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Unemployment benefits extension clears hurdle

The "real" unemployment rate(which is not used because the other is what has been used and it would be confusing to change)) is tracked by the government, and is called the U6 unemployment rate. It is as of June 16.5 %.

You trust the government to be honest about the unemployment when it lies at every opportunity? The numbers are cooked since it doesn't include all of the categories of unemployed. Clinton and other presidents have adjusted what constitutes being unemployed. The real percentage of all unemployed people is around 20-25%.
 
Small towns always have less opportunity. We still find work by doing just what you say. This town is right between 3 bigger cities(Grand Rapids, Lansing, Battle Creek), and most people work in those places. Guess what...there are not jobs there either.

There's always jobs, it's just a matter of what people are willing to take. And a bit of good timing helps too.
 
You trust the government to be honest about the unemployment when it lies at every opportunity? The numbers are cooked since it doesn't include all of the categories of unemployed. Clinton and other presidents have adjusted what constitutes being unemployed. The real percentage of all unemployed people is around 20-25%.

Feel free to offer evidence of anything you have said in this post. Challenge U6 in some way that is not "well, I don't want to believe it".
 
There's always jobs, it's just a matter of what people are willing to take. And a bit of good timing helps too.

Easy to say. If there are always jobs, why is unemployment 250 % of what it was 10 years ago?
 
Easy to say. If there are always jobs, why is unemployment 250 % of what it was 10 years ago?

If there are no apples, how come there's a bowl of oranges right there on the table?
 
If there are no apples, how come there's a bowl of oranges right there on the table?

Does not answer the question. Minimum wage part time jobs are in high demand...
 
What kind of bugs me about this debate is that it's being treated as if not wanting to extend unemployment benefits for half a year is the same as wanting to stop giving unemployed people any benefits ever. I'm fine with unemployment benefits (though I'd like to see them be privatized, I know this is unrealistic) as long as there is a clear limit during which time the recipient knows he/she has to find a job. Two years is not only plenty of time, but probably about twice as long as I think should be alloted, at least. Extending that by another 6 months not only makes an already ridiculous situation more ridiculous, but also gives the impression that since Congress doesn't have the spine to keep things the way they are, they might just keep doing this again indefinitely in the future, creating even less incentive to go out and get a job.

When you pay people to not work, it's a disincentive to get a job. This is Econ 101 stuff. Or maybe more like the prerequisite to Econ 101. It blows my mind that some people are treating it as a fringe, classist opinion.
 
I'm sorry, but you know the rules. Now we have to fumigate you. Get in the pot. Yes, I love you, too.

Get in.

A) you caused me click on a WND link. That is vile.

B) he uses his own metric, using his own data collection method. There is zero evidence that it is more accurate than U6.
 
A) you caused me click on a WND link. That is vile.

B) he uses his own metric, using his own data collection method. There is zero evidence that it is more accurate than U6.

A: I gave you two links, one WND and the other MSN Money. Both say the same thing in that the government cooked the books.

B: He uses the same metric used to determine unemployment in the Great Depression. That is more accurate then the government selectively choosing what categories to count.
Williams starts by discussing the headline economic data: "Real unemployment right now -- figured the way that the average person thinks of unemployment, meaning figured the way it was estimated back during the Great Depression -- is running about 12%. Real CPI right now is running at about 8%. And the real GDP probably is in contraction." (By "real," he means calculating the data the way they used to be calculated, not as inflation-adjusted.)

He then explains how the employment data are compiled, noting that 5 million chronically unemployed people are not included in the statistics. In fact, there are seven or eight different employment statistics. One called U-3 is the official one. The broadest one, U-6, currently shows unemployment as running around 8.4%. As he explains, the one that's the most historically consistent is running around 12%.

That is from the MSN Money article.
 
If, IF anybody had watched the entire video, they'd already have the answers (and yes. They are good ones, based in history, and with citations). One of my pet peeves, as I've stated before, is willful ignorance. If you can't be bothered to watch the entire speech and give the man the benefit of the doubt, I can't be bothered to discuss this any further with you.

We won. I'm happy. Life is good.

Wilful ignorance... often is perpetuated via socialisations. I find it aggravating personally from personal experience. I grew up in a protestant family with a father that was a minister and a conservative politician. I understand though what it means to have your beliefs you were brought up on crushed by what seems some vague sophistry.

