Should Unemployment Insurance Extension Benefits be Renewed Through the November 30, 2010 Deadline?
Should We Extend Them Again?
As the President returns from overseas and as the freshman Congressional class arrives in Washington D.C., first up on the legislative agenda is the decision to extend and renew unemployment insurance extension compensation or not. The current legislation allows for extended benefits only until November 30th.
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Some politicians and economists believe we may be approaching a point where this extraordinary and important aid acts as a crutch we've grown too used to. Before the Republican Party regained balance, there were voices emanating from it to ease back unemployment benefits to normal flow. There is an active viewpoint regarding a theorized negative impact of unemployment insurance, which argues that it acts as a support to the lazy. Given their fiscal concerns, this could be a point of argument for Tea Party Republicans and even Blue Dog Democrats, and so another extension of benefits is not guaranteed.
Our friends in the United Kingdom recently implemented rules to penalize welfare recipients who are not accepting work opportunities. We already have these guards in place, but enforcement is suspect; that's likely due to the size of the task at hand these days and a lack of human capital and funding to get the job done.
Do you think unemployment insurance keeps people from seeking work? I know people who have avoided taking part-time work because it would not match their income earned for sitting idle. I know still more others who realize that taking a part-time job could limit their critical income if laid off, as it would set new basis for their benefit calculation.
I think there are clear solutions to solving these conundrums, and they can be employed by creating a more critical unemployment insurance calculation, and by making it widely known to the American public. As is always the case, painted black and white issues offer opportunities for better measure in the gray area in between.
I recently wrote about the importance of the fourth quarter to the American economy, and that no matter what, the extension of benefits should run at least through the critical period. Where do you stand on this subject? Are we spending too much to support slackers or is this spending necessary to keep Americans from foreclosure, bankruptcy and fiscal demise, and the economy with it?
Should Unemployment Insurance Extension Benefits be Renewed Through the November 30, 2010 Deadline?
Article should interest investors in Paychex (Nasdaq: PAYX), Manpower (NYSE: MAN), Robert Half International (NYSE: RHI), 51Job Inc. (Nasdaq: JOBS), Monster World Wide (NYSE: MWW), Korn/Ferry International (NYSE: KFY), Administaff (NYSE: ASF), Kforce (Nasdaq: KFRC), TrueBlue (NYSE: TBI), Dice Holdings (NYSE: DHX), Kelly Services (Nasdaq: KELYA), SFN Group (NYSE: SFN), CDI Corp. (NYSE: CDI), Cross Country Healthcare (Nasdaq: CCRN), On Assignment (Nasdaq: ASGN), AMN Healthcare Services (NYSE: AHS), Barrett Business Services (Nasdaq: BBSI), Hudson Highland Group (Nasdaq: HHGP), StarTek (NYSE: SRT), RCM Technologies (Nasdaq: RCMT), VirtualScopics (Nasdaq: VSCP), American Surgical (OTC: ASRG.OB), Medical Connections (OTC: MCTH.OB), iGen Networks (OTC: IGEN.OB), St. Joseph (OTC: STJO.OB), General Employment Enterprises (NYSE: JOB), Total Neutraceutical (OTC: TNUS.OB), TeamStaff (Nasdaq: TSTF), Stratum (OTC: STTH.OB), Purespectrum (OTC: PSRU.OB), Corporate Resource Services (OTC: CRRS.OB), Bank of America (NYSE: BAC), J.P. Morgan Chase (NYSE: JPM), Goldman Sachs (NYSE: GS), Citigroup (NYSE: C), Morgan Stanley (NYSE: MS), Wells Fargo (NYSE: WFC), TD Bank (NYSE: TD), PNC Bank (NYSE: PNC), General Electric (NYSE: GE), Wal-Mart (NYSE: WMT), McDonald's (NYSE: MCD), Alcoa (NYSE: AA), American Express (NYSE: AXP), Boeing (NYSE: BA), Caterpillar (NYSE: CAT), Cisco Systems (Nasdaq: CSCO), Chevron (NYSE: CVX), DuPont (NYSE: DD), Walt Disney (NYSE: DIS), Home Depot (NYSE: HD), Hewlett-Packard (NYSE: HPQ), IBM (NYSE: IBM), Intel (Nasdaq: INTC), Johnson & Johnson (NYSE: JNJ), Kraft (NYSE: KFT), Coca-Cola (NYSE: KO), 3M (NYSE: MMM), Merck (NYSE: MRK), Microsoft (Nasdaq: MSFT), Pfizer (NYSE: PFE), Procter & Gamble (NYSE: PG), AT&T (NYSE: T), Travelers (NYSE: TRV), United Technologies (NYSE: UTX), Verizon (NYSE: VZ), Exxon Mobil (NYSE: XOM).
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Labels: Debate Topics, Labor Market, Politics
posted by The Greek | 1:00 PM
11 Comments:
The impacts of policy are at the margin - that is, a few folks are incented or disincented to behave differently. The more dramatic the policy, the larger the margin of folks that will change behavior.
Good economic policies should reward good behavior and dis-incent bad behavior.
Jacking up unemployment benefits and uping marginal tax rates does the opposite: it rewards bad behavior and dis-incents good behavior.
There may be reasons to extend unemployment benefits, but economic growth is not one of them
Do we have extra tax money that exceeds our current year expenses?
Markos, this is a highly troubling matter as I see the consequesnces of unemployment and underemployment all around. The jobs are just not available and job growth will continue to be slow. One attitude, of course, is to just let the people suffer.
