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Americans React To End Of Jobless Benefits: “I Just Don’t Know What To Do, Except Pray”
"It's going to put my family and me out on the streets," is a perspective shared by many of the 1.3 million Americans about to lose their emergency unemployment claims. The program, started during the recession, was intended to help jobless people after they exhausted state benefits, typically lasting six months. House Republicans resisted continuing the benefits without budget cuts elsewhere to cover the cost. As Bloomberg reports, opponents say the extended benefits discourage the unemployed from accepting jobs and that the program should be curtailed, given the recovery in the nation’s labor market.
“It lacks compassion for the victims of the recession and, economically, it’s shooting ourselves in the foot,” said Lawrence Mishel, the president of the Economic Policy Institute in Washington, which backs policies that help low-income workers. “The timing is very premature. The evidence is that people who want work can’t find it.”
...
“The economy has now been out of a recession for more than four years,” said Chris Edwards, an economist with the Cato Institute in Washington, which argues for scaling back the role of government. “These unemployment benefits are emergency benefits, but the economy is no longer in an emergency situation. People can find jobs if they are willing to moderate their wage demands and make compromises.”
...
“Not all of us have savings and a lot of us have to take care of family because of what happened in the economy,” said Walker, of Santa Clarita, who said she has applied for at least three jobs a week and shares an apartment with her unemployed son, his wife and two children. “It’s going to put my family and me out on the streets.”
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There were 3.9 million job openings across the U.S. at the end of October, according to the Labor Department. That same month, 11.3 million people were looking for work but couldn’t find it, a gap advocates say underscores the need to keep benefits flowing.
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Failure to extend the program will affect 1.9 million people who are forecast to use up their state benefits in the first half of 2014 before they can find work, according to the White House.
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The effect will be especially pronounced in the most-populous U.S. states. In New York, 102,700 people were expected to lose their benefits on Dec. 28, said Chris White, a spokesman for the state’s labor department. In New Jersey, about 90,300 will do the same, according to estimates from Democrats on the House Ways and Means Committee. More than 222,000 Californians will likewise see their benefits disappear.
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“I understand the government doesn’t want to pay for people who are taking advantage of it,” she said. “But I am not, and many other people are not.”
“I just don’t know what to do, except pray.”
Of course, as we discussed in detail previously, this will mean a notable drop in the unemployment rate (for what that is worth)...
This has profound implications for the oh-so-important unemployment rate that the Fed is so dependent upon...
JPM's Feroli: One observation that could set an upper bound on thinking about a participation effect is to hypothesize that all 1.3 million EUC claimants exit the labor force after benefits expire in 1Q (again, should Congress allow that to happen). In that case, the unemployment rate would fall by 0.8%-pt, obviously an extreme example. Some of the Fed studies can help to narrow the range of outcomes.
One of the more recent works (Farber and Valletta from the San Francisco Fed) indicates that about a fifth of long-term unemployment is due to extended benefits. With just over 4 million long-term unemployed recently, this would imply that the absence of extended UI benefits could lower the unemployment rate by 0.5%-pt.
This will directly impact the Fed's credibility to manage the economt in a "data-dependent" manner:
JPM's Feroli: Setting aside the normative aspect of whether from a public policy perspective this is a desirable or undesirable outcome, such a fall in the unemployment and participation rates could create some tricky choices for Fed policymakers as they assess the health of the labor market.
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Pelosi says so, so it must be true...
Downward sloping?
Upward Sloping?
Ahhhhhhhhh. The elusive Phillips Curve.
You can ignore reality but you can't ignore the consequences of ignoring reality.
Lesson: The reality is a bitch!
Time to create WPA part 2?
Why down vote this? If the money is being spent anyway why not get stuff done and keep peoples' skills up?
My answer would be to look at a recent example - the $700 billion that supposedly was going to be spent on "shovel ready" infrastructure jobs in 2009. How much of that money was actually spent on something useful and how much was simply wasted?
I honestly don't know. Wonder if it has been researched? I can say that Dallas-Fort Worth has been a road construction hell for 4-5 years now.
Some corruption is a given IMO.
Installation of locally viable permaculture and widespread low cost housing seem like good bets for our downwardly mobile society.
Concentrated low cost housing tends to concentrate crime, so better to spread it around in small clusters near our low pay service jobs....maybe an apartment tower on every Wal-mart parking lot. Only seems fair, and residents wouldn't have to drive to use their EBT cards.
I'm a fan of localized alternative energy too, not because I think we have one that will replace oil, but because 3 is 2, 2 is 1, and is none. Good to have a fall back.
About $50 billion was spent on infrastructure projects. The rest was transferred to the states so they could keep their over compensated bureaucrats employed for another year.
Especially public school teachers, who comprise the NEA, the nation's most powerful union, and, needless to say, massive campaign donors to team blue.
Problem is the government and unions are linked at the hips - no jobs unless you have union socialist card even in WPA-2
LOL.
