This graph is from a think tank article about the importance of extending unemployment benefits. It may explain why the normal political jackassery is finding a rather intolerant audience at the moment.
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[…] lists and no-fly lists aren’t just an annoyance, they divert attention from real threats; on long term unemployment; oh waah, companies are having a hard time raising prices; let’s see how far the rotten […]
cleek
where did it find that audience ? AFAIKT, the GOP is clearly benefiting from their jackassery,
superdestroyer
The left would have more credibility in discussing long term unemployment if the left did not show so much support for open borders and unlimited immigration.
Does the U.S. really need amnesty and open borders at a time of 10% unemployment and a lack of business expansion?
When the left cares more about those long term unemployed instead of creating more automatic Democratic Party voters, then people might listen to the left when it fakes concern about unemployment.
Teri
This is why it is important to start telling people to register to vote and vote this fall. As a registered republican I am getting all sorts of emails, mailers, phone calls etc from local and state orgs to make sure “our base” is fired up and organized for the GOTV effort. Say what you will about these jackasses they know how to organize and beat a message into peoples head. “To protect “our” way of life you need to vote.” My head is about to pop off. I nearly decked an old lady at church on sunday for spouting this crap at me…..I told her that I would pray for her that her delusions would be healed by the lord! So….tell people to make a difference and show up for their local primaries and vote in November!
Teri
cleek
wait… did superdestroyer learn a new song ?
mistermix
@cleek: All the generic polls show general disgust in both parties, congress and government. When you force people to choose, they choose the out-of-power party, so I guess in that sense the GOP is benefiting from high unemployment, but the benefit is dubious at best.
cleek
@mistermix:
a vote’s a vote.
ericblair
Balking at unemployment benefits is probably the Repub’s stupidest fuck-the-peasants move yet. Obviously, anybody getting UE isn’t a lifelong “welfare” mooch, and it’s pretty hard these days to convince yourself that everyone who got laid off in this country was a lazy slacker.
There are surely more than a few republicans out there who just got sacked because shit happens and are actually feeling the pain of services cuts. Remember the Republican Motto: It’s Different When It’s Me.
toujoursdan
superdestroyer:
Right, because those blue collar auto and industrial workers who lost their jobs because of overseas outsourcing are just dying to pick cabbage in the Central Valley and frustrated by all the Mexicinz doing it for third world wages and living conditions. It’s jealousy I tells ya!
Do you people even think?
Maude
@superdestroyer:
You’re new here, aren’t ya.
rachel
@toujoursdan: superdestroyer thinks of skeery furriners. He thinks of them all the time.
rachel
@Maude: Sadly, no.
someguy
duper destroyer,
more new people = more new customers = more new jobs.
figure it out, ya racist asshole.
demimondian
Hey, folx…SD is an old, old troll here and a lot of places, and quite a nasty one at that. If you engage with it, it’ll start spewing high proof racism in short order, but not with any cleverness, novelty, or wit.
I recommend not taunting this one unless your goal is to see if you can get it to go all Chevy Chase to your Richard Pryor.
Douglas
My first reaction to the graph was “The supplyside-wingnuts are going to blame the rise in of long-term unemployment during recessions on the common extension of unemployment benefits during them”, seeing that they seem to commonly blame unemployment on the lazyness of the unemployed and confusing cause and effect is something they usually do twice before breakfast.
rachel
@demimondian: When I feel sad about how people can’t have public discussions in comments any more over at The Moderate Voice, I remember that SD has been silenced, too. And then I feel better about their decision.
someguy
@ Rachel,
That’s what you get with the wingerz. They pretty much shit all over everything they touch and wreck it. See, e.g. the economy.
zed
Looking at that graph, all I can think of is this.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MoMAsAF81AU
Sly
I always favored the economic reason over the ethical one. Unemployment benefits allow people to spend some money during a recession so that the paradox of savings doesn’t kick in and make a bad situation worse. That’s why UIB has one of the largest stimulatory effects.
