Unemployment Benefit Extension. Really?

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cargau said:
Congress is scheduled to consider adding another 43 weeks to the 99 they have already approved.

I own a small business. I pay for my unemployment insurance for the benefit of my employees. They pay nothing. When the bill comes due to pay for the expected increases to cover 2.5 years of sitting home all day, guess who pays? And, in reality, we all pay because I have less money to provide other benefits and or raises.

Look, I understand that there are needs. But, Unemployment insurance is supposed to be a bridge, not a way of life. And, extending the benefits perpetuates the unemployment rate because many are comfortable collecting the check that the business owner and the working stiff is providing.

Our country is too soft. Hardship builds character. I heard one politician comment that extending benefits will keep families together. Really? What happened during the depression? Families buckled down and came together and they survived. Then they prospered. I know the social justice proponents will be aghast reading this post. While I acknowledge that as Catholics, we need to be sensitive to the needs of our brothers and sisters, at the same time too many entitlements allow folks to drift into a sort of productive coma. Is that good?

Actually, I am 100% behind the idea that we have to look out for the sufferings of others. I just don’t think that the government taking money from the producers and giving it to the leaches is real social justice. Again, I realize that there are exceptions. But, the way this government thinks scares me. We are creating a whole social group of dependents.

OK, fire away…
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I appreciate the aggravation a business owner feels about this. The entitlement mentality is a particularly annoying side effect. Today’s “poor” have more than the well-to-do of a generation ago.

Financially, though, the unemployment compensation preserves the country’s financial health as a whole and prevents your business from feeling as many of the effects of the fluctuating economy. We keep the spending stable, fewer businesses become insolvent, and the country does not fall into a crisis.
 
Black_Rose said:
Isn’t reducing the supply of labor by paying people not to work a good thing? Wouldn’t a massive reductive in the supply of labor reduce unemployment since the surplus workers are mopped up by a policy that pays them to stay out of the labor market? Too many laborers are a bad thing since they lower wages which reduces the quality of life for the workers.
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No, it’s not. It’s unsustainable and immoral.

Reducing unemployment will never happen when you subsidize unemployment. And reducing unemployment by paying them not to work is self effacing and entirely negative. You reduce unemployment by increasing employment.

There will never be such a thing as “too many laborers” if the market is left to its own devices. Labor is a resource and someone will find a way to utilize it if given a chance to do so.
 
Darkbloom said:
You’re advocating paying people not to work as a tool to fix unemployment, and yet you claim to be a realist?
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No I’m advocating paying people because of unemployemnt. Look outside your abode for a minute. There is a depression going on out there… Myself Iv’e never had such a hard time finding places to apply for jobs muchless getting an interview. If jobs are not there, taking people off of unemployemnt pay isnt going to get them a job anymore handidly.
 
I have relatives who have waited until their unemployment has run out before seriously looking for work. If you make a low wage or will make a low wage employed, it makes sense in a way to put off working. Why work a lousy job doing something hard and boring when you can stay home and receive a little less from your unemployment compensation? And if you have kids, it’s even easier to put off the job hunt–who would want to leave their kids to work a lousy, low paying job?

During a previous recession, my sister stayed on her unemployment for as long as possible.

But…there’s plenty of other people who sincerely can’t find work. But, I don’t know how anyone could realistically live on unemployment… You’d have to be living very close to the bone.

Being unemployed is awful. Dh was laid off again last week,and we are scared. This last year has been hard, hard, hard. Any work he finds is temporary.

One good thing about it has been that it’s teaching me about the poor. I have had a lot of middle class prejudices and misconceptions. Everything we have is from God–even our job skills and training and intelligence. It’s stupid to take pride in them as if we did it ourselves. We need to be giving glory to God and looking out for our brothers and sisters who don’t have the same gifts. Or, those who have lost heart.
 
