According to the article on Fox News, “Early last year, 75 percent were receiving checks. The figure is now 48 percent — a shift that points to a growing crisis of long-term unemployment. Nearly one-third of America’s 14 million unemployed have had no job for a year or more.”
Another way to look at this is those who are unemployed form 14 Dec 2009 are now receiving their last check after 99 week without a job. During the same time period, I was dong a short contract until March of 2010 and another nine moth unemployment followed by nine moths of work followed by one moth unemployment before starting a new contract on Monday. Therefore, in other words I was working 25 weeks or more and especially in a self-inflicted depressed economy in Oregon. I cannot buy the line one cannot find, even for a few weeks, suitable work in ones chose field, relocation, and / or retraining during the 99-week period. The 99’ers are very much at fault for their situation.
The real failure here is the unemployment system. The goal of unemployment should not be subsistence while stuck in a low standard of living but restoring people to productive work. In another post, I quoted an MTI professor noting what and unemployed person can accomplish during a 99-week period. Some Ideas I have are nationalizing the unemployment insurance to make unemployment potable. Second is to encourage relocation.
Another fallacy is in the article is $1 spent on unemployment benefits generate up to $1.90 in economic growth. I cannot find any substantive proof. Those who advocate this position fail to account the dollar taken from the productive economy and redistributed. The problem is there a big difference between a product wage and an entitlement. When I work I produce a service or item by taking material of less of value adding my time and skill to make an item or a service of grater value for me or the company. Where the unemployed worker is not productive he or she are not engaged in labor making item or service of great value,; therefore the government take a dollar out of the productive economy and redistributes the bill to the unemployed. The $1.90 return is offset by the dollar has removed from the product economy. In truth a dollar spent on unemployment only generates $.90
Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2011/11/05/most-us-unemployed-no-longer-receive-benefits/#ixzz1cuCZRbPe