Time for another "Hoover Dam" mega public works project.
If recipients want unemployment continued, then tie it to a public service. Pick up shit on the sides of the roads, sweep gutters, whatever ... just tie it to something more than sitting at home watching porn, and make that something more distasteful than accepting a shitty job elsewhere.
Do that and the jobs will miraculously be found.
There was a time when that was true!
This is not that time...
DaddyO
Are you saying "this time it's different?"
yeah, sure, ok ... cough
No, I'm saying that this time is totally devoid of a plethora of better jobs.
The last few years has seen a real and tangible erosion of both job quantity and quality.
All by design, TPP anyone?
DaddyO
Better jobs? Maybe. But jobs nonetheless.
I have done very lowly jobs in my life while looking for something better rather than skim off the public dole, but nonetheless, the recipients should have to do something for the public good to receive their benefits after some point (say 9 months of free jack from Uncle Sugar). I know there could be public service work for them picking up shit on the side of the road, because there is shit on the side of the road, so if they get money from the public they should do something in return. Maybe they won't magically find better jobs, but they may look at a crappy job in a different light in comparison, and after they get the crappy job they will continue to look for something better.
My way the streets get cleaned and the recipients get the impetus to do something for themselves. Your way recipients get bleed money for years for doing nothing.
Don't hurt yourself jumping to conclusions.
I agree that if you don't work you shouldn't eat. But to make the statement that everyone can just go get a job is short of a real assessment of the current job market.
I have been in the job market for 40+ years and never drawn any .gov benefits. It is always easier to find a job if you have a job but when the regime is working against this principle it makes it tough for any self motivated individual to not become apathetic.
I still stand by my belief that this is by design...
DaddyO
So how do you plan on accounting for the menial jobs that you displace from government mandated work? Would this not add persons to the welfare ranks?
Road sides are still full of trash, Newark, Detroit, etc have plenty of buildings to be demolished, the cities cant afford $150K a year (all in with bennies and overtime), union labor to do it. Buy them a Chinese sledge hammer and a Chinese wheel barrow and let em have at it...
Sure, but how long is it going to take for millions of folks on the dole to clean up the side of the highway? They'll probably just be taking that trash to a waste facility that's privately managed... the waste from which gets recycled and the check goes into private hands. Who is it that should benefit from a public works project?
The fact that Smegley got two thumbs down is indicative that the US of A is done. What is wrong with performing public services in return for public benefits?
"ask not what your country can do for you, ask what you can do for your country." Seems like anyone in a position of power to change things takes a bullet when they push crazy anti government dependency ideas like that. Though if history is any guide this time around they'll miss the target outright if the trend holds up.
Kennedy - dead
Reagan - hit but didn't finish the job
What did they also have in common?
Ending the Fed? I know kennedy talked about it till they stopped him down in Dallas, but was Ronnie for that? I don't recall him being an end the fed guy.
Ronnie wanted to revamp the entire economy after the disaster of Carter. He wanted to reinstate the Gold Standard.
George HW Bush campaigned against him claiming Reagan's plans as "Voodoo Economics". But Reagan brought in a whole bunch of outsiders to revamp the economy.
Reagan was shot and the reformers started resigning in droves afterwards.
On what alternative reality did you glean this from?
Ask not what you can do for your country,
ask what your country did to you.
-KMFDM
... Your body has parts your country can spare ...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=j9UeLylS_eA
So here's my idea - you can continue on extended unemployment benefits, but the state gets a lien on your harvestable organs. Brilliant, huh?
Ha ha ha! The govt gave all the jobs to China even without such an agreement in place. Imagine how fast jobs would disappear if they had any more incentive ...
Yep. The Free Shit Army is increasingly in control. You can systematically take away constitutional rights and protections and nary a peep, but talk about cutting a benefit and the shit hits the fan. Sad.
The Fed aren't and have never been assessing the job market if they are going by the bureau of lies and scams figures!
PLENTY of jobs in N Dakota, Texas, Oklahoma etc. Beggars can't be choosers!
greenspan used to opine about the mobile economy, though its skill specific, so unless you know oil and oil drilling those jobs you mention aren't going to help.
It is a big world wide circle jerk. So many lament about the manufacturing jobs going to China. which I read has a major breathing problem and which depends on the world to purchase its goods, but how if there is no money to buy it?
Look at Spain, Greece, Cyprus, Italy and France, countries which are deperate and it is getting worse.
Pretty soon taxi, truck and bus drivers will be replaced by autopilot in much the same way drones are doing a pilots job. Imagine, no overtime, medical benefits, wages and so on as machines only need maintenance and they are easily replaced with a newer more efficient model plus they can function 24/7.
We innovated ourselves out of work, taken all the money and gave it to the corporate offices at the top along with the regulators in the capitals, so what is left?
We are seeing it in the Arab springs, the recent bombings by women suicide bombers etc. I never thought I would see women suicide bombers, that is something left to the testosterone side for those who believe in the virgins and a better fate awaiting them in death.
