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There is no reason to insult the unemployed.

Unemployment insurance payments are not enough money to sustain the formerly middle-class professionals and tradesman who are being consumed in the bonfires of layoffs and business closings.

At best you are going to see about one forth of your former income for about 26 weeks. That might just be enough to make your apartment rent or mortgage payment, but probably not. Do you eat food? Do you think you can get to job interviews without a car?

By 99 weeks (if you got the extension), your savings are gone and your address is about to change for the worse.

Working at almost any skilled job pays better than collecting UI checks. Don't kid yourself otherwise.

Here's the catch though - there are 400 applicants for that skilled job opening. Maybe you'll be the luck one today!

So in the mean time you say you are willing to "take anything" and apply for that fast-food job that pays 7.25/per hour? Guess what! The crew leader is (insert different ethnic background here) and only hires co-ethnics. You are not in the club.

Send out the (expletive deleted) UI checks! It's cheaper and more effective than pouring hundred billion dollar bailouts into the hands of the banksters.

And if you want to put people back to work?

Dump "Obamacare" completely.
Drastically cut back the authority of the EPA.
Make "student loans" fully dischargable in bankruptcy.
Eliminate deficiency judgements when homeowners lose their properties to forclosure.
Make "loan writedowns and writoffs" a non-taxable event to borrowers when incurred during settlement proceedings. (You cannot squeeze blood out of a turnip).

There are people receiving unemployment benefits who could find work if they wanted to. If you consider telling that truth an insult, so be it.

Here is an example of what I am talking about from Instapundit.

Reader Isaac Vavra emails: “I’m a 20 year old who works at a McDonalds and saved up enough money this year to travel throughout South America. I met a kid in San Jose, Costa Rica: He is in his 20′s, he got laid off from his job with Medicare, and is now living down here in Costa Rica. He says he has enough to stay for five years. He is collecting unemployment and just withdraws the money in Costa Rica.”

I don't know what you call collecting unemployment benefits in Costa Rica - but I call that being a deadbeat.