After delving into politics seriously from 1995-1997 (three academic years) and reacting to that liberal arts education I took personal time to find opposing philosophy, to left wing philosophy. You see from 1995-1997 I lived with a sociologist that was a radical feminist. I know a lot of people make fun of them as being ball crushers.. but she never once did any of the sort. heh. At any rate after we broke up I took a negative attitude towards my liberal arts education and sought out ideological arguments that I assumed would be appropriate.

Well I am a bit of a blogger and I had learned far right wing philosophical arguments. So.. I engaged in arguments as though I was a libertarian. But deep down the argument was about proving collectivists absolutely wrong. What I found out that even after reading and agreeing with particular right wing ideas.. I had a lot of questions that didn't get answered. I ignored all that and engaged in intellectual discourse as though it was sophistry. Like a game.. wilfully ignorant. Then in this one epic debate.. as far as I was concerned, I was forced to dig deep.. and I came up dry. The truth was that morality was founded in absolutism.. and the only way that could be is if there was a god that dictated it to be the case. Well when I realised this.. everything fell into place but it was a real disappointment. I realised I had been nothing but a dupe.

Oh awesome video. A politician at work indeed.
 
Does not answer the question. Minimum wage part time jobs are in high demand...

Doesn't answer the question because the question made no sense. That the unemployment rate has raised from 4% to 10% in ten years does not mean there are "no jobs". It just means that, on a national level, job loss has exceeded job gain. This is different from an individual level, where there are always jobs available, even if the prior one was lost. 10% unemployment just means more people than usual in the phase between one job and another (though obviously, not always of their own choosing, and what's available is probably not as good as what would be available in a better economy - but it's still there).
 
Here's a Layoff List article about the real unemployment numbers.

Mike: Many talking heads mention that the “official” unemployment rate of 6.7% is less than that of the 1974 and 1980 recessions, so that this newly minted recession won’t be as bad as the two previous recessions. What is not mentioned is that the reported rate of unemployment was changed during the Clinton administration. The change was the exclusion of discouraged workers from the reported unemployment rate. So if you include the discouraged workers, the official rate would be greater than 6.7%. Government manipulation of numbers makes the current situation look better than previous recessions, but that is not the case.
 
Dav, I have posted this link before: News - Economy - Unemployment Map - WOODTV.com and WOOD TV8: Grand Rapids, MI

This is the traditional unemployment rate, by county for the area I live in. If you put your mouse over any county, it will show you the monthly rate for that county. This is the traditional, not "real" unemployment rate. AS things get worse(and they have been), not only are there fewer jobs available, but more people looking for them. When traditional unemployment is between 12 and 19 %, "real" unemployment is well over 20 %, or around 1/4 of the people in west Michigan are unemployed or underemployed. Now ask yourself how many jobs are probably available.

There are jobs. Nursing is in demand. Of course, it means 2 + years of school to get. Engineers are in demand(we are moving away from our core employment in the automotive and furniture business around here, with suppliers for those industries looking to diversify), but again, 4 years of school. Minimum wage, part time jobs, not so much. Jobs that pay enough to cover the bills and don't require an education, very very rare, and far more applicants than jobs.
 
Does not answer the question. Minimum wage part time jobs are in high demand...

If that's true then why aren't people taking the minimum wage jobs temporarily? Answer - because they could make as much sitting home - looking on line for a few hours a day for a job - send a few email resume's and collect. All I'm saying is I'm not wired that way - if I stayed home on the computer looking for work for 2 months I'd go nuts. I'd have to stay busy - even at 7 or 8 bucks an hour.
 
A: I gave you two links, one WND and the other MSN Money. Both say the same thing in that the government cooked the books.

B: He uses the same metric used to determine unemployment in the Great Depression. That is more accurate then the government selectively choosing what categories to count.


That is from the MSN Money article.

Chronically unemployed("discouraged workers") are included in the U6 unemployment rate.
 
If that's true then why aren't people taking the minimum wage jobs temporarily? Answer - because they could make as much sitting home - looking on line for a few hours a day for a job - send a few email resume's and collect. All I'm saying is I'm not wired that way - if I stayed home on the computer looking for work for 2 months I'd go nuts. I'd have to stay busy - even at 7 or 8 bucks an hour.