I am not a pessimist, but technology, greed, fraud and overpopulation with the majority of mortals living in urban areas without the ability to forage for themselves when the chips are down lends this scenario to end up going badly unless there are major changes and there isn´t anyone out there who can grasp the complexity or seriousness of it all until we implode and humanity is forced to start anew, if the human race is fortunate enough not to render itself extinct.
The Cato institute. LOL. Who pulled their chain? They are just an organization that rephrases talking points for money, no matter how ignorant.
UNEMPLOYMENT GOING DOWN = TAPER !!!!!!!
We can all come up with examples of somebody who's been sitting on the dole, not really looking for work, hoping the ideal job that doesn't really exist to come and tap him on the head. I can think of a couple myself. I can't relate to those people. The few times I've been out of work, I've immediately lined up a new job or two to take care of temporaries, and worked on a longer-term solution.
But here's the thing. I've noticed that I think of work in different ways than most people. I think in terms of my skills, not what kinds of jobs I can do. I can do any job really, because my skill is in interpreting, sorting and distributing information, and then communicating with the people who use the information to make sure it's the right information, and getting them whatever more they need to move forward. But my 50 year-old sister who's out of work says "I'm a corporate paralegal," and can't imagine it's even possible for her to do anything else.
News Flash to my sister: For your job, large corporations are hiring a 25 year-old for less than half of your last salary. You're done in the corporate world. On the other hand, you have skills every business needs, they just don't think they can afford your services. So go downtown and knock on every door, offering to go over every small business' contracts for an reasonable hourly rate (say, $40/hr.). 9 out of 10 will say "no." Hit 50 doors and 5 will say "yes," so there's maybe $1,000 that first month, but they'll tell their fellow small business-owners how relieved they were when you told them they had the wrong insurance or had a shitty lease or whatever. Soon enough you'll be doing a lot of what you're good at, and instead of a boss trying to live off your productivity you'll be looking to hire somebody to do your paperwork for you. That's my story, actually. But no, my sister just couldn't give up the "security" of the corporate job she doesn't have anymore right now, and never will have again. There's something wrong with her. She's been brainwashed, for lack of a better way to express it.
So this 1.3 million people who have been on Extended UI? That has been at most 2/3 of what they had been making, so they'd been taking a 33% pay cut. Very few Americans can survive that for long. So they've spent down anything they had saved, spent the equity in their house if they had any, they're behind on all their bills, and they're carrying as much consumer credit debt as their creditors will allow.
Now they're losing that starvation diet? If they take what jobs are available, they won't even earn that 67% of what they used to bring in. If they could, they'd have already taken that job. Being on Unemployment sucks if you're trying to raise a family and keep your finances in some semblance of order.
So now they'll be forced to take jobs that will not support their families. What do they do then? Well, say goodbye to the house. At least 500,000 houses will be emptied out, maybe more. Let the bank take the car. Bankrupt out of whatever credit you had. Time to face facts. Lucky you if you have a friend or relative who owns a duplex. Otherwise you're moving into whatever dump rents without doing a credit check.
The net effect of this will cost us a lot more than the Unemployment payments were costing. This will further damage housing prices, retail, any sort of consumption, tax collections, etc. In the long run I think it's what needs to happen, but it's going to make a big mess messier.
The idea of riding the benefits because they are so good is foreign to me. IIRC max weekly benefit in TX is $320, equivalent to a job that pays $8 an hour full time. Big step down for anyone with a middle class income.
So a job that pays $9/40 hours would be an improvement...$360 a week.
OTOH, a lot more part time than full time jobs out there, so about $11 an hour/29 hour week would be a wash...might as well stay home while you can.
Raise minimum wage to $12 and part time employment could be worth more than UI. Just a thought...
I think the current plan is to move all these from extended-unemployment to medicaid-SNAP. That allows all their real-estate to be confiscated and rented out to the undocumented. Also their vote can be more readily controlled. Unfortunately I'm afraid I'm not joking. The plan would work except God has a sense of humor. Everyone is about to get the punch line.
I always wondered how long it would take America to realize that all the Illegal Aliens, have Jobs or they would not be here..
So the Illegals have Jobs but our Teenagers do not.. I have a running Bet with my Buddy on when the first tires will be burning in the streets of Washington DC I'm going got frame that Picture, when it gets here
A teenager today WOULD NOT EVEN CONSIDER doing one of the jobs that most illegal immigrants do. Get real.
until you've actually done manual labor you don't realize how much skill and experience are required. a burger flipping job not so much so.
Yeah, it's hard to believe, but when they drop you off in that strawberry feild, they actually expect you to pick strawberries - not stand around and chat with your peers. This is a very shocking realization to most teenagers nowadays, who did not have to do any work in school, and think a job is just an extension of high school - where you just show up, occasionally, and get paid. Very sad.