forums.catholic-questions.org/showthread.php?t=442884

It is a thread about why should unemployment be treated as paying jobs.
An interesting perspective on the standard Philips Curve trade off of contemporary macroeconomics where in order to reduce inflation one must increase unemployment and conversely to reduce unemployment one must tolerate more inflation. Inflation is a threat to the value of money because it effectively reduces the purchasing power of a given amount of currency overtime. Unemployment is necessary to reduce inflation thus unemployment is a structural necessity to keep the value of money for the greater good of future economic growth even though it harms the entire labor market by reducing the demand of their labor resulting in lower wages. Since laborers are also potential consumers who could spend the money that they earn on goods, lower wages denies them nominal currency that they can use in the marketplace effectively reducing aggregate demand. As a result of lower wages, these workers do not have surplus income to demand the labor intensive goods and services of other workers further reducing the demand for labor causing lower wages. Therefore, in order to keep money valuable in a fiat regime, money is not kept scarce by pegging it to a finite quantity such as gold or silver bullion, but instead labor is devalued so money itself can retain its value. Those who derive their income from capital (or from a differentiated form of labor whose demand and value is not affected by this) benefit from this trade off because of lower inflation because of the reduced competition from the demand side since they do not have to compete with many consumers.
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Raising wages are scant compensation if unemployment in the economy keeps increasing from structural job losses. Job creation then becomes a priority and a policy prerequisite in a modern economy. Government must adopt policies to create new jobs to achieve full employment at high and rising wages to absorb the loss of jobs from rising productivity and use sovereign credit to sustain consumption to obliterate overcapacity that weakens economic growth. Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times has finally arrived in the modern post-industrial economy.** Perhaps the economic definition of a job needs to be reconsidered. What about treating involuntary unemployment as paying jobs? The logic is immaculate. If structural unemployment is necessary to keep money sound and valuable, it can be argued that a “natural rate” of unemployment to prevent inflation is a profitable arrangement to the economy and the unemployed should be paid for their selfless service to society.**
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henryckliu.com/page8.html
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mark_a said:
Not at all.
That’s all part of the deal. And you shouldn’t.
It’s all part of the deal. It’s the old 85/15 rule.

Works based salvation is heretical.

Are you envious?
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What deal? I never agreed to anything, it was coerced (stolen) from me.

I am not envious. I am PO’d. I am sick and tired of people who think like you presuming my profits are rightfully theirs when they have done nothing to earn it.

Again, I have no problem supporting a system that helps a person get back on their feet. Many of the responses to this thread have made good points about the difficulties associated with being unemployed. My contention, however, is that 2.5 years of support is a bit extreme. Instead of portraying businesses as villains, government would do well to be supportive of businesses. After all, businesses are the ones hiring people. That would solve the whole problem. But then, that would make too much sense…
 
aspawloski4th said:
Ah yes objectifying people. I see which altar you worship at.
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You objectify others when you refer to them as “laborers” or “workers”, as if their job is the sum total of the person.

But I shouldn’t be surprised. The social justice crowd seem completely immune to fact or rational argumentation. Why bother when you have sanctimony?
 
Darkbloom said:
You objectify others when you refer to them as “laborers” or “workers”, as if their job is the sum total of the person.

But I shouldn’t be surprised. The social justice crowd seem completely immune to fact or rational argumentation. Why bother when you have sanctimony?
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I call them what they are , men ,women, or people. I consider it an insult to base my human identification based on what my job is. Jobs aren’t my God.
 
The problem is that the US is likely going into a long-lasting, perhaps permanent, state of European-style high “structural” unemployment, where there simply aren’t enough jobs for all the willing workers. Obviously unemployment payments cannot be the solution, although they may be necesssary in the short term.

America has simply lost its competitive advantages in the fields which generate large numbers of jobs, such as manufacturing. The areas in which we still do excel (increasingly limited to sports and entertainment, it seems) tend to generate a few very highly-paid jobs, but don’t have the broad-based “pyramid” structure of traditional industries.

As the US becomes an increasingly deindustrialized, consumption-oriented, import-dependent economy, we’re going to see a dramatic decrease in our overall standard of living.
 
I think the real issue is that this extension even needed to be discussed. I can agree with some of the OP’s posts about frustration of people staying on unemployment for so long. It certainly does lead to the creation of a welfare state. The US economy has serious problems that the current government seems to be putting expensive band aid solutions on. Why it isn’t looking for long term solutions instead of putting a bigger band aid on the issue concerns me.

In terms of economic hardship keeping families together, this was not even close to what was experienced by my family. My grandparents (parents to 11 children) split in the late 40’s because they could not survive on my grandfather’s income and families in those days could not qualify for government help if the father was present. My pre-teen aunt died due to the family’s fear of paying to get her fever treated (turned out she had lock jaw). And my father, who is nearly 70 never saw his father after he left when he was a young boy. Extreme economic hardship just plain leads to hardship. There’s no doubt in my mind that the younger children who were still at home would have starved if their father had not left. As it was they lived without running water or indoor plumbing and were homeless at several points.

