Unemployment Compensation - The Usual Tired Playbook
Unemployment compensation is always going to be one of those subjects that want to tug at your heart and leave your mind under-worked.
You know, when you start to feel sorry for people and empathy gets in the way of common sense.
The current fight in Congress regarding extending unemployment benefits would be so amusing except for the fact that this matter affects so many people in such serious economic times.
Republicans are basically insisting that the right thing to do is, do nothing - do not extend the benefit period as this will in turn motivate people to go look for work.
Make sense, right? Until you ask the question, where are the jobs? With so many out of work and so few jobs, what you are really doing is hoping your little theory is right and showcasing your beliefs about how people should function.
Here we go again.
It is the usual stuck-in-place thinking.
No innovation, very little analysis and too much playing to the usual self-serving political mantra.
They go to their play-book every time, even when the ground has shifted under them completely.
No real solutions, just dogma.
Democrats of course, they too drawing from their usual play-book, will have none of this.
It is unconscionable, they argue, to just leave people on their own like this in this terrible jobs environment.
Hey, they are right.
But neither this thinking nor the thinking of the Republicans is going to solve this problem for anyone.
Once again we see people who we have elected to lead this country more interested in massaging their political philosophy.
Well here goes.
I for one am not interested in your damn political philosophy.
If you are not prepared to apply yourself and come up with workable solutions to the problems of State, then you are in the wrong place because all you are serving is your huge ego and small beliefs.
Go preach on the street corner.
It is unforgivable that the system of handling involuntary unemployment for workers in the US is in the state that it is given the changes that have taken place in worker demographics and in the economy overall.
And worse, it is instructive of how bankrupt our politics has become when all we can get from the Democrats and Republicans in congress is the same crappy solutions and posturing that reflect only their way of thinking but does nothing to really address the real problem at hand.
Many, too many you could say, of the jobs lost will not reappear in the form they were before.
It means that the skills sets available are going to be useless over time.
What we should have been doing years ago is focus on retraining - at any age.
What about ramping up the retraining support systems in place to respond to the current job needs of the economy and the trends we can see? Further, we should be using the unemployment compensation funds for each unemployed in a more creative manner such as encouraging more people to use some of their skills to start their own business.
I have seen people who were not prepared to take the plunge when they were employed forced to do it when they became unemployed and even unemployable.
Most of them have no regrets and wished they had done it a long time ago.
Of course people are going to be less motivated to look for work when they have unemployment compensation funds coming in.
No one should argue with that.
But what is your point really when the job market is so terrible? And why even bother being so empathetic to the plight of the unemployed when you know this very plight is not solvable by just extending the compensation period.
Because you know we cannot keep on handing out money to people for doing nothing.
And you know no matter the level of motivation, if the jobs are not there, yes a few will find work, but in this climate a few will not even begin to solve the problem.
But maybe I am wrong on this.
Maybe these people are really convinced that what they are proposing to address unemployment compensation makes sense and is enough.
Maybe it has nothing to do with their political philosophy.
Maybe it is really a reflection of their abilities to come up with workable solutions.
God, are we in it deep if that is the case.
You know, when you start to feel sorry for people and empathy gets in the way of common sense.
The current fight in Congress regarding extending unemployment benefits would be so amusing except for the fact that this matter affects so many people in such serious economic times.
Republicans are basically insisting that the right thing to do is, do nothing - do not extend the benefit period as this will in turn motivate people to go look for work.
Make sense, right? Until you ask the question, where are the jobs? With so many out of work and so few jobs, what you are really doing is hoping your little theory is right and showcasing your beliefs about how people should function.
Here we go again.
It is the usual stuck-in-place thinking.
No innovation, very little analysis and too much playing to the usual self-serving political mantra.
They go to their play-book every time, even when the ground has shifted under them completely.
No real solutions, just dogma.
Democrats of course, they too drawing from their usual play-book, will have none of this.
It is unconscionable, they argue, to just leave people on their own like this in this terrible jobs environment.
Hey, they are right.
But neither this thinking nor the thinking of the Republicans is going to solve this problem for anyone.
Once again we see people who we have elected to lead this country more interested in massaging their political philosophy.
Well here goes.
I for one am not interested in your damn political philosophy.
If you are not prepared to apply yourself and come up with workable solutions to the problems of State, then you are in the wrong place because all you are serving is your huge ego and small beliefs.
Go preach on the street corner.
It is unforgivable that the system of handling involuntary unemployment for workers in the US is in the state that it is given the changes that have taken place in worker demographics and in the economy overall.
And worse, it is instructive of how bankrupt our politics has become when all we can get from the Democrats and Republicans in congress is the same crappy solutions and posturing that reflect only their way of thinking but does nothing to really address the real problem at hand.
Many, too many you could say, of the jobs lost will not reappear in the form they were before.
It means that the skills sets available are going to be useless over time.
What we should have been doing years ago is focus on retraining - at any age.
What about ramping up the retraining support systems in place to respond to the current job needs of the economy and the trends we can see? Further, we should be using the unemployment compensation funds for each unemployed in a more creative manner such as encouraging more people to use some of their skills to start their own business.
I have seen people who were not prepared to take the plunge when they were employed forced to do it when they became unemployed and even unemployable.
Most of them have no regrets and wished they had done it a long time ago.
Of course people are going to be less motivated to look for work when they have unemployment compensation funds coming in.
No one should argue with that.
But what is your point really when the job market is so terrible? And why even bother being so empathetic to the plight of the unemployed when you know this very plight is not solvable by just extending the compensation period.
Because you know we cannot keep on handing out money to people for doing nothing.
And you know no matter the level of motivation, if the jobs are not there, yes a few will find work, but in this climate a few will not even begin to solve the problem.
But maybe I am wrong on this.
Maybe these people are really convinced that what they are proposing to address unemployment compensation makes sense and is enough.
Maybe it has nothing to do with their political philosophy.
Maybe it is really a reflection of their abilities to come up with workable solutions.
God, are we in it deep if that is the case.