My Dad, b.1896, although a college math grad, ended-up as a streetcar conductor during the Depression and that left a lasting lifetime affect on him. He was very frugal even after gaining some prosperity, and he passed that frugality onto me. I'm a fiscal conservative, yet I have empathy for the unemployed.
The 'makes them lazy' claim doesn't wash with me, although in a percentage of cases that may happen. Benefits aren't that great so every dollar paid out returns to the economy immediately.
Help the crippled, while looking for a cure to our economic ills. America is unlikely to ever be the same as in my time. Not having the answers, hence looking to others to find ways to get a societial balance restored, I can only say that curtailing unemployment benefits is a negative thing to do.
Unemployment benefits in this country are too low to make people want to stay home forever instead of finding work. The fact that this statement will never pass the lips of any right wing nutjob doesn't make it less true.
A sharp and unanticipated cut off would be damaging in a couple of respects - first to the receipients and and secondly to the overall economy. The extended benefits should not have gone as long as they have.
We should start a weaning process and reduce the benefits over a set period of time - anything over an original 26 weeks and everything that has been extended beyond that could be extended for an additional 26 weeks - starting at 90% of the original dollar level and decreasing monthly to some minimum amount with a firm understnding that there will be no additional extensions. Future benefits would be limited to 26 weeks of "regular" amounts and the decreasing amount for the second and final period. People have to know that the end is coming - it will force the unemployed to accept lesser wages but the longer it goes the larger the unemployable work force will become.
Before there is any serious threat to cutoff unemployment, there MUST be some job creation. What the hell are people thinking that there are ten millon plus people out there that don't want to work anymore and that they are turning down jobs?
No. Businesses are still cutting jobs and are reluctant to hire. When businesses do hire quite often cutting their offerings to the bone. In San Francisco that means an ad for a receptionist with a college degree with no benefits for $10 an hour. I kid you not. My wife even had a job that requested her age, sex and "absolute minimum acceptable wage" to be submitted with her resume. Why do they do this, because they can, because there are 400 people applying for every job and 60 or so of these applicants are suitable candidates.
Start forcing banks to loan money, start forcing business to hire or lose their government benefits, and then get some job growth before you cut off workers benefits.
My 2-cents.
The problem is that unemployment benefits have an end date. When we start pumping out extensions, we eliminate the recipients' concerns about the money running out.
I realize that the total payment is still insufficient, but it helps the poorest folks get by. And it's true that most of it is spent almost immediately.
A lot of others are forced to change lifestyle, sell the porsche, downsize the house... Sometimes people don't want to make those moves until they have to. It's called denial. And there are people, who will stay unemployed for as long as possible, and not even really look for work until the funding end-of-tunnel is in sight.
That said, it's clear enough that most people are more ambitious than that, and not happy sitting around watching Oprah (or whatever) and wasting away on a couple hundred bucks a week. It's also clear that there are not enough jobs, and that they're being filled by folks taking three steps down to qualify.
Thus, we need to extend unemployment benefits. I worry about those people who lost their jobs before the extension legislation was passed. Those folks are having just as hard a time finding work, and they are eating potatoes... home grown at that.
Unemployment of this magnatude is not a behavior. When so many people are unemployed and so few jobs are available, it is an indicator that something is vastly wrong and needs changed. To judge unemployed workers as bad behavior on an aggregate level doesn't make sense. Unemployment benefits are not a reward. How is reducing one's income significantly a reward? How is not working and using one's hard won education and time-invested training and skills a reward? In the current economic conditions, unemployment benefits are the only tool some of us have to survive.
We are not "bad" because we need unemployment benefits. We are (all of us) bad because so many talented and skilled workers are sitting idle and very few avenues have been opened to tap into this huge pool of available talent. Virtually everyone agrees that jobs need to be created, but I haven't seen any programs or legislation to urge unemployed workers to create their own businesses and thereby create jobs.
I also haven't seen many unemployed workers take a real interest in making changes. Most of the blogs and postings I have reviewed shoulder the responsibility for change onto the government. It would be nice to sit back and believe the government is going to fix this, but I don't.
Agreed! Americans are not to blame for their unemployment, nor should they be labeled "slackers" by anyone. Most of us are taking a huge cut in income when accepting the unemployment check, and that does not measure the hit to our self respect. We're not happy about it, but give us our money back. We paid for our own benefits through taxes over the years, and now we need our money back!
I have been unemployed since 11/30/2008. I am a middle management professional in the medical device business, and UI has helped me survive so far. The 400.00 a week I receive does NOT compare to the 100K salary I have commanded the last several years. Trust me.
Thanks to Obamacare, the medical device manufacturers are not hiring. Why? Because they will be taxed to pay for the bill. Same goes for uncertainty with the business climate. That's why there is 2 TRILLION dollars on the sidelines waiting to see what happens. Set tax policy, repeal Obamacare, and replace it with a common-sense policy, and the economy will spring back into action.
I have applied to 100's of positions and had many interviews. I have been told I am under-qualified, over qualified, under educated, and other reasons too many to list here. I'm also in my 50's and have had "tricky" questions asked during interviews to try to calculate my age. I recently applied for a position and had a phone interview, and in the rejection letter I was told 150 people had applied for the position. I am now applying for anything in the purview of my experience, praying someone will give me a chance.
So, to answer the question: Yes. Otherwise you will see suffering unlike anything since the Great Depression.
I'm a single mom working two jobs, receiving child support when it's convenient, as it seems. My daughter's father has been on unemployment for 2 yrs now. How, is my question. When his benefits run out, my daughter is the one that suffers. All though this doesn't apply to half of the people on unemployment because i do realize that you would like to stay in your field of work, but if it's that bad, wouldn't you work anywhere??? There are jobs out there. McDonalds is always hiring.
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