I have picked strawberries as a kid in Southern NJ on a relative's farm and it is horrendous work. If done long enough, it quickly leads to disability issues including lower back, knees, and hands.
There is a reason the Mexicans who work in CA especially around Watsonville and the surrounding areas called it the 'Devil's Fruit' since it is backbreaking labor and it isn't uncommon at all for illegals to work a 12-hr day in peak conditions with no paid breaks & maybe earn $5-6/hr.
I remember the guys who painted my house. Dunno whether they were illegal or not, but the prep work involved standing on ladders in the blazing sun for eight hours a day grinding off old peeling paint. I was paying, so I know for a fact that they weren't getting rich. i'd like to think I'd take that work, if i had no other choice, but i'm not sure i could do it.
I'm a bit older than most of you here and my first vote ever was for Barry Goldwater. Here's just one of his quotes: "Most Americans have no real understanding of the operation of the international money lenders. The accounts of the Federal Reserve System have never been audited. It operates outside the control of Congress and manipulates the credit of the United States" — Sen. Barry Goldwater (Rep. AR)
You won't like the picture as "They" have been preparing for that eventuality for years and years.
Normally, I would suggest robbing banks. If you get the money. great. If you get caught, free room and board, great. But there is no money in banks , so no longer a great idea. Guess it's time to call Client #9.
Robbing a bank with a gun is one of the dumbest things you can possibly do due to the sentence. Police especially in wealthy surburbia pursue these crimes diligently, it often attracts federal attention, and the sentences are federally mandated thanks to the '86 sentencing revision and steep.
Committing various forms of financial fraud is the much safer, smarter, and lucrative way to go.
"tricky choices for fed policy makers" No shit. Either celebrate the drop in unemployment rate(WAHOO IT DROPPED-WE DID IT- WE ARE RECOVERED!!) which means they dont need to print as much, or at all, or admit that all their numbers are a lie, we are actually in a depression, and thus we need to print MOAR
my guess is they'll do both, celebrate the drop in unemployment and print MOAR. but you're unemployed either way.
This is a direct consequence of Greenspan and Clinton's deregulation of the banks.
Lack of regulation? Each of the beurocracies blow has thousands of pages of regualtions: Then there are also state regulators beyond the Federal as well as the hundreds of thopusands of other laws that noone could possibly keep track of. I would suggest that we need to deregulate everything and let the market kill these imbalances rather than corrupt olicrats.
Do a bit of research. When TPTB don't like the laws, they get them changed. And that is how banksters usually avoid "breaking the law". (Okay, okay, they also own the law makers - just in case they don't get the laws changed in time before they break 'em).
"The economy has now been out of a recession for more than four years,” said Chris Edwards, an economist with the Cato Institute in Washington, which argues for scaling back the role of government. “These QE benefits are emergency benefits, but the economy is no longer in an emergency situation. Commercial and Investment Banks can create jobs if they are willing to moderate their profit margins and make compromises.”
Fixed that for ya!
What's good for the goose, anyone?
Well said. +1
if Ben was in charge of tapering the unemployment benefits these people would all be drinking champagne tonight
Many of these folks want us to feel sorry for them and we do but, what the fuck were they doing for the past 2 years while collecting benefits? I would be willing to bet they did not take minimum wage jobs because the benefits paid more? Well, you voted this con man into office and now you are paying for buying into his lies and deception. Blankfien and Dimon along with Buffett and Soros are all doing fine and thank you and all of us for government handouts to get richer while Bernanke and his Jewish friends helped destroy your future. Time to go get them; they are the ones you need to be angry at and help to impeach this trash by voting for real change and that menas getting rid of Reid and Pelosi.
They were probably trying to save their homes and cars and pay their credit debts, which might have been almost possible at 67% of their previous income (the max you get on UI). If they took the minimum wage jobs that are available, no way that would be possible. They would lose their homes, cars, and have to bankrupt out of all their debts, and then try to survive on minimum wage. Even $10/hr, 40 hrs./wk = $1,600 gross per month. Maybe $1,280/mo. net. Most of those jobs don't give 40hrs./wk. anyway. So it's 2 jobs at $10/hr. for 29.5 hrs./wk, which will net you about $1,880, assuming (huge assumption) you can find 2 jobs at that rate that offer that many hours, and you can get to them both without a car, and if you have kids they can take care of themselves for the 80 or so hours a week you'll be either working or going to and from work.
After you pay your $1,000/mo. rent for a rat and roach-infested dump, buy your monthly bus pass, you're working all the time and you're butt-ass poor. And strangers, or the streets, are raising your kids.
It's way beyond all the people you named. It's the collapse of the entire economic system, one household at a time.
On a brighter note, the unemployment rate is at a 5 year low...
So says the government manipulated lie.
Yessir
You know congress will extend it or Odumbphuck will executive order its extention. There goes the $23 billion in savings this last phony budget created.