@superdestroyer:
I’ll give the right credence on immigration when its arguments are not subsumed in cliched ethnic resentment. High structural unemployment and income inequality, things which the financial backers of the right actually like, are not the result of poor migrant farmers and construction workers.
And I’ll give the right credence on UIB and other safety net measures when they stop relying on the notion that someone, somewhere, getting something from the Federal government that they “don’t deserve” is the worst catastrophe ever. There are far more people who qualify for UIB but don’t get the benefits because their former employer contracted claims out to a company like Talx (who deny all initial claims automatically) than there are people who are getting benefits through fraud.
Mark D
This is just another example of how Democrats suck at messaging.
Coburn (who recently blocked the extension) happily, and without any hint of reservation whatsoever, voted for adding $6 TRILLION to our debt from ’01 – ’08. Most of that went to the top 1%, drug companies, and defense contractors.
Yet he turns around and blocks less than one half of one percent of that total — about $18 billion — because of “fiscal responsibility.”
How do Democrats not pound that into the media at every turn? How do they not point out that he’s destroying lives? Why do they not point out that people need this money to survive after the GOP spent nearly a decade destroying our nation?
—
My wife lost her job in October through no fault of her own. She’s sent more than 100 resumes in that time. There are simply no jobs. Even K-Mart won’t hire because: a.) she’s waaayyy overqualified; b.) they had 40 (!!) applications for one cashier job.
And because of one guy — Coburn — we now have a $900 hole in our budget and may lose our home.
One. Person.
That’s it.
That’s all it takes to have everything you’ve worked for taken away, even though you have done every … single … … thing … the right way.
Elections have consequences, folks, and we need to find a way to make our nation work again.
And may the likes of Coburn rot in fucking hell.
Mnemosyne
@superdestroyer:
I’m glad to find someone who I’m sure will support my solution to the problem of illegal workers: we need a federal law stating that any company found to have any illegal workers on their payroll — even one — will have its CEO or owner sent to jail for one (1) year. No exceptions. No “oh, that person gave me fake documents.”
If we do that, I guarantee you that not only will workers stop coming here, but the ones who are already here will go home, because the jobs will dry up once employers figure out that they will actually be punished for breaking the law, not just get a slap on the wrist that allows them to keep breaking the law. We can probably stop all enforcement actions other than, “Are these workers illegal? Put the handcuffs on the CEO,” which is good since it’s a lot cheaper to arrest and jail one guy than the 200 illegal workers he “accidentally” has on his payroll.
Funny how punishing the people who have actually broken the law — the employers — never occurs to the people who rant about illegal workers taking all of our jobs. It’s not like those employers don’t realize they’re hiring illegal workers at sub-minimum wages and they need ICE to come and clue them in.
Citizen_X
@superdestroyer: “Open?” Have you ever even been to one of our borders? You try walking through the border crossing because it’s “open.” You’ll get shot.
Or do you mean our borders are “open” because we don’t have the Berlin Fucking Wall built through 2000 miles of wilderness? Is the Cheney Memorial Boondoggle Partition they built on the southern border not enough for you? Fine, go live in New East Germany, you chickenshit. Build your own compound with barbed wire and guard dogs and mines and the whole nine yards. You’re not dragging the rest of us in there with you.
Church Lady
Random thoughts:
If the average time right now to find a new job is 6 months, and in most states unemployment benefits have been pushed up to 90-something weeks, at what point do we fairly curtail unemployment benefits and tell people that they have to apply for some other form of government help?
It used to be that you had to physically go down to the unemployment office to apply for benefits and then send in proof ( a list of places you had either applied for a job or had sent a resume to), on a weekly basis, that you were actually searching for a job, in order to continue to draw benefits. My understanding is that you now apply online and no proof of searching for a new job is required in order to continue receiving benfits. Is this true?
