Quote:
Originally Posted by Nascar1966
You might be right right. Consider this also some folks stay unemployed because they make more collecting unemployment.
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No one makes more money collecting unemployment, as it's based on what the person earned before.
Even were a misanthropic statement like this true, and it's a popular meme in right-wing circles these days (if you take support away from the destitute they'll CHOOSE not to be destitute!), I would still support unemployment benefits, for the simple reason that it benefits me (no, I am not on unemployment). Unemployment benefits, like food stamps, are one of the most effective ways of pumping money into the economy. They work because they are immediately spent: on food, on rent, on gas, on car repairs. That money, taxed from corporations and given to those looking for work, goes back to private businesses in the form of money paid for necessities. It's a symbiotic relationship. We live in a consumption based economy. If people aren't purchasing things, our entire economy suffers. When the economy suffers, we all suffer, unless we are the super-wealthy who live off of investment income, and even then we eventually start to suffer, though not to the level the middle-class do.
Tax cuts to the wealthy do not benefit the economy in the same way, as they tend to invest the extra money (because they actually have extra money), rather than spend it to the degree that the unemployed spend their benefits. Unemployment benefits go, in their entirety, right back into the economy. Which is good for all of us.
The other reason for their existence is that they give people an opportunity to look for work in their field, rather than being economically forced to take the first job available. A technician with two kids who has to immediately take a job at Denny's washing dishes because he has no savings is a technician who is not available to go out on job interviews for openings in his field.
And that's the other thing with unemployment- you must, at any moment, be ready to show that you've been looking for work or your benefits will be cut.
I realize for the DTers who don't believe anything Rush and Beck told them to think, this post will be ignored, but I hope it was at least passably informative to the moderates. Very little media attention is given to the economic benefits of unemployment insurance, and they are, in fact, fairly substantial.