I'm self employeed I don't get UE insurance. But hey you say these people paid into it. Yeah for 6 months worth after that it just plain welfare.
The conservatives offered to extend this program if the liberals would agree to stop the IRS from making illegal tax refunds and credits to "undocumented immigrants". Harry and his buddies preferred to continue the illegal payments and instead they threw the long term unemployed under the bus.
Yet the dems and reps are the same...according to agreed upon wisdom. I still think there are differences even if there are a bunch of bad players on the right.
By the way, did anyone notice how the MSM is now pumping up Christie for Rep nominee? The worst possible piece of shit, worse than dole and romney combined. He's tied with Clinton in polls according to MSM stories...such bullshit...they do this everytime, touting the worst possible candidate so that the sheep on the right side of the fence can eat the oaffal.
We are fucked as a nation...
Yes, they know that Christie will pull only some of the Tea Party and almost no Libertarians so Hillary would win easy. Similar to what happened with Romney.
More handouts is NOT in the long term interest of the long term unemployed. They need an economy that has actual demand for labor, and you can basically draw a legislative map of things that kill labor demand by simply listing what passes Congress and gets signed by the President without controversy or significant opposition or media coverage.
a lot of these people will go from one benefit to another, section 8 and food stamps. i am really sorry they sent all those jobs to china, i fought that back in the 80s, and people laughed at me. but when the new bosses come in and offer to keep you around if you take a 50% cut in pay, you have to make choices.
There are those who need some bennies for sure, but let's call it what it is, welfare. The idea that someone is "looking" for work for 2 years and cannot find any is ludicrous.
I have heard from so many people that they will not take a job because it will disrupt their benefits that it is nauseating.
Some will want to work, some won't, but in the end very few will actually "starve". There are resources available for anyone in this country, it just is a matter of what you are willing to do to get them.
sschu
I have a neighbor that's been happily unemployed for almost two years and laughs about it. He's collecting and making a nice buck working under the table.
Collecting UE or SSI and Food Stamps plus working cash jobs is a real problem. Small construction/rehabers take this approach to avoid the workers comp/941 and other employment taxes. They pay $15 to $18 cash here in Washington state. This causes havoc for the state as they miss out on their cheese and have to keep shelling out bennies to those slugs. Other than the roofers it is very difficult to catch these guys.
For those that try to play by the rules, however absurd, this is a source of major frustration. Unless you are willing to cheat, making money in the residential rehab market is nearly impossible for a small contractor.
sschu
I've heard so many people doing the same
they're doing very well
Obama doesn't need their votes anymore.
+1 - The truth is the truth.
you can keep your truth if you want it
It's an incremental step in the grand strategy of converting the USA from a wealthy First World nation into ... something else, maybe something similar to Argentina. It's about half complete.
Even Argentina has enough sense to have a closed border
I lived there for two years and there are some things they can do quite well. Secure borders is one of them.
Exactly. Evita is Obama ...only Obama is black. Maybe situation is closer to Chile however.... Allende.
They can all go and work for Caterpillar.
"People can find jobs if they are willing to moderate their wage demands and make compromises.”
This Chris Edwards from the Cato institute is the same dumb fuck who believes in using chained CPI to calculate inflation. The population starts out eating prime rib and by the time the calculations are done they end up eating earthworms.
To all those unemployed,"Don't worry, be happy". Bet your bottom dollar you will get another extension once those losers get back from their vacations. Afterall how many extensions have their been? A lot more then there should have been. And since your not making much, you already qualify for Obamacare. You won't need to pay a dime. The rest of us working folks will pay for that also. Isn't it nice to know so many are helping you out in your time of need. lol!
HAHA, my two brothers went on unemployemnt for 2 years and wrote this book - http://www.amazon.com/Americas-Youth-vs-Big-Government/dp/0982775512
Sadly, no one in Amerika gives a fuck......
Hey! It's not on Kindle. That's why no one cares.
and his target Audience was a bunch of kids who can't read, unless it's on a i-phone screen with abbreviated text. ?
BTW, I've read the book. It's very good. My Brother gave it to one of his friends, a raging Lib (but he does not not know why he is one) in Shitcago, he read the 1st page, and then admitted he could not handle the book and would refuse to ever open it up again. What a total bitch.
HAHA, my two brothers went on unemployemnt for 2 years and wrote this book -
Congrats to them at least they did something.
31% of work force in USA have a full time job . Let's get real for the moment.
It's all about stocks, not about jobs these days.
Cook the numbers and it all looks better.
Holy shit! Is that the real number? We're fucked
Real number of full time jobs is 114 million with 57 million on SS or SSDI. Two to one margin...
Out of sight, out of BLS stats.
With over a million on unemployment insurance dropping off it makes the unemployment numbers drop and the Fed can have their 6.5% unemployment rate quickly.
Plus it will make stocks rally again with a drop in BLS unemployment numbers as 1.3 million unemployed are taken off the stats.
Huge motivation to do this.