I have a friend that was employed by Expo, which Home Depot closed. She had this job for something to do and to make some extra spending money. She is now drawing unemployment, along with her Social Security benefits, and is not actively looking for a job, because she doesn’t want one. She said she just does everything online and doesn’t have to provide any proof that she’s searching for a new job. Although I doubt many are doing this, I’m sure some are. Does lack of a requirement to prove you’re actively involved in a job search encourage taking advantage of the current system?
BTW, I did tell her that gaming the system wasn’t right. Her response to me was pretty much “fuck that – I’m due, and I’m going to collect as long as it’s there.” She and her husband are in Europe on vacation right now. I guess that since everything is done online, she won’t have a problem continuing to file from overseas.
Mark D
Depends on the state.
Here in Mo., my wife can file online three weeks out of the month. Once a month, though, she has to go into the office and list out where she applied.
While I understand your concern about “how long do we keep paying benefits,” here’s the simple fact you and others don’t seem to get:
THERE ARE NO JOBS!
You and others can claim that there are just hundreds of jobs waiting to be filled if folks weren’t just so damn lazy and in love with getting 60% of what they used to make.
Out here in reality, however, that’s 100% bullshit spread by people who don’t have a clue. (Note: Not directed at you personally.)
My wife has two college degrees, and nearly 10 years of experience in non-profit marketing, development, and PR. But since the economy is in the crapper, non-profits are broke and aren’t hiring.
And, again, places like K-Mart (and even McDonald’s) simply aren’t going to hire someone like her. As the manager at K-mart told my wife, “We can’t hire you because you’ll just leave once a better job comes along.” Again, there were 40 applicants for one single cashier job.
Are there people like your friend gaming the system? Probably. Just like they do in every other area — defense contracting, banking, retail … it’s done across the board.
But people like my wife and I — and our five-year-old — shouldn’t be punished because of it. Without that money, and some real action on job creation, millions will wind up with nothing left. Not because they were lazy. Not because they were moochers. Not because they did something wrong.
But simply because one political party has decided playing bullshit games and destroying peoples’ lives are good politics, and others are convinced — simply convinced — that 30 million Americans are just sloths.
It’s disgusting.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Any company? Hell, in Southern California, almost anybody who can exploit illegal immigrants will do so, without regard to political ideology. Unions allow illegal immigrants to comprise construction crews. Moms love to employ illegal nannies for their children.
The only difference is that while the worst conservatives don’t care whether illegal immigrants can’t get services or health care, the most hypocritical liberals refuse to pay a fair wage or overtime, but are willing to let taxpayers foot the bill for education, housing and healthcare and income supplements.
Illegal immigration has already slowed as the US economy has shut down.
From a 2008 WSJ article:
Apart from this, people will come to the US as long as there is more opportunity here than in their home countries. And campaign donors, uh, I mean, employers will get away with lax enforcement because nobody wants to rock the cheap labor boat too hard.
Mnemosyne
@Brachiator:
I’m happy to have it apply to private in-home employers, too. Once you have a couple of Orange County soccer moms spend a year in jail, that should make that pool dry up, too.
I spend way more than “market price” to have housecleaners come twice a month, because I use an actual company and not someone who brings her relatives over to do the work and pays them $5 an hour. People think I’m crazy, but I’m just not comfortable perpetuating our slave labor system on the backs of illegal workers. I’m kinda stuck with restaurants — good luck finding any restaurant anywhere that doesn’t run with the work of illegal workers — but other places I do try to avoid if it’s probable that they’re using illegal workers. No Tyson Chicken for me.
robertdsc
In California, the terms of the benefits specifically state that you need to be looking for work, even in situations where you know you won’t get hired, like having an outstanding federal jury service summons.
When the check comes, it’s attached to a form called a continuing claim form. On this form you are asked a series of questions, one of which is “Did you look for work?” If you answer yes, there’s space on the back of the form for your work search record where you write down the companies you’ve submitted applications to. If you answer no, then the state will send you a letter scheduling you for a telephone interview where you must explain why you didn’t look for work. In that interview, the state person will go over your circumstances and determine if you may or may not receive benefits.
