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Showing posts with label Great Depression. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Great Depression. Show all posts

Friday, January 3, 2014

Unemployment benefits, the cruelest cut of all

Today's post was shared by Steven Greenhouse and comes from www.washingtonpost.com

To 1.3 million jobless Americans: The Republican Party wishes you a Very Unhappy New Year!
It would be one thing if there were a logical reason to cut off unemployment benefits for those who have been out of work the longest. But no such rationale exists. On both economic and moral grounds, extending benefits for the long-term unemployed should have received an automatic, bipartisan vote in both houses of Congress.
It didn’t. Nothing is automatic and bipartisan anymore, not with today’s radicalized GOP on the scene. In this case, a sensible and humane policy option is hostage to bruised Republican egos and the ideological myth of “makers” vs. “takers.”
The result is a cruel blow to families that are already suffering. On Saturday, benefits were allowed to expire for 1.3 million people who have been unemployed more than six months. These are precisely the jobless who will suffer most from a cutoff, since they have been scraping by on unemployment checks for so long that their financial situations are already precarious, if not dire.
Extending unemployment benefits is something that’s normally done in a recession, and Republicans correctly point out that we are now in a recovery. But there was nothing normal about the Great Recession, and there is nothing normal about the Not-So-Great Recovery.
We are emerging from the worst economic slump since the Depression, and growth has been unusually — and painfully — slow. Only...
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Friday, December 27, 2013

Charts: The Worst Long-Term Unemployment Crisis Since the Depression

Today's post was shared by Mother Jones and comes from www.motherjones.com

Officially, the Great Recession of 2007 ended in June 2009. Yet the economic downturn remains in full effect for millions of Americans, particularly the nearly 40 percent of the unemployed who have been looking for work for six months or more.
In less than a week, emergency federal unemployment benefits for 1.3 million of these jobless Americans are set to run out. Proponents of ending the benefits argue that the economy is expanding and that the benefits prevent people from finding work. "You get out of a recession by encouraging employment not encouraging unemployment," according to Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.), who opposes extending benefits. However, the data shows that while corporate America has bounced back, it is not restoring all the jobs it shed when the economy tanked five years ago.
Currently, nearly 11 million Americans are unemployed. The unemployment rate stands at 7 percent. Both of those stats are improvements from a little more than four years ago, when the post-recession jobless rate peaked at 10 percent and more than 15 million people were out of work.
However, there currently are more than 4 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer. Not since the Great Depression has the United States experienced such massive and persistent long-term unemployment.
Overall, the long-term unemployed (those with out a job for six months or longer) make up nearly 40 percent of all the jobless.
Long-term unemployment has not affected...
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Monday, October 28, 2013

A Day In The Life Of Ted the Tea-Partier

Today's guest post is by Jay Causey of the Washington Bar.


     Ted gets up at 6 A.M. and fills his coffeepot with water to prepare his morning coffee.  The water is clean and good because some tree-hugging liberal fought for government-enforced minimum water-quality standards. 
     With his first swallow of coffee, he takes his daily medication. His medications are safe to take because some stupid commie liberal fought to have the government insure their safety and that they work as advertised.  All but $10 of his medications are paid for by his employer’s medical plan because some liberal union workers fought their employers for paid medical insurance – now Ted gets it too.
     He prepares his morning breakfast, bacon and eggs.  Ted’s bacon is safe to eat because some girly-man liberal fought for laws to regulate the meat-packing industry
     In the morning shower, Ted reaches for his shampoo.  His bottle is properly labeled with each ingredient and its amount in the total contents because some crybaby liberal fought for his right to know what he was putting on his body and how much it contained.
     Ted dresses, walks outside and takes a deep breath.  The air he breathes is far less polluted than decades ago because some wacko liberal environmentalist fought for laws to stop industries from polluting our air.
     Ted begins his workday. He has a good job with decent pay, medical benefits, retirement, paid holidays and vacation because some lazy liberal union members fought and died for these working standards.  Ted’s employer pays these standards because Ted’s employer doesn’t want his employees to call the union.  If Ted is hurt on the job or is laid off, he’ll get workers’ compensation or unemployment because some stupid liberal didn’t think he should lose his home because of his temporary misfortune.
     It’s noontime, and Ted needs to make a bank deposit so he can pay some bills. Ted’s deposit is federally insured by the FSLIC because some godless liberal wanted to protect Ted’s money from unscrupulous bankers who ruined the banking system before the Great Depression and nearly collapsed the banking system again in 2008, saved only by a tax-payer bailout.
     Ted is home from work, and drives to visit his father this evening at his farm home in the country.  His car is among the safest in the world because some America-hating liberal fought to have the government enact car safety standards.
     He arrives at his boyhood home.  His was the third generation to live in the house financed by Farmers’ Home Administration because bankers didn’t want to make rural loans.  The house didn’t have electricity until some big-government liberal stuck his nose where it didn’t belong and demanded rural electrification.
     He is happy to see his father, who is now retired.  His father lives on Social Security and a union pension because some wine-drinking, cheese-eating liberal made sure he could take care of himself so Ted wouldn’t have to. Ted gets back in his car for the ride home, and turns on a radio talk show.  The radio host keeps saying that liberals are bad and hate their country.  He doesn’t mention that his radical, anti-government Republicans  have, over many decades, fought against each and every one of these protections and benefits Ted enjoys throughout his day.
     Ted agrees:  “We don’t need those big-government liberals ruining our lives!  They’re taking away our freedoms!  After all, I’m a self-made man who believes everyone should take care of themselves, just like I have.”
- See more at: http://workersadvisor.com/a-day-in-the-life-of-ted-the-tea-partier#sthash.PiWVQFET.dpuf