The horror is very real; the United States of America is a terrible place on earth to go broke, if you are white. The shame imposed by the prevailing Calvinist standards, is difficult to bear.
Let's get real here; if you are white you have no fallback. There is no sympathetic demographic. You are out in the Calvinist cold.
I would say 95% of the comments on this here thread are from white American men, who are proving my point even as I type ... "what were they doing ... should have pulled themselves up by their bootstraps ..." Bullshit, how many making those comments are collecting 80-90% pensions? I have no hope of a pension, ever, personally.
Good luck to all of us, the nightmare is all around and pulling our families and friends down. Anyone have friends they knew were having a bad time, from whom they have not heard for a long time?
The shearing machine they are trying to herd us all through is soon going to be calibrated to SKIN level.
Hope and pray you do not fall in.
in my state if you go to jail and you wife and the kids go on welfare, when you get out they hand you the bill. it also applies to hispanics, but they call jail, college, and the bill is your student loan.
..."95% of comments"...
And don't forget the one's "working" here on the bosses dime. Wingers crack me up. Probably a bunch of trust fund babies here too.
I have no hope of a pension either, and my concern is that they money i should be saving, and the money that I have saved, is going to "sheared" off, in order to provide ever more free stuff for the FSA.
my rich country elected, war mongering/nation building KBR bribing vs. business owner paying u/e ins + healthcosts+++
in serious conflict here. i mean two years u/e? prob is when we bailout bankers, even pay them bonuses?
congress gets a raise + super benie's what? w/ worst approval in history? i mean some of these Americans
hv kids to feed. we r so #@$ed & @#$ed up.
fucking thumb texters.
Nevermind destitution, has he signed up for Obamacare yet?
Too many of these people wait until their benefits run out before trying to seriously get a job. And many more need to lower their expectations.
That's a lie !!!... clearly it's 2 weeks before they run out.
We need to close the Mexican border, the 14+ il;legals have diluted the job market and pay pool.
We need to take care of our own first.
people who want to work should be punished to help people who don't?
It would be a simple thing to FORCE the crooked corporations to return the MFG jobs to US soil... in a reasonable timeframe. Cancel all trade agreements and apply huge tariffs for stuff made offshore. Cancel China's most favored nation status. End ALL aid of ANY kind to ILLEGALS, mandate E-verify in all states and apply 5 year prison terms for first offenders, 15 for 2nd. Set up labor camps in national parks for unemployed going homeless and provide shelter and food in return for that labor. Additionally provide real job training in the trades. Did I mention kick all the parasite beaners out?
That tariff closed trading border thing has been tried - didn't work out so well
Well in that case, debt jubilee and crash the price of real estate to 1 cent for an average house and then people won't mind working for 5 cents per week. Jobs galore! Your local grocer will be able to sell you a weeks supply of food for half a cent if his mortgage payments are reduced proportionately. How do you think China would respond to that?
Oh yeah, but then the rentier class would have to take a hit ... Never gonna happen.
It hasn't been tried lately - in fact, for the past 30+ years, we have been doing the opposite, as we gave away American production, technology, and technique. How's that working out for us?
I am all about trade - Fair Trade, not Free Trade....especially when so many of a trading "partners" are little more than mercantilist countries busy subsidizing the takeover of markets and industries.
Do you lock your gate? How about your garage? How about your car. or your house? If so, then you, too, are a protectionist.
If you disagree, please explain how protecting your personal belongings is any different than protecting the lifeblood of your country's economy.
How was it that this country financed it's growth largely by tariffs until 1913 (what a year!) when the 16th amendment was ratified?
It financed its growth by heavily exploiting its untyped natural resources. Some of the land was legimitiately bought but most of it just waged a 300+ year campaign of genoicide and forced occupation on Native Americans.
U.S. gov't didn't honor a single agreement with Native Americans until into the 20th century.
Jimbo, some of the stuff you mention may help. But first and foremost we must eliminate barriers to small business formation and operation. Government regulations and onorous tax code make it hard if not impossible to compete with slave labor overseas...
Your tax code and red tape makes you uncompetitive against people who think that 50 bucks per week is a damn good wage? Or is something else also involved?
What if the wages and taxes you paid were zero and all you had to worry about was real estate and debt? Would you be competitive then?
And another million or so are due in June to get hacked. End of 2014 another million +.
post
A few thoughts (1) How many of the unemployed were formerly in service jobs? Will they ever come back? (2) How many would still be employed or could be employed in manufacturing jobs if the US population bought more US made goods. We're kepping millions employed in other countries. Why not here? (3) Historically, a large percentage of those on various unemployment benefits magically find jobs just as their benefits end. How many of these benefitees could have already found jobs? (4) Everyone that needs help should get help but the previous fact (3) indicates how difficult it is to issue, effectively, benefits without causing the problem(s) to get worse.
It all a matter of degree.
Hopefully these people are all Obamatons who voted for their own demise. A man can dream.
