What are your thoughts about this?

This is a statement from Representative Steve King (R-IA) about unemployment. This is a red meat platform issue for the Republican Party and I would like to know what your opinion is. Do you agree and why? No snark or contentiousness from me, I am looking for just an honest discussion.

REP. STEVE KING: United States of America borrows money and hands it to people and tells them, you don't have to work for this. You don't have to produce anything for this. We just want you to spend it. That's your patriotic duty, to take the money that we borrowed from the Chinese, and the debt burden we put on our grandchildren, and put it in people's hands and say it's a patriotic thing, take your food stamps and take your rent subsidy and heat subsidy and your unemployment check, and go engage in commerce, that's patriotic. Um, no? [...]
The former speaker of the House, Speaker Pelosi, has consistently said that unemployment checks are one of those reliable and immediate forms of economy recovery, that you get a lot of bang for your buck when you pay people not to work, and they will go out and spend that money immediately, therefore we should pass out unemployment checks and stimulate the economy. That statement is ridiculous where I come from, Mr. Speaker. To pay people not to work, and somehow in that formula it stimulates the economy. [...]

The 80 million Americans that are of working age but are simply not in the workforce need to be put to work. We can't have a nation of slackers and then have me have to sit in the Judiciary Committee listening to them argue that there's work that Americans won't do, so we have to import people to do the work that Americans won't do, and borrow money to pay the welfare of people that won't work. That is a foolish thing for a nation to do. We've gotta get this country back to work and get those people out of the slacker rolls and onto the employed rolls.

I like the idea. I am a lot softer on FDR than many of my conservative friends. I loved his CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and other programs. It was WORKfare, not WELLfare. If you are able, and you agree to work, we will take care of you. There is NOTHING wrong with this IMHO.

Of course if someone is truly disabled, elderly, etc. then they should be helped without having to work. But what is wrong with getting your hands dirty? I had jobs which wore me out, got me filthy and made me tired as hell but I did it to get by and pay for tuition and other bills. If the work sucks, it encourages them to learn a trade, get a skill and enter the work force. In the meantime, they are producing something of value for themselves and the country. People can learn a trade and then take that skill and apply it to the real world.

The sad truth is that people will not take the option to work for money if they know they can get something for free. If we cut-off all well-fare I guarantee people will find work or flock to this sort of program, because they are forced to. Why would anyone want to work when they are given so much for free and without any expectation of repayment?

Study after study have shown that most people (not just Americans) are able to find work when their unemployment benefit ends.

Study after study have shown that most people (not just Americans) are able to find work when their unemployment benefit ends. Originally Posted by gooose

Can you find one for me? Im searching for some info on your claim and let you know what I find.

yep and even the useless homeless assholes that beg on the street corner, they have enough energy to stand in the cold or in the blistering sun and hold up a damn sign, what the hell grab a shovel, hire on at the f...ing convienent store there standing all day in front of. every body needs and should work thats able to. and i agree anything is better than wellfare.

I like the idea. I am a lot softer on FDR than many of my conservative friends. I loved his CCC (Civilian Conservation Corps) and other programs. It was WORKfare, not WELLfare. If you are able, and you agree to work, we will take care of you. There is NOTHING wrong with this IMHO.

Of course if someone is truly disabled, elderly, etc. then they should be helped without having to work. But what is wrong with getting your hands dirty? I had jobs which wore me out, got me filthy and made me tired as hell but I did it to get by and pay for tuition and other bills. If the work sucks, it encourages them to learn a trade, get a skill and enter the work force. In the meantime, they are producing something of value for themselves and the country. People can learn a trade and then take that skill and apply it to the real world.

The sad truth is that people will not take the option to work for money if they know they can get something for free. If we cut-off all well-fare I guarantee people will find work or flock to this sort of program, because they are forced to. Why would anyone want to work when they are given so much for free and without any expectation of repayment? Originally Posted by Marcus78

It's funny you say that Marcus because my grandfather worked in FDR's CCC camps and that was the primary reason they were able to survive. My grandfather lived under a bridge with my grandmother when he was able to take advantage of that program and then went on to serve in WWII and Vietnam. That's also why my grandmother never allowed anyone in our family to be nothing but Democrats. LOL!!

