EXTENDED UNEMPLOYMENT BENEFITS DILEM

Message 48 of 4891

I had a neighbor tell me today that Obama has ruined what has taken her three years to accomplish by extending the length of eligibility for unemployment insurance. Her son was fired from a job that she had to force him to get and now he is back on her sofa playing video games. He has not looked for new employment since receiving his first compensation check and is eagerly awaiting news of extended benefits.

Working with the population that I do, I have heard of many people who did not want to work anyway, extolling Obama's new welfare largesse. For these people, I hate it. For those who really can't find employment and are unable to meet basic needs without unemployment benefits, I applaud it. But how many times are benefits to be extended? What is going on with the creation of new jobs that has been so touted?

Anyone have any suggestions as to how the problem of long term joblessness should be handled? How many times unemployment benefits should be extended and raised?

posted by elizkaye

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Where did the jobs go?

1.. Growing population - - - there are more people looking for jobs.
2. Automation - - - robots do much of the welding, painting and assembly in factories.
3. Foreign labor - - - labor is a cost, costs are held to a minimum.
4. Higher aspirations - - - no one wants to pick tomatoes or do repetitious manual labor anymore.
5. Lower motivation levels - If manual labor is all there is, I'll stay home, play videogames and talk on my cell. And I'm not getting up at 5 AM. This is the 21st century.
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posted by KerryCork
25 days ago

Your ASSumptions about where the jobs went are truly staggering in their ignorance Kerry....

posted by TwoSpirits
25 days ago

2 - actually, they are not. Look at a photo of a Ford plant in the sixties and compare it to one of today. There is ,perhaps, one human in today's shot for every ten in the shot from the 60s. Americans do not want to do manual labor - ask any fruit or almond farmer how hard it is to get laborers from among unemployed Americans. While automation has taken over many routine tasks in manufacturing, the population has grown by one hundred million people since I graduated high school. There are few cloth mills in America, no shoe manufacturers, few toy factories. Those jobs have gone abroad. Even infant formula is made abroad. The last one, motivation, does not impact the number of jobs, it limits the number of seekers at the low end of the spectrum and so doesn't really belong on the list.

posted by perm3800
25 days ago

" The last one, motivation, does not impact the number of jobs, it limits the number of seekers at the low end of the spectrum and so doesn't really belong on the list. " Perm

It is also a reason the increasing automation.

posted by KerryCork
25 days ago

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