I answered no on one of my continued claim forms because of my outstanding jury service summons and the interviewer told me that I was still required to be looking for work. She let my benefits pass when I told her that I didn’t know that. She said that my benefits would be paid if I got on a case, but waiting for a case made me ineligible.
I wound up calling the Court and demanded that I be allowed to do my service. I told the clerk that the terms of my unemployment required me to be looking for work and that I couldn’t get hired with an outstanding summons. He fiddled with the roster and let me do my service. I went down to the courthouse, did my one day’s service, didn’t get selected, and was sent home free and clear.
terry chay
The sad thing is those jobs are not coming back. :-(
The long-term unemployed are in industries like manufacturing and construction. Also, look also at the unemployment rates of high-school (or below) educated with college degree (or above) educated. The latter are at the 5% levels (nearly full employment). The gap has been growing for forty years and now we’re reaping the whirlwind.
KRK
Here in Washington State I’m not sure what the ongoing UI payment eligibility requirements are, but when people come into the office looking for work and I have to tell them we’re not hiring right now, about half of them ask for a business card or piece of paper with the company name & contact info so they can report the attempt. Some just say “okay” and leave. One person recently had a form that I signed stating that they had come in seeking work and found no openings, but I didn’t notice what agency the form was from. It’s certainly possible that the ones who have asked for proof of having asked for work are citizens or documented aliens who are in the UI system while the ones who don’t ask for any proof are undocumented and so can’t get UI benefits anyway.
Brachiator
@Mnemosyne:
Orange County? Hell, there are countless Westside NPR soccer moms who couldn’t hang out at the mall or the gym if they couldn’t rely on the underpaid illegal immigrant nannies who actually raise their kids.
This gets kind of interesting. Mid-price and lower priced restaurants depend almost exclusively on a network of illegal immigrant cooks who, although relatively well paid, often don’t get benefits or overtime, but who have squeezed citizens and legal immigrants out of this market entirely. I was once walking in upscale Westwood (where UCLA is located), and noticed a sign advertising for cooks and other restaurant workers for a new eatery that was opening soon. The sign was entirely in Spanish.
superdestroyer
@Mnemosyne:
Instead of going after some unworkable poetic justice remedy for illegal immigration, why not use the existing regulation. Everytime the Social Security Administration receive employment for a bogus SSN, the business should receive a visit the next day from the IRS, the health inspector, the OSHA inspector, the EPA inspector, and state tax board, the building inspector, and every other existing government inspector.
If a business is willing to cheat by using illegal aliens, the business is probably cheating every other way possible. No business would hire any illegal aliens if it meant that their taxes were audited, every license was review, and the building inspector goes through every inch of their facility.
However, I never have heard a progressive call for using existing rules to punish business.
chrome agnomen
@superdestroyer:
if only the right hadn’t gutted all those agencies.
TenguPhule
Yeah, good luck with that idea after Republicans everywhere “starved the beast” by cutting staff on all of the above except the IRS (which has nowhere near enough agents to do that and chase after regular tax deadbeats).
Clap your hands and dream of ponies.
superdestroyer
@TenguPhule:
Actually, several of those organizations fund themselves through fees for the inspection. It is more than the Republicans than have cut off those organizations.
Considering that the Democrata have total control of the government, the Democrats could introduce legislation to control the hiring of illegal aliens. Unsurprisingly, not a single Democrat even bothers. The idea of millions of automatic Democratic voters who will support higher taxes, more spending, an expanded government, and will create a demand for millions of more government employees is just too tempting for the Democrats to pass up.
Even the unemployment, crime, and ruined schools that are created by illegal immigrations just creates more reasons for an expansion of the government (See California). Who cares if more Americans lose their jobs as a result.