace of 2.5 percent during the summer months–would fall off by 0.6 percent.
I am of the other opinion.
There is a point in time in which the ‘present’ becomes the new ‘normal’. This is it. 99 weeks (or whatever) of unemployment is enough and we must face the fact that this is the new unemployment for the next ten years. Nobody will admit it except for economists who couch it in terms like slow job recovery. What they fail to tell you is that the baby boom generation has stopped spending and will not start up again.They have all the cr@p they need and their identity is not dependent upon what they own anymore.
The heartless thing to do is to extend benefits again and give people false hope that this year will be different than the last two.
Time to cut the chord. And it is better to do it before Christmas than after. There is nothing worse than spending at Christmas because you think you have money coming in next year and then learning you don’t. Secondly, because it is Christmas, the unemployed have the best opportunity of receiving unexpected charity.
I am not heartless. I am practical. And we all need to face the fact that automation and robots will keep many of us unemployed for a long time to come. The bad news about worker productivity is that it puts people out of work and keeps them out of work longer. That is why you can spend a trillion dollars on stimulus and you end up saving jobs rather than creating them.
Time to stiffen our spine and recognize the new reality.
Should read: “Time to cut the cord.”
Sheesh. I need new fingers to type what I speak.
How is that even close to practical PB? Time to cut the chord before Christmas? So families cant have Christmas and kids cant eat? I would say sitting around hungry in a dark house hoping for unexpected charity is no way to live.
The practical way is to get these people jobs. Whats keeping us unemployed is our insane trade policies, love of wall st and bought and paid for politicians. It is a sin that we are not lowering our unemployment and then cutting them off while the boner cries about not giving the billionaires even more money(giveaways).
I don’t know about practical but it is realistic.
All the kids in America will eat on Christmas Day. There is no starving class in America. . . yet.
I don’t know the numbers well but I think that there are aleady 6 million unemployed that are not receiving benefits. The difference between the reported unemployment (those looking for work and receiving benefits) and those who have stopped looking for work and not receiving benefits.
Things are bleak and we would be wise to tell people that there is little hope of going back to work as everyone once did. It is better to make this change now and talk about multi-generational and multi -family housing options than it is to pretend that benefits to the unemployed can continue ad infinitum. Better to talk about having family move in with each other than to pretend we can all make it on our own.
We are in a new age and need to adjust to that.
So you are saying your accepting that the US is no longer the super power of the world and that we are a third world country and might as well accept it?
I am not sure how we go from unemployment realities to world domination but I learned this morning that Bernanake said (this past weekend) what I said: this is a slow jobs recovery.
We are the only superpower in the world today but soon China will compete with us hemisperically in the East.