They are taking those jobs. There just are not enough of them.
 
I have looked into that claim and find exactly zero evidence to back it up.

Really? Are you really sure that you found no evidence to back up that President Clinton altered the way the data is presented?
 
The bolded stuff please.

Alright.

1) Unemployment benefits do not really help the economy. This point also really goes with, "Yes, but government generated demand is a false demand. It first has to kill a same level of private sector demand. There are no jobs (I would argue) because the government keeps spending untold amounts of money trying to "create" them, ignoring that it first elimintes them by taking that money out of the private sector."

My point here is basically that an extension will really do nothing to help us move from where we are. This is basically an extension of the broken window fallacy (defined here).

The point is that diverting money from one group to another does not really create "new" economic activity, it simply relocates what was already there to begin with, essentially destroying the economic activity that was there to start. This is an ecomonic theory certainly, as there are others that oppose this viewpoint, it appears we come down on opposite sides of that theory.

2) Paying people not to work (in the name of economic recovery) is going to get us nowhere

Many prominent economists have admitted that paying people not to work takes away their incentive to find work. Alan Krueger, the current Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, and Lawrence Summers, current director of the White House's National Economic Council both have made comments to this regard. Even Paul Krugman states, "Do unemployment benefits reduce the incentive to seek work? Yes: workers receiving unemployment benefits are likely to be slightly more choosy about accepting new jobs." While he goes on to argue that "slightly" is key, he does admit that it makes them more choosy.

Additionally, from the OECD Employment Outlook of 2007 (Page 75 roughly), it is argued, "It is well established that generous unemployment benefits can increase the duration of unemployment spells and the overall level of unemployment…"

Additionally, A Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco study argued basically that tax cut multipliers beat government spending multipliers in terms of GDP growth. That also goes to the point of unemployment benefits just won't work to bring us out of the where we are. (The first point)
 
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They are taking those jobs. There just are not enough of them.

another obvious failure of boy wonder and his retarded pet apes, the botox babboon and the Harry Rhesus Monkey
 
Really? Are you really sure that you found no evidence to back up that President Clinton altered the way the data is presented?

They expanded on the data available. They included asking people if they are actively looking for work instead of guessing. They made the U1 - U7 scale somewhat standard. Did you read the whole thing?
 
Dav, I have posted this link before: News - Economy - Unemployment Map - WOODTV.com and WOOD TV8: Grand Rapids, MI

This is the traditional unemployment rate, by county for the area I live in. If you put your mouse over any county, it will show you the monthly rate for that county. This is the traditional, not "real" unemployment rate. AS things get worse(and they have been), not only are there fewer jobs available, but more people looking for them. When traditional unemployment is between 12 and 19 %, "real" unemployment is well over 20 %, or around 1/4 of the people in west Michigan are unemployed or underemployed. Now ask yourself how many jobs are probably available.

There are jobs. Nursing is in demand. Of course, it means 2 + years of school to get. Engineers are in demand(we are moving away from our core employment in the automotive and furniture business around here, with suppliers for those industries looking to diversify), but again, 4 years of school. Minimum wage, part time jobs, not so much. Jobs that pay enough to cover the bills and don't require an education, very very rare, and far more applicants than jobs.

A few things. For one thing, I'm not really sure what the point of that link was when my whole point was that high unemployment does not indicate a lack of jobs; saying that yes it does, because there's high unemployment, is a weird argument.

Now, another link: Gallup Daily: U.S. Job Market

Right now, there are more companies gaining jobs than losing them - according to Gallup, 29% of businesses are growing, whereas 21% are letting people go. Keep in mind that the 44% that are "not changing in size" are almost certainly hiring new people, as they replace people who both leave voluntarily and who retire, or who get laid off for non-economic reasons. Also look at data for the last two years - for the whole time the economy has been in the toilet, companies "not changing" in size have far outnumbered both "hiring" and "letting go", both of which have stayed more or less equal to each other.

So yes, there are jobs available. I in fact know several people who have gotten at least halfway-decent jobs within the last year. Granted, the economy around here isn't nearly as bad as in Michigan, but the recession has had an effect nonetheless. Still, lots of people are hiring.

Anyways, if someone really can't find a job in two years, I don't know how an extra six months is supposed to help/encourage them.
 
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