OT - Speaking of Obamatons voting for their own demise, my family and I had the unfortunate displeasure of meeting my father-in-law's new libtard girlfriend's libtard offspring yesterday. Her son is a 25 y/o aspiring actor, and, obviously, a check-the-box leftie. During dinner he was talking about a part in a Shakespeare play for which he recently auditioned. He felt he had the best audition but he lost because "the production company is really big on, uh, diversity and, uh, um, white actors get, uh, passed over a lot.
After he put the period on that sentence, I had to excuse myself from the table and quickly run down the hall to the bathroom, cover my face with a towel, and laugh my fucking ass off. I couldn't believe my good fortune at actually being able to witness one of these idiots confessing to the damage caused by his belief in the modern progressive agenda.
A few minutes later I returned to the dinner table and spent the rest of the evening listening to these a-holes lament the state of the country and their own future, letting the words tickle my eardrums as I drank California zinfandel and sported a perpetual grin.
My greatest sympathies for having to suffer such an ordeal.
We live and learn ... ...
you get a nice HOT CA Zin, you can put up with most anything at a family outing
It is even easier if they know they better than to set you off.
because obviously all the woes that beset this country are strictly due to liberals and their faggot muslim loving ways, and not the global banksters who own every single politician and run every fiscal aspect of this kleptocracy.
what an incredibly ignorant post.
you don't get it, i had the same argument with a relative who was going to vote for Obama because he was the lesser of two evils, i just about crammed the whole turkey down their throat.
what don't i get? even if RP were elected by some snowball's chance in a supernova, he'd be JFK'd.
getting caught up in this partisan nonsense is just as nonsensical as taking sides or laughing at those who you believe are on the 'wrong side'.
I was right with you when you were debunking the blame-it-all-on-socialism set, but then you piped up with your _own_ hate/conspiracy object - global banksters! Sheesh. Pot, meet kettle, and all that.
How about this? How about the headwind that all developed economies in Europe, Japan, and North America are facing, is simple demographics? The aging of the baby-boom generation? You can fiddle with fiscal policy, monetary policy, tariff policy, foreign policy, but it won't change the fact that populations are aging, and the process is kicking into high gear right about now.
Onward free shit army, marching as to the bank...........
Somewhere, Deep in the NSA. there is a Big Fat file, with all the people From Zero Hedge... who will be rounded up on Day One... :)
Hahaha, good luck with that. Looks like they're going to need a bigger assault vehicle.
In that case: Hi NSA bitchez!
Thumbs up to say hi to those bitchez
I wish I could rally all of these great Americans and direct them toward a permaculture demonstration using aqua ponics. Swaling food foresting techniques Hugelculture. Rocket stoves, community efficiency living, cal earth architecture, and many other off grid elements to foster healthy humans living healthy with earth. You have to know this is the way out for all the social classes they just don't know it yet, and I havebeen waiting for so long to design for you, and I am in the dark still waiting for you!
Here's another fucked-up thing this fucked-up country does ... makes it impossible for anyone to generate side income at a certain level. In many countries people can make a table out of a box and sell stuff on street corners ... here, you get rousted for not having a license, et cetera. Hell, they even fuck with children trying to sell lemonade.
Here in the S.F. Bay, the can-and-bottle scavenging is syndicated by the Chinese. The cardboard scavenging is syndicated by the Mexicans. I am speaking for whites because they are my tribe, and I am here to say it is a frightening prospect to go broke in this country.
The nation is plagued. It is coming home to roost. Live right and be ready.
last year instead of giving my yard guy a raise i gave him all my CRV. he's happy with that
I always worry that articles like this provide cover for the politicos to do the "generous & humane" (vote-getting) thing, and give away things they don't own at cost to others than themselves.
At the same time, I can see that the march of efficiency and progress may very well lead to a time where there *aren't* enough jobs for the number of bodies; it only takes so many to feed us, cloth us, house us, entertain us, give us cars etc etc etc. So as humans, how will we choose to deal with this situation? Starvation, slavery, forced equality/mediocrity of socialism?
My own hope is a path where those on the dole get an equal slice of what the working part of the family can afford. Food, yes; shelter, yes; life of luxury filled with toys, ipads, free phones houses and cars, um, no. Being a welfare case *needs* to be motivating to push competition for better. Oh, and the whole one-heartbeat-one-vote thing *was* a mistake, just as the people who initially trialed it back in the 1700s/1800s worried about.
"At the same time, I can see that the march of efficiency and progress may very well lead to a time where there *aren't* enough jobs for the number of bodies;"
This is an economic falsehood which comes up over and over. The bulldozer will put the shoveler out of work, etc. The fact is the bulldozer creates more opportunity then the inefficient shoveler did. Think of the example in the Jetsons, George was a button pusher who worked a couple of days a week for a couple of hours and supported several kids, a wife, a maid, and multiple pets. Of course that would be a free market rather than this quasi-fascist circle jerk that we are a part of.
