I suggest Washington DC.
Posted on 02/12/2014 1:44:35 PM PST by Responsibility2nd
The end to federal jobless benefits for nearly 2 million people has sparked a bitter debate in Congress about whether Washington is abandoning desperate households or simply protecting strained government coffers.
It is also providing real-time answers to a question economists have long pondered: How do people survive when they suddenly have no money coming in?
Studies show that about a third of the people cut off from long-term unemployment benefits will find help from Social Security or other government programs. Others will cobble together dwindling savings or support from family. But most baffling to economists are the people who appear to come up with more-idiosyncratic solutions, which are tough to identify and almost impossible to track.
~snip~
Never in more than 65 years have so many workers been without a job and without a government lifeline. Congress cut off 1 million people en masse in December when it permitted a special emergency program for the long-term unemployed to lapse. Since then, their ranks have been growing by about 72,000 a week, according to the National Employment Law Project (NELP), which lobbies on behalf of the jobless.
~snip~
Last year, lawmakers cut the maximum benefit to 73 weeks. Then, at the end of December, Congress let federal aid lapse altogether.
Mitchell Hirsch of NELP said people were “thrust essentially overnight from a situation where they were struggling to make ends meet with their benefits into one where they’re now struggling just to survive.” Six weeks later, he said, “what we’re hearing . . . is increasingly desperate.”
(Excerpt) Read more at washingtonpost.com ...
Many of them take a job that pays less than the unemployment benefits. After a while they increase their job skills and make more money. That is what I did.
We all know the answer. The benefits are not going to end.
Should never have paid people for 99 weeks. Total insanity.
They sit at home and blame Bush.
They become Republicans.
Which is why the Washington Post has no idea what happens to them.
I suggest Washington DC.
Some of us would rather cut our throats than go after these benefits. Or save up our sleeping pills.
Yes, I know, the obvious answer is “they go to work.”
But seriously, the fact that the Compost had to go through such a tortuous hand-wringing answer in blind avoidance of the obvious answer is, in a nutshell, proof of everything wrong with our society.
My husband was on unemployment (after 40 years employment) and got about 6 - 8 months unemployment while we both looked for jobs. Who got those 99 weeks, I’d like to know.
Many do go to work in the pharmaceutical industry: meth labs and pill mills. Sadly there are countless communities across fly over country where the factory has closed and illegal drugs keep cash circulating in the county. Portsmouth, Ohio comes to mind.
I thought Obummer saved the economy.
Our production supervisor tells me that every opening in this plant he interviews for always has a couple of well-qualified candidates who turn down offers because (a)we don't offer union scale wages they get before or (b)their unemployment benefits haven't run out yet.
Our pay isn't that bad as you can judge by the vehicles which even our entry level production workers have in the parking lot.
Well here is what I did. Back when husseins uncle Carter destroyed the economy I was a well paid carpenter. That ended for most construction people in early 1980. Of course it was blamed on Reagan because he had been in office for about an hour and a half.
I had no education, no money and no clue. The only thing I had was a strong work ethic. I started doing whatever construction work I could get my hands on.
I, like so many others, really struggled for a few years. Eventually I started doing specialty work that had nothing to do with carpentry. When someon would ask me if I could do a certain project I alaways responded that of course I could even though I had no clue what I was doing. Eventually I gained a reputation and a short list of customers who need my particular and unusual services.
I have never had a “real job” since. I make about a hundred grand a year, still have no education but have hired many “educated” folks along the way to shovel dirt and run a wheelbarrow for me. It is funny watching an MBA trying to figure out how to push a wheelbarrow. They must not have taught that in MBA school
My daughter’s company closed her division. She received unemployment checks and also found a little part-time job at a bank while searching high and low for a real job that would actually keep their house payments paid. She was getting discouraged.
WE prayed for her here. Her unemployment benefits ran out at the end of the year; her new full-time job started then. She’s one of the lucky ones. Though her new full-time job pays half what her old full-time job paid, they can still “make it.” But with a considerably lowered standard of living.
Many hardworking people are in similar circumstances, less lucky perhaps than Katy, less prayed-for. They’d love to go to work, but where’s the work? China?
File for “disability”?
The important thing is that they have escaped the dreaded “job lock”. Maybe they can write some poetry or learn to play a pan flute.
You mean JOB BLOCK?
God bless your daughter, Veto! I hope she can only go up and up and up!
We know what DC will do next about the problem...give green cards to at least 12 million illegal aliens. That will solve the problem with unemployment.
Until a million unemployed do show up and surround the WH and Capital with pitch forks and torches..nothing will change.
7 years ago my well paid job with terrific benefits came to a sudden end. After having work for 37 year I found no one hiring full timers, PERIOD. I went on long term unemployment. I took every temp job I was offered (all at half the rate I used to get). During this period there were many times no temp jobs were available. At one point I was working 3 part time jobs. No benefits and no insurance. Just prior to the end of my eligibilty for unemployment I got a minumun wage job full time with insurance. How did we do it? You cut back. Got rid of the house phone, got rid of the Sat TV, set the winter heat lower did not use AC at all unless it was 100> etc etc.. Oh and I ended up with a decent job but in the next city so now driving a lot more...
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