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Obama says GOP making life harder for the jobless

Unemployment benefits already cover basically two years. Since you "work in the financial related industry", please explain how paying people not to work really gives them an incentive to find a job?

The premise behind unemployment insurance is to provide short term support so to minimize the incentive for segments of the labor market to become underemployed. People with MBA's working as janitors might make good press but it provides little if nothing to short or long term labor markets as such a friction impedes upward income mobility. This case of inefficient allocation does however come with income elasticities, meaning as we examine higher and higher income earners, the ability for unemployment insurance to provide an incentive to minimize underemployment falls dramatically. Higher income friction is commonly a market orientated phenomena; severance packages and competition restriction based compensation (paying soon to be former employees not to work for competing firms) work to minimize employment search frictions/mis-allocation.
 
The premise behind unemployment insurance is to provide short term support so to minimize the incentive for segments of the labor market to become underemployed. People with MBA's working as janitors might make good press but it provides little if nothing to short or long term labor markets as such a friction impedes upward income mobility. This case of inefficient allocation does however come with income elasticities, meaning as we examine higher and higher income earners, the ability for unemployment insurance to provide an incentive to minimize underemployment falls dramatically. Higher income friction is commonly a market orientated phenomena; severance packages and competition restriction based compensation (paying soon to be former employees not to work for competing firms) work to minimize employment search frictions/mis-allocation.

I understand the premise...however I would argue two years is starting to get out of the "short term" arena. What is your definition of "short term"?
 
I am a Veteran, and haw does that pertain to this thread at all?

Well, since your comment in the OP had nothing really to do with the article or didn't even offer any real insight into your position one way or the other...

I had to decide whether to comment on the article or your meaningless talking-point comment in the OP.

I decided to comment on your ironically tragic comment ...

Gov't is not the answer Barack.

Sounds funny coming from a Veteran.
 
It does not matter. It is simply not financially feasible to continually expand unemployment benefits until there are enough jobs.

You do understand the notions of marginal propensity to save and spend no? Thus, you should be able to figure out that unemployment benefits are effectively a stimulus. I agree that it is not financially feasible, but nor is it financially feasible to have increasingly large percentages of people uninsured and possibly resorting to crime. There isn't a good option here and I have no problem admitting that. As I have said before, there are no good tools to get out of a financial/liquidity crisis avaliable to us. History has shown this time and time again but for some reason people here don't understand the difference.

How many "jobs" are enough? How many people refuse to take "jobs" just because they perhaps would earn basically the same amount as they can collect on unemployment?

A line has to be drawn somewhere. We simply cannot afford to endlessly deficit spend for this vague notion of "jobs".

Of course. I'm just pointing out the assumption underlying the argument is faulty.
 
OC, you ran from the other forum which isn't surprising as you don't like being challenged but do your best to put everyone else down with condescending comments.

How long exactly should unemployment benefits be paid and where is the incentive to get a job as long as those unemployment benefits are paid?

What far too many do not seem to get is the concept of incentive, the concept of personal responsibility, and the concept of free enterprise and capitalism. You seem to be in that category. Your view yourself in an intellectual manner when the reality is you seem to be book smart and street stupid choosing to compare everyone else to your standards and ideology which isn't mainstream nor does it fit into the economic model of this country. You claim to have voted Libertarian but all your posts defending the massive growth of govt, the Obama agenda, and the massive debt being created isn't Libertarian.
 
OC, you ran from the other forum which isn't surprising as you don't like being challenged but do your best to put everyone else down with condescending comments.

Incorrect. I stopped responding because you refused to respond to what I wrote repetively. It is futile to attempt to discuss anything with someone like yourself who relies upon lies and fabrications.

Until you actually start responding to what people write in honest fashions, read my signature.
 
What is Washington supposed to do?

Which is a very good question. I keep bringing up the fact that this recession was largely due to financial/liquidity (housing itself is rather irrelevant considering its portion of the economy) but apparently virtually no one here understands why a financial/liquidity recession is critically different from other recessions.

Washington doesn't have any good tools and there aren't many good tools for financial recessions period.