That way the politicians can claim they "saved" people, get in front of the cameras provided by the sycophantic media, etc.
After all, 2014 is an election year...
I live in NJ we have very high unemployment ,but once I saw the UE benifits were $600.00 a week I understood why peopple would turn down $10.00 hr jobs . When you pay someone to NOT work ,it works very well !
RE
The Federal Reserve, the US Chamber of Commerce, and the TBTF banks collude to keep wages suppressed, as well as lobbied to run the UE program so they can take taxpayer money off the top of it.
Even if they eliminated UE, corporations still wouldn't hire those people (and those who do, it would still be at shitty wages. Human nature has changed to shit on people in order to get ahead....because the markets aren't free anymore).
Also, I love those who say $10/hr is a "good wage". It was - in 1995. It's motherfuckin' 2013. People in most areas of the country, especially in populated cities, IMO, need at least $12/hr to survive, if not more in places like NYC, SF, Boston, etc.
But hey, the fact that the dollar isn't worth as much as it used to be in our wallets because of endless money printing and institutional fraud? THAT'S TOTALLY THE WORKERS AND THE UNEMPLOYED's FAULT.
Here is a premise ZH needs to sink in.
The earth doesn't have the carrying capacity to pay off the global debt.
There is no recovery
The Earth, to save itself, will shortly abolish the debt based Babylonian magick money system of the self-annoited. If you can't pay a debt, or it is an odious debt, then you default on it. Even Forest Gump could figure that out. Then we start over with real free enterprise and without corporations pretending to be immortal and übermenschen and corporatist (fascist) governments.
If you can't pay the debt and a hard default isn't on tap, then you get rid of the debt in real terms via a currency collapse. That's what is in store for the biggest debtor nation on earth. Buckle up,
Agreed.
But it is not the premise that needs to sink in, it is the potential, specific, real world manifestions of what we can expect as a result of these massive debts being unpaid.
Well, if you're going to be out on the streets, you can probably turn a few tricks while you're out there.
Kidding folks, just kidding
The Russians and Chinese can profit to selling rounds of various sorts to the mobs when this Oligarch fest comes apart.
Pitch Forks are available at any of your local hardware stores. Baseball bats will work just as well.
You can get to the Hamptons from Los Angeles or anywhere inbetween by the following directions.
Google Maps - Directions from Los Angeles to South Hampton NY.
Bombs work a lot better. They have Home Depots and Auto Parts Stores near South Hamptoin, New York.
All you must do is put them together. New York can pass all of the Gun Laws that they want. Who needs a gun?
Besides...Bombs are much cheaper. Pitchforks and Baseball Bats? Why bother? The Machine Guns will mow your ass down.
There is nothing better than an RPG to take out a Machine Gun Nest.
http://terminalcornucopia.com/#weapons
We can create lumber from regenerative growth with timbersil technology
We can create green energy royalties installing extreme efficiency to collect bio gas, algae fertilizers and fuels, and create a cycle of fuels and foods to create enclosed abundant communities. We can install vertical farms and green cities but its got to value efficiency and capitalism doesn't do that!
It's time to create community green energy agreements based on residuals from efficient living.
Then let market participants do that. I don't want to pay for some schmuck to install green nonsense. In most cases envionmentalist means communist. Capitalism is all about efficiency. What we have now is not capitalism.
Poor people come together to design hemp food forest to bring bio mass into fuel.Produce into algae and timbersil and get royalties from agreements for bio mass without deforestation. Appropriate design! Pay off green energy power park over time with labor and energy production. It's a loan that could take 5 to 35 years to pay off but at least they own if in the end. There own power station. Check out onsite or ecosoul for more information on systems design.
This is not about paying for someone to live but givongthem tools to become their own independent power park. you are seeing shadows!! Not gifts!!
I am a Big Outdoors kind of person. Hiking, backpacking, Canyoneering, etc. Every Federal park I visit has signs that read..... Don’t feed the animals, they will become dependent upon it. Same goes for other animals... Like Man!
Time for nature to take its course. The US government is insolvent and the sooner we let the inevitable occur the sooner we can get back to a more fiscally responsible situation.
This is more divide and conquer. They want us ripping at each other's throats. They want hoardes of indigent people tipping over the middle class life boat.
What is this middle class you speak of?
You mean the elderly who are cannabalizing budget at every level including SSI, Medicare, and Medicaid (who single biggest expense by far is assisted living facilities for the eldlery)?
Let's cut the bennies to the 1%, end all QE today!
Farm subsidies, too.
What's that? Oh, sorry, don't want your equities to tank. I know, alpaca are tricky to raise..
Sorry I brought it up.
75 bil a month for the rich, a boot in the ass for everyone else.
USA! USA! USA!
Yes, Funny how the Republicans are all for ripping emergency benefits away, what was the phrase, 'moderate expectations', but are not keen at all on ending QE as that would affect the value of their stocks.