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How Long Should We Help the Unemployed?

LizardofOz

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http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/13/news/economy/unemployment_benefits_extension/index.htm

I
found this to be a very interesting article and before I might say extend but I tend to agree--several unemployed don't need these extensions they need to learn to adapt and build up. This is a nonstarter to get unemployment down by continuously extending the unemployment for those out of work for over a year. I mean come on a year? Jesus Christ.
 
Wouldn't it be better for everyone if we just had a system in effect to place people into jobs? There would be no need to subsidize unemployment, since there would be far less of it.
 
Wouldn't it be better for everyone if we just had a system in effect to place people into jobs? There would be no need to subsidize unemployment, since there would be far less of it.
Are you sure that everyone will do their "new" job with vigor and zeal or maybe just believe - I am worth more than this, the government needs to pay me better, give me better benefits and make sure I earn more than my neighbor?
 
In most states, the deal is 26 weeks. Past that, it is no longer unemployment, it is welfare.
 
Wouldn't it be better for everyone if we just had a system in effect to place people into jobs? There would be no need to subsidize unemployment, since there would be far less of it.

There is it;s called Jobcore and the government runs it and it places people in a job after teaching someone a trade.
 
I think we should have different rules for "regular" times than we do at the moment. We are in a global financial crisis.
 
http://money.cnn.com/2011/12/13/news/economy/unemployment_benefits_extension/index.htm

I
found this to be a very interesting article and before I might say extend but I tend to agree--several unemployed don't need these extensions they need to learn to adapt and build up. This is a nonstarter to get unemployment down by continuously extending the unemployment for those out of work for over a year. I mean come on a year? Jesus Christ.

And what do we do when those unemployed people are suffering and struggling with no money or job to be found? Just leave them to hopefully grab a rope to keep from sinking?
 
Wouldn't it be better for everyone if we just had a system in effect to place people into jobs? There would be no need to subsidize unemployment, since there would be far less of it.
There are programs like that. My brother worked for one of the "placers" and it's corrupt as hell which is why he decided to stop working there.
 
I'm all for a system similar to what Wisconsin has been using for the past few years.....

Anyone coming into the system would be classified based on their education and job skills. Over a period of time (six months to a year) they would be offered educational and job training programs to bring them to a minimum of a GED level education and some job skill (if necessary). At the point they are deemed both educated and skilled they should be given 26 weeks to find employment or they get cut off completely. During those 26 weeks they should be required to check in weekly to ensure they are actively seeking employment. Those check-ins would also allow the administration to provide them with information on potential job opportunities with their skills.... IN OTHER AREAS OF THE COUNTRY.
 
And what do we do when those unemployed people are suffering and struggling with no money or job to be found? Just leave them to hopefully grab a rope to keep from sinking?

The unemployment is high but it isn't high enough that someone should be out of work for 70+ months.
 
The unemployment is high but it isn't high enough that someone should be out of work for 70+ months.

I do not know. What I do know is that it's very hard for us Americans to find jobs. What was it, every 1 in 4 Americans are jobless? [Correct me if I'm wrong]

We need bussinesses to STOP sending jobs overseas, and we need to STOP illegal aliens from entering and taking our jobs. We have what, 20 million or so illegal aliens in our country? That is food and money taken from Americans. If I have to humble myself and work in the fields to make money to get back in nursing school, then I will. Any job, even the "unwanted and crappy" jobs that IA take, I am sure Americans are eager to have. We need to change our constitution and stop treating corporations as people, as well, because that is madness.
 
I do not know. What I do know is that it's very hard for us Americans to find jobs. What was it, every 1 in 4 Americans are jobless? [Correct me if I'm wrong]

We need bussinesses to STOP sending jobs overseas, and we need to STOP illegal aliens from entering and taking our jobs. We have what, 20 million or so illegal aliens in our country? That is food and money taken from Americans. If I have to humble myself and work in the fields to make money to get back in nursing school, then I will. Any job, even the "unwanted and crappy" jobs that IA take, I am sure Americans are eager to have. We need to change our constitution and stop treating corporations as people, as well, because that is madness.

We also need Americans to stop with this ridiculous idea that there is any job that is beneath their dignity. When you need the money, you do whatever (legal) is necessary to make ends meet. Whether that means moving to another area, taking a lesser paying job, or whatever. Until Americans are no longer of the mentality that there is a job that they are too good to do, bringing those jobs back from overseas and throwing the illegals out isn't going to make a significant difference.
 
it can take a pretty long time to find work. at the height of the financial mess, it took me over nine months to find another job, and i have a good work record and a graduate degree.

the outsource labor / import everything in order to sell it at artificially low retail prices model is a massive failure.
 