I'd ask the partisans here for tools, but frankly, they are clueless as to why a financial recession is different. Obama has tried the very same tools other presidents used to get out of non-financial recessions and not surprisingly, they didn't work. He cut taxes and gave huge incentives to businesses as well as large amounts of spending. The same stuff Bush and Reagan did. They don't work because Bush and Reagan didn't have financial recessions. One does not use a baseball bat to play football. But that's what people are calling for.

There's some consolation here. I feel smarter compared to rest of you. :2wave:
 
Republicans are outnumbered, so they can't stop legislation.

Nonsense. Republicans have distorted the "closure vote" into a weapon against there being any meaningful legislation passed, and they quite clearly in this case, don't care one bit about the peoples lives they have destoyed by undermining the economic fabric of our Nation through their years of unbridled DEFECIT SPENDING. Only now, that they have managed to drive the economic bus off the cliff, do they express concern about how much spending is. There was nary a peep from them when untold HUNDREDS OF BILLION$ in graft being handed out like candy to their death and war cronies. Righties can ALWAYS find the funds to kill, but NEVER give one **** about We the People.
 
Interesting, as usual you want to control the debate and do so by diverting from the topic of the thread. Then when asked the tough questions you run. The thread had nothing to do with the state of TX but it now has everything to do with you being a fraud, callilng yourself a Libertarian and then defending a President who is about as far from being a Libertarian as anyone in public service. Keep running.
 
Wrong, Reagan and Bush both gave across the board tax RATE cuts, not targeted tax cuts in the form of a rebate. The incentives to businesses were offset by upcoming higher taxes on healthcare, the concern about cap and trade, and biggest of all the anti business agenda of Barack Obama. You buy what you read and ignore reality. Maybe after spending 35 years in the business world you will better understand how business works.

What started out as a financial recession is now much more than that, Barack Obama has done nothing to promote job creation in the private sector and done nothing but expand the role of govt. Only blind ideologues don't see that.
 
How long should unemployed people get unemployment insurance in your world? Where does the money come from, the "Obama Stash?" Please stop reading what you are being told by the media, we have three equal branches of govt. and Congress has been controlled by the Democrats since January 2007. We the People are sick and tired of the victim mentality and have no problem helping people truly in need. Too bad "your" President doesn't see it that way.
 
What evidence is there that suggests extending unemployment benefits leads to a diminishing rate of U-6 unemployment? Please consider job search frictions and how they impact underemployment before you begin your series of jargon.
 
Unemployment insurance has always been intended to be temporary but the word termporary seems to have a different meaning to a lot of people. I continue to contend that unemployment insurance takes away incentive from far too many who seem to prefer staying home to actually looking for a job.
 
Nonsense. Republicans have distorted the "closure vote" into a weapon against there being any meaningful legislation passed, and they quite clearly in this case, don't care one bit about the peoples lives they have destoyed by undermining the economic fabric of our Nation through their years of unbridled DEFECIT SPENDING. Only now, that they have managed to drive the economic bus off the cliff, do they express concern about how much spending is. There was nary a peep from them when untold HUNDREDS OF BILLION$ in graft being handed out like candy to their death and war cronies. Righties can ALWAYS find the funds to kill, but NEVER give one **** about We the People.

So you are saying the GOP is using the democrat policies from the Bush years.
 
Unemployment insurance has always been intended to be temporary but the word temporary seems to have a different meaning to a lot of people. I continue to contend that unemployment insurance takes away incentive from far too many who seem to prefer staying home to actually looking for a job.

I see, just a "hunch"....

So what you are saying is, a person who made $1,000/ week before they were laid off should "desire" to work a job only paying $500/ week yet does not require them to perform tasks that they went to school/trained to do. And to expect you to comment on underemployment :lamo
 
What I find frustrating is the lack of civics understanding by far too many and the pure partisanship by ideologues on both sides. Fact is I am a conservative and proud of it. Fact is that I deal in reality not partisan ideology.

Too many people ignore the fact that we have three equal branches of Govt. and today the Democrats control two of those three, Congress and the WH. What is also ignored is that Democrats controlled the Congress from 2007-2008 which was the last two years of the Bush Administration. That means they controlled the legislative agenda for the country. Bush couldn't get anything voted on that Pelosi-Reid didn't want thus it is the Democrats along with Bush that created the recession and more so the legislative branch that was the biggest contributor. Obama was part of that legislative branch but for some reason now that is ignored.
 