It’s clear that my family at this time was more a case for welfare than UI, but the issue isn’t that there are vast amounts of free money floating around, it’s that people are either unable or unwilling to find work. If our country offered more well paying jobs, UI payments would certainly go down, the welfare culture would become less acceptable. People pay into their UI, they can only get back money they have put into the system. Unless the new bill has changed that (I didn’t read it.)

For the record, labor is a perfectly acceptable term for work. It doesn’t define you as a person but it does define what you do. Your employer isn’t paying for you as a whole, unique child of God. They are paying you for the task (the labor) they hired you to do. Some parts of this conversation were just odd. (I think now I may have offended everyone who posted here. Possibly even the mods, since this probably belongs more in the politics section than social justice, but it was such a passionate and interesting conversation, I couldn’t help but want to join in.)
 
It amuses me that people talk about economics like they were talking about physics or some other objective science. (“Based on a macroecon class I took once and my political beliefs, the Great Depression was caused by…”) :confused:

Particularly this:
vz71 said:
Basic economics teaches us that you get more of what you subsidize.

Harsh as it may seem, subsidizing more unemployment is simply going to give us more unemployment.

The real answer here is not to extend unemployment further, but to extend the job market further.
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Even if this were true in a vacuum, you’ve deliberately phrased this to suit your own beliefs. First of all, economics can’t quantify “externalities” associated with supply and demand (e.g., while unemployment benefits may cost you a few dollars in taxes, the overall effect of prolonged unemployment affects in a more abstract, but more severe way).

Which is a nice segue to your main misunderstanding: unemployment insurance doesn’t “subsidize unemployment,” it subsides the search for gainful employment. And using the basic principle you stated, subsidizing the search for employment is simply going to give us more employment. In summary, discussions of economics are interesting, but should all be taken with a grain of salt.

As for this discussion as a whole, it seems that people who oppose this either cite some trite economic concept that supports their pre-held beliefs, or they cite some vague anecdote (“so and so didn’t even look for a job until his check’s stopped coming!”). I have to say I find first hand accounts in favor of reasonable extensions more compelling.

News flash! The entire economy is lagging and at least 10% of the population is unemployed. I don’t get why employers don’t expect to suffer a bit too. It builds character anyway.
 
rjparson said:
Which is a nice segue to your main misunderstanding: unemployment insurance doesn’t “subsidize unemployment,” it subsides the search for gainful employment.
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So you say.
Yet the facts remain. These people are paid, and they are not gainfully employed.
And these payments are cut off when employment happens.
rjparson said:
And using the basic principle you stated, subsidizing the search for employment is simply going to give us more employment.
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How about we argue with what is written. Not what we wish were written.
You were good enough to quote my post, please do not attempt to rephrase my words to suit your own purposes.
It appears dishonest.
rjparson said:
In summary, discussions of economics are interesting, but should all be taken with a grain of salt.
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Agreed.
Whenever an inexact science is worked with, there is plenty of room for those that wish to deceive.
 
Clever rhetorical gymnastics going on in that post, “you’re putting words in my mouth by saying I’m putting words in your mouth by…”

There’s nothing legitimately factual about the argument you’re making, you’re misrepresenting ideas to suit your own purposes.
Yet the facts remain. These people are paid, and they are not gainfully employed.
And these payments are cut off when employment happens.
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These people are paid, and they are not gainfully employed…and they are required and enabled to find unemployment. In a major recession, you really think people can survive without any sort of support for over a year? Unemployment insurance isn’t much; don’t pretend people can laze around the house playing Xbox with their check.
vz71 said:
So you say.

How about we argue with what is written. Not what we wish were written.
You were good enough to quote my post, please do not attempt to rephrase my words to suit your own purposes.
It appears dishonest.
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I, um, was arguing about what is written. About what was written originally. I rephrased your argument to show that it was either a.) meaningless or b.) wrong; I think it was pretty clear that I wasn’t putting words in your mouth. I think you’re the one that turned this into a he-said, she-said argument.
 
vz71 said:
So you say.
Yet the facts remain. These people are paid, and they are not gainfully employed.
And these payments are cut off when employment happens.

How about we argue with what is written. Not what we wish were written.
You were good enough to quote my post, please do not attempt to rephrase my words to suit your own purposes.
It appears dishonest.

Agreed.
Whenever an inexact science is worked with, there is plenty of room for those that wish to deceive.
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And if your implied way were to be had man more would go homeless including children and the econemy would spiral downword even more from those being unemployed not having money to spend on needs and there would be even a death toll. There is an economic depression going on out there if you havent noticed.
 
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