Thinking Straight on Unemployment Benefits

A recent article in ThinkProgress explained that cutting off unemployment benefits didn’t actually encourage people to get jobs. Citing a load of statistics, it showed how the majority of the benficiaries of unemployment benefits don’t actually find jobs when their unemployment benefits are cut off:

So what does happen when people lose their benefits? A 2012 report from the Government Accountability Office found that their poverty rate spikes by 5 percent, a third turn to government programs, and 90 percent turn to family members or money from retirement or savings accounts.

Here’s the problem. This is not a single-pronged issue. You can’t pull just part of the civil government’s vast welfare state, and expect that to work out. Halfway systems and compromise solutions almost always take the worst of both worlds and marry them together. The solution is not less government involvement in welfare and charity. It’s either all or nothing. Either we have a nanny state entirely, or not at all.

Because think about the current situation. If states aren’t shelling out unemployment benefits, does that mean those states don’t take as much in taxes or federal aid? Nope. So the money is just being used in some other big government project.

The real solution here is to actually cut the federal and state budgets. A huge amount. The only way to really solve unemployment is to have more jobs. Not government jobs or government-created jobs. Those are just different names for welfare. Real jobs created by a real demand.

What would create that scenario? Lowering taxes across the board so that businesses and individuals have income to spend on expanding their businesses or buying services and goods.

The ThinkProgress article is right about one thing. We need to stop viewing the people on these programs as parasites. They aren’t ultimately the ones to blame. Our power-hungry representatives are to blame. We need to be cutting off welfare and charity to the civil government!

28 responses

  1. Minkoff for Congress ( or President). The real answer to the problem is LESS GOVERNMENT. (Much less)

    • Absolutely, and the first cuts from the biggest waste of taxpayer money – the defense segment.

      • I agree, lets retire all but 2 aircraft carriers and park them side by side where we can guard them with a minimum of men. Same thing with excess aircraft. Nobody would dare attack us, oh wait, we were attacked in December of 1941 and all the ship and airplanes were sitting ducks. But that will never happen again so we don’t need to plan for the worst. It’s more important that we take money from those that earned it and give it to those that did not. I support a helping hand, but 3 to 4 generations of handouts is NOT a helping hand.

  2. Mr. Minkoff forgot “corporate welfare.” If he wants to talk money then he’s neglected to mention the corporations that offer garbage wages while the rest of us have to foot the bill for food stamps.

    BP oil is fighting lawsuits from that Gulf oil spill. Republicans have given away billions in subsidies to oil companies. Oil is still washing up on the shores of gulf states. Many Americans who helped with the clean up or affected by it are sick.

    Justices Alito and Scalia have children who are lawyers for BP.

      • Also failed to mention that BP has now been forced to pay ANY business that CLAIMS to have been effected even without proof that they were. And that is the minimum wage is raised to $15/hr, cost of everything else is going to go up too. Money doesn’t grow on trees, and if you really want to see unemployment go up, raise the minimum wage in this depression we are in….it’ll make the 1930’s look like good times!

        • BP wants to go to The Supreme Court.
          You’re in the minority when it comes to the min. wage. That includes surveys that conservatives responded to. It is fiscally conservative to pay workers a higher min. wage. Right now our taxes are paying for food stamps because the min. wage is too low. Shielding corporations from giving a fair wage is called corporate welfare.

          • Actually I am not in the minority of thinking $15/hr @ McDonalds is sustainable. BP should go to the Supreme Court. They should pay for damages, but there should be proof that the damage existed. Our taxes are paying for food stamps because obama has more than DOUBLED the number of people on food stamps & ran campaign ads IN MEXICO that he would take care of everyone that came here! Do you really think that food stamps should go to NON CITIZENS that DON’T pay taxes, 23 year old surfers to eat lobster that should be working, and for people to spend money at strip clubs & pot stores? There is corporate welfare, just ask GM and GE, but there is far more welfare for people who SHOULD be working and are not!
            AND, a FAIR wage should be judged on the work done, not what you think you should be making….right now we’re lucky they haven’t automated and gotten rid of 1/2 their workers!