I see, just a "hunch"....

So what you are saying is, a person who made $1,000/ week before they were laid off should "desire" to work a job only paying $500/ week yet does not require them to perform tasks that they went to school/trained to do. And to expect you to comment on underemployment :lamo

Yes they should. Where I live $500 would be more than unemployment so take the job. I make less than I did in 2008 but I am not whining I am adjusting. When the economy is down take less and advance when the economy improves.
 
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I will ask you the same question others ignore, how long should unemployment insurance be authorized for the unemployed? Why is it that you and others take the extreme and make it the norm? Where does personal responsibility lie in your "Libertarian" world? Thought that is what Libertarians believed?

Anyone making 1000 a week has to accept personal responsibility just like everyone else. Unemployment insurance was supposed to be temporary not a permanent "job."
 
That is accepting personal responsibility, something a liberal never does.
 
I will ask you the same question others ignore, how long should unemployment insurance be authorized for the unemployed? Why is it that you and others take the extreme and make it the norm?

During years of economic expansion, the 26 week threshold seems quite generous. During periods of contraction (such as this), extensions are a necessary component for demand stabilization.

Where does personal responsibility lie in your "Libertarian" world? Thought that is what Libertarians believed?

Ad homs prove what exactly? You initial premise was based on incentive; now you want to argue with me about my beliefs on "personal responsibility". Oh that's precious.

Anyone making 1000 a week has to accept personal responsibility just like everyone else. Unemployment insurance was supposed to be temporary not a permanent "job."

Which is where i ask you, once again, how your notion of personal responsibility effects labor markets. Unless of course MBA's working at starbucks serving coffee seems responsible to you....
 
Wrong, Reagan and Bush both gave across the board tax RATE cuts, not targeted tax cuts in the form of a rebate. The incentives to businesses were offset by upcoming higher taxes on healthcare, the concern about cap and trade, and biggest of all the anti business agenda of Barack Obama. You buy what you read and ignore reality. Maybe after spending 35 years in the business world you will better understand how business works.

Umm.. libertarianism hasn't always been in control of the GOP. Your wrong about Regans taxation.

Even Reagan Raised Taxes - Forbes.com
The first part of that path entails raising higher revenues. Everyone remembers Reagan's 1981 tax cuts. His admirers are less likely to tout the tax hikes he accepted as the 1981 recession and his own tax cuts began to unravel his long-term fiscal picture--a large tax increase on business in 1982, higher payroll taxes enacted in 1983 and higher energy taxes in 1984. A decade later, when a serious recession and higher spending began to upend the fiscal outlook again, the first President Bush similarly raised taxes on higher-income people in 1991; Bill Clinton doubled down and raised them again in 1993.

The insanity of libertarianism and the disasters that have reared their heads over the last couple years because of it are becoming more and more clear. Libertarianism is becoming a defenceless philosophy and it's mainly being proven by the effects of already implemented libertarian policies such as deregulation, taxation cuts.

The debt and deficit spending is not being spent on “crazy liberal” social programs. The money is being spent on war, bailing out the banking industry, subsidizing big business and tax cuts for the weathly. Tax cuts are growing your debt because spending was increased and taxation decreased under Bush Jr. under the guidance of libertarianism. Deregulation is not owned by the republican party and indeed democrats are also responsible for it. So yes you can be a democrat and still implement libertarian policy.

At any rate America needs to cut spending insanely or raise taxation. Given the greatest concentration of wealth is by far and away squarely in the top 10% (=50% of total wealth in America) of the income stratus it would seem to me a likely place to gain tax revenues.

Libertarians need to grow up, deny their ideology for the sake of the country and stop being so dogmatic about their faith in zero taxation/regulation small government. The small government is a libertarian fantasy anyhow the GOP didn’t cut spending.
 
Yes they should. Where I live $500 would be more than unemployment so take the job. I make less than I did in 2008 but I am not whining I am adjusting. When the economy is down take less and advance when the economy improves.

No comment on underemployment, and how it effects long term full employment rates.... Facinating!
 
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