The Unemployed Held Hostage, Again

[cal04]

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/11/28/opinion/28sun1.html?ref=opinion

It is hard to believe, as the holidays approach yet again amid economic hard times, but Congress looks as if it may let federal unemployment benefits lapse for the fourth time this year.

(snip)
Some opponents of unemployment benefits — mostly Republicans but a few Democrats as well — would have you believe those figures are evidence of laziness, enabled by generous benefits. They conveniently ignore three facts. One, there are five unemployed people for every job opening — a profound scarcity of jobs. Two, federal benefits average $290 a week, about half of what the typical family spends on basics and hardly enough to dissuade someone from working. Three, as unemployment has deepened, benefits have become less generous. Earlier this year, lawmakers ended a subsidy to help unemployed workers pay for health insurance and dropped an extra $25 a week that had been added to benefits by last year’s stimulus law.

Other opponents would have you believe that the nation cannot afford to keep paying unemployment benefits: a yearlong extension would cost about $60 billion. The truth is, we cannot afford not to. The nation has never ended federal benefits when unemployment is as high as it is now, and for good reason: Without jobs, there is inadequate spending, and that means ever fewer jobs. A wide range of private and government studies show that unemployment benefits combat that vicious cycle by ensuring that families can buy the basics.

(snip)
President Obama should pound the table for a clean, yearlong extension of unemployment benefits, and should excoriate phony deficit hawks — in both parties — who say that jobless benefits are too costly, even as they pass vastly more expensive tax cuts for the rich.

[redirish28]

1. HAVE these people no conscious?! Should we send them a copy of A Christmas Carol?

[RKP5637]

2. They don't give a damn IMO. If they did, we wouldn't be in many of the

messes we are in ... they would toss it in the trash while chuckling.

[somone]

3. $140 Billion Bonus for Wall Street

while the unemployed on Main Street beg for money to pay the electric bill.

[lefthook]

4. Investing in the American people has always paid off.

This isn't philosophy or opinion. We can look at how we did
when we invested in people and how we did when we didn't. the
answer to the "why should I have to pay" tripe is
that it grows the economy and improves the quality of life for
all of us.

[Moosepoop]

5. +1

Welcome to DU, lefthook! :hi:

[wisteria]

6. Their attitudes, their opinions and their lack of compassion just makes me sick.

Deut. 15:7. If there is a poor man among you, one of your brothers, in any of the towns of the land which the LORD your God is giving you, you shall not harden your heart, nor close your hand to your poor brother; but you shall freely open your hand to him, and generously lend him sufficient for his need in whatever he lacks.