I do not know. What I do know is that it's very hard for us Americans to find jobs. What was it, every 1 in 4 Americans are jobless? [Correct me if I'm wrong]

We need bussinesses to STOP sending jobs overseas, and we need to STOP illegal aliens from entering and taking our jobs. We have what, 20 million or so illegal aliens in our country? That is food and money taken from Americans. If I have to humble myself and work in the fields to make money to get back in nursing school, then I will. Any job, even the "unwanted and crappy" jobs that IA take, I am sure Americans are eager to have. We need to change our constitution and stop treating corporations as people, as well, because that is madness.

Well if the unemployment by government grading is around 10% usually the past few years it is 1 out of 10 Americans. Realistically though it is 15% as in those not looking or those that do not claim. Of course, that has all dipped down thanks to seasonal hiring, but this dip is far greater than the last 2 years so it might actually stick some. I could not agree with you more about sending jobs overseas. I work for a company that competes with companies in Mexico and China, and quality and craftsmanship trumps all almost always. While a Chinese person gets next to nothing I get $15/hr. As for the immigration thing I tend to agree just depends on the field. If they have a workers permit they are here fairly. Look man I've bailed hay, cut tobacco, everything and been the only white guy there with Mexicans, but those Mexicans were there legally. Obama has made laws to make sure it happens. If someone gets caught hiring illegals it is serious jail time.
 
Wouldn't it be better for everyone if we just had a system in effect to place people into jobs? There would be no need to subsidize unemployment, since there would be far less of it.

It would be better of the government would stop stifling job creation.
 
Federal tax monies used to provide a minimum level of income for the unemployed is an unconstitutional program which invites moral hazard for both those receiving the assistance and those providing it. Why should an individual, merely from the fact that he paid income tax and now finds himself unemployed be subsidized for not working? It is nobody else's responsibility - not the government, not society, not the taxpayer, not his neighbor - to provide that individual with a job, with an income, or with an education. It is solely the responsibility of the individual to seek, acquire and retain these things. A country which does not promote that is instead promoting self-defeating ideas which lead to the moral decay of both the individual and the civilization at-large.

Here's a thought for people without a job: drastically downsize your expenses, sell assets, remain out of debt and don't consider any job "beneath" you. The people receiving government assistance rarely take common sense measures like these to alleviate their own circumstances. They are not less "fortunate" than others. They are not unluckier than anyone else. They arrived in their situation - or remain there - because of the choices they make. Financial assistance to the unemployed only discourages those people from making the kind of hard decisions they will eventually be forced to make anyway. Much as no bank is too big to fail, no individual is too small to fail either. Welfare, in all its forms, is wasteful and corrupting whether the money lands in a bank vault or a family checking account.
 
The unemployment is high but it isn't high enough that someone should be out of work for 70+ months.

The recent recession was not a typical cyclical event, largely driven by inventory imbalances. It was a structural event and its ramification will play out for years to come. Many jobs e.g., in construction, will not return anytime soon.

Indeed, if one looks at the October data (latest date for which job openings data is available), one finds:

3.3 million job openings (Job Openings and Labor Turnover Survey Home Page)

In October, there were 13.897 million unemployed workers (http://www.bls.gov/news.release/archives/empsit_12022011.pdf)

That means there were 4.2 unemployed workers for every job opening. That does not even take into consideration issues such as job requirements-skills mismatches, location of jobs vs. location of unemployed, etc.

With such a high ratio of unemployed workers to job openings, it is no surprise that in October, 42.4% of unemployed workers had been unemployed for 27 weeks or longer.
 
Wouldn't it be better for everyone if we just had a system in effect to place people into jobs? There would be no need to subsidize unemployment, since there would be far less of it.

We had the NRA (etc) and it was ruled unconstitutional. . . people feared it would lead us towards Facism:
By the time NRA ended in May 1935, industrial production was 55% higher than in May 1933. On May 27, 1935, the NRA was found to be unconstitutional by a unanimous decision of the U.S. Supreme Court in the case of Schechter v. United States. On that same day, the Court unanimously struck down the Frazier-Lemke Act portion of the New Deal as unconstitutional. Libertarian Richard Ebeling believes these and other rulings striking down portions of the New Deal prevented the U.S. economic system from becoming a planned economy corporate state.[52] Governor Huey Long of Louisiana said, "I raise my hand in reverence to the Supreme Court that saved this nation from fascism."[53]

However - many states can and do operate unemployment agencies that function as temp agencies to find people a place of employment based on their skills. It cannot be done by the Federal government but it can be done in measure by State Governments as they see fit.