          • They will automate…higher minimum or not. And btw, :”surfers” should not be plural. Fox has milked that guy for all he is worth.

          • I still believe this surfer guy is so blatantly a fraud that he is the poster child for it. Because if there were more just like him (please note those last three words), I am sure Fox would have them on also. I mean, why stop at one if more prove your point better? If you do a search, he is the only one that shows up as a surfer dude fraud. Now, is there other fraud in the realm of food stamps? Sure. Just like there is fraud in tax paying, fraud in companies that apply for government contracts, fraud in predatory lending, fraud in sports, fraud in medicare billing, need I go on? I still say “surfers” should be singular, not plural.

        • Hey Beckah, If $15.00 is good… why not $50.00? Right? Sometimes you have to regress a little and “think” like a lib. (wink, both eyes)

          • Well why stop at $50? If $15 is good, $50 is better, then $100 should be “fair”! Can you imagine the price of a “Happy Meal” if they raised the wage to $50?

          • How right you are Beckah. Congress can prevent that problem too, by passing a law to freeze the current price of that “Happy Meal” and everything else.

          • I understand what you’re saying, but I don’t exactly agree. I think we need LESS (much less) government “help”. They have regulated everything so much so that we no longer have anything that resembles a free market. Supply and demand do a pretty good job of keeping prices in check. And if we don’t stop printing money soon, it’s going to cost a wheelbarrow full of money to buy a loaf of bread (just like pre-WWII Germany!

          • We agree 100%. I was being funny when I suggested to freeze the price of goods. Wages and I think goods were frozen in the Carter administration. I know I had to wait for my 10cent raise.

      • “Court slaps down BP’s motion to torpedo its own gulf spill settlement”
        Gibson, Dunn and Crutcher is the law firm handling the BP oil spill case.

        • So what? Show where either has even attempted to influence their fathers. “Scalia, who does not argue before the Supreme Court or share in the firm’s Supreme Court case revenues to avoid a conflict of interest.” You are the one who should do better research. You are no more than a libtard tool grasping at non-existent straws. I reiterate, your “lies are getting even more outrageous than usual”.

      • Instead of making ad hominem attacks why don’t you look up the facts, and the fact is this: the BP spill has killed the Gulf; their corexit solution made the oil sink to the bottom and now the gulf’s bottom is covered in a layer of toxic goo. Nothing is fixed, and the MSM just keep it quiet.

          • So you agree that BP spill has killed the Gulf – good for you – maybe there is hope for deniers after all.

      • What lies. Everything he says can easily be verified. Just Google: “BP oil is fighting lawsuits from Gulf oil spill” – you really make yourself look like a fool with those type of statements.

  3. In the wake of working for 25 years for someone else I picked it was the perfect time for a change, trading was the reaction for me in light of the fact that I need to work from home. I say quit working for someone else and benefit .Check out the site Traders Superstore, essentially Google them you should have the ability to uncover them, these honorable men are positively doing it right and make you inquire as to why everybody isn’t like them.

  4. Have more jobs is the answer, sadly we are leading the world in exporting
    jobs and importing workers, the reason being it drives down wages and creates
    greater wealth for Chamber of Commerce members Soros, and Zuckerberg who openly
    stated they would spend millions to defeat anyone opposing the open border cheap
    labor push.

    Politicians allow for almost two years of unemployment benefits along with
    food stamps, energy and housing subsidies not to help anyone but to buy their
    silence. Without the benefits people would stand up and demand an end to
    both illegal and mass immigration.

    Two reasons for them are to drive down wages and change the make up of
    voters, neither will build a better stronger America both will enhance the
    wealth of the buyers and sellers of the American people.

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