The flaw in everyone's approach is that theyr'e expecting the federal government to employ people and solve this problem.
 
I'm all for a system similar to what Wisconsin has been using for the past few years.....

Anyone coming into the system would be classified based on their education and job skills. Over a period of time (six months to a year) they would be offered educational and job training programs to bring them to a minimum of a GED level education and some job skill (if necessary). At the point they are deemed both educated and skilled they should be given 26 weeks to find employment or they get cut off completely. During those 26 weeks they should be required to check in weekly to ensure they are actively seeking employment. Those check-ins would also allow the administration to provide them with information on potential job opportunities with their skills.... IN OTHER AREAS OF THE COUNTRY.

This sounds like a really good idea actually. We have way too many unskilled workers demanding to be paid to make things a 10 year old in Malaysia can do. What we need is a more educated work force like the Japanese.
 
This sounds like a really good idea actually. We have way too many unskilled workers demanding to be paid to make things a 10 year old in Malaysia can do. What we need is a more educated work force like the Japanese.

In order to have an educated work force, we need a culture that values education and science.
 
In order to have an educated work force, we need a culture that values education and science.

I think we also need more affordable access to higher education. Many students chose not to get a degree because of the cost and the loans they will have to repay.
 
The workforce is much more highly and narrowly skilled today. In days gone by, all a man needed was a strong back to earn a days wage, and learning new trades was relatively simple. Today it can often take two years or more of costly training to learn the skills for a new job, which is difficult to do with family and work obligations.

Unless someone is clairvoyant about which direction the trends in their particular sub-specialty are going, it isn't worth it to start training for a new job unless you know the one you have is going the way of the dodo. By then unfortunately it is often too late. Typically people take extra training to get better jobs in the same field or higher salary in a different field, not to have skills in two separate fields in case the current one dips in demand.

For my own case, I was a master control operator at our local Fox station here in Lafayette, Louisiana, earning very low wages, and realized that I needed to move out west to get a better job with more money if I was going to continue in this industry. So then I got a job as a broadcast operator at DirecTV in Marina Del Rey, California for about 6 years. As time went on I saw that automation was going to decrease the number of jobs in my field, and that there was no way to go but to train for a more technical position in the same industry, which I didn't want to do. So I changed career fields instead of waiting for the day that I was downsized.

That strategy worked, and I have not had any break in employment for almost 15 years.
 
Unless someone is clairvoyant about which direction the trends in their particular sub-specialty are going, it isn't worth it to start training for a new job unless you know the one you have is going the way of the dodo. By then unfortunately it is often too late. Typically people take extra training to get better jobs in the same field or higher salary in a different field, not to have skills in two separate fields in case the current one dips in demand.

One need not be clairvoyant to have a chance at success in today's demanding and tomorrow's even more demanding labor market. What one needs is a broad education that allows one to develop sophisticated and transferable knowledge and skills. The problem is that exactly the kind of education that makes that possible is being downsized via narrowing curricula (fewer math, science, history, english/writing courses that develop analytical and communications skills) or specialty courses. Worse, educational attainment in the U.S. has flatlined. It is declining in relative terms vs. the rest of the OECD for all students (male and female). For males, it is declining in absolute terms. In short, the nation is witnessing an erosion in its human capital even as the global economy is growing increasingly demanding.

Today, and even more tomorrow, job creation and higher wage positions are increasingly concentrated in knowledge areas. Low skill positions are already largely a commodity, with low wages playing a prominent role where such jobs are situated (usually low wage countries where a physical presence in the U.S. is not required). Not surprisingly, the Bureau of Labor Statistics data reveal that the higher education (bachelor's degree or above) provides the closest thing to full employment. Those with associate degrees or less are largely captive to labor market volatility and lack job security and labor force flexibility. Those labor market inequalities could be further amplified in coming years.
 
We should help them until it won't kill our economy to cut them off. Unemployment benefits at the moment are as much (and probably more) for the protection of businesses already facing shaky consumer demand as they are for the individuals involved.

When it becomes apparent things are not going to get any better or we are in danger of immediate fiscal issues that would also be a good time to stop benefits. We are probably approaching that point quickly, but I don't think it's hit yet.
 
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