Study after study have shown that most people (not just Americans) are able to find work when their unemployment benefit ends. Originally Posted by gooose

Hey gooose, I found this article but Im not familiar with this website so I cant substantiate what it says:

Do generous unemployment benefits prolong the length of unemployment?
by Xin Lu on 27 March 2009 131 comments



The latest news is that unemployment benefits will be extended from 59 weeks to 79 weeks in California with the help of the new Federal stimulus money. The maximum benefit has risen to $475 a week and it means that some of the unemployed Californians could collect over $2000 a month for more than one and half years. This makes me wonder if people will now stay unemployed longer because they have more benefits for a longer period of time. After all, more "free" money would make a person less motivated to find a job, right?

Here is some anecdotal evidence that more unemployment benefits actually makes people less inclined to work. There are a couple of my friends who actually want to be laid off just so they can collect the unemployment. They all qualify for the maximum benefit and they do not particularly like their jobs. They actually do not mind getting a "vacation" while living on unemployment because they are young and single and their expenses are low due to shared living conditions with their parents or friends. There are a couple others who are already unemployed who think it is awesome because they do not really have to do much to collect the money. At least one of them plans to use the break to prepare for graduate school, and that seems fairly productive. If you think about it, $475 a week is nearly $12 an hour if you consider each week as 40 work hours. $12 an hour is much better than minimum wage, and they do not have to put in much effort to get this money.


Then I did a bit of research and it seems that I am not the first person to question the effects of generous long term unemployment benefits. There has been many studies done on the amount of unemployment insurance in relation to how long people stayed unemployed, and most of them do find that more unemployment benefits do steer people to stay out of work for a longer duration. This is not really surprising because if the unemployment benefits cover someone's expenses then they would not be in a hurry to find another job.

yep and even the useless homeless assholes that beg on the street corner, they have enough energy to stand in the cold or in the blistering sun and hold up a damn sign, what the hell grab a shovel, hire on at the f...ing convienent store there standing all day in front of. every body needs and should work thats able to. and i agree anything is better than wellfare. Originally Posted by bdforyou

Hey bd, glad to hear from you and Marcus. Have you ever talked to any of those homeless people? I use to work on Broadway and Hildebrand (You can probably guess what company that was!) and I would cross paths with the homeless at the Valero towards town. I almost always gave change or bought a soda or sandwich for some of them when I had a chance. One thing that stood out was that almost every one of them was, or seemed to be at least, mentally ill or extremely LD. I don't know that a vast majority of them are able to work or that an employer would want to be responsible for their actions.

Study after study have shown that most people (not just Americans) are able to find work when their unemployment benefit ends. Originally Posted by gooose

One thing that needs to be considered is that the jobs have to be there to go to work and right now there aren't any.

2 below are excerpts from published studies. and the last one is a link to a Macroeconomics book.

7. Summary and Conclusion
This paper provides new evidence on job search intensity and Unemployment
Insurance. We use data from the American Time Use Survey and model job search
intensity as time allocated to job search activities, consistent with theoretical models. We
find that time allocated to job search is inversely related to the maximum weekly benefit
amount for UI eligible workers, with an elasticity of -1.6 to -2.2, which is large enough to
account for much of the gap in job search time between the U.S. and Europe. We also
find that job search increases sharply in the weeks prior to benefit exhaustion, in line with
Mortensen‟s (1977) model. These findings highlight the utility of simple search models
for understanding job search behavior and UI.

The authors also found that the amount of time spent on
job searching varied as the end of the worker’s eligibility
approached, which occurs in most state programs after week
26 of unemployment. For workers eligible for benefits, the
time spent on job searching increased dramatically between
weeks 15 and 26, from less than 20 minutes per day to more
than 70 minutes.

Page 160 "Case Study"

http://books.google.com/books?id=B-i...search&f=false

2 below are excerpts from published studies. and the last one is a link to a Macroeconomics book.

7. Summary and Conclusion
This paper provides new evidence on job search intensity and Unemployment
Insurance. We use data from the American Time Use Survey and model job search
intensity as time allocated to job search activities, consistent with theoretical models. We
find that time allocated to job search is inversely related to the maximum weekly benefit
amount for UI eligible workers, with an elasticity of -1.6 to -2.2, which is large enough to
account for much of the gap in job search time between the U.S. and Europe. We also
find that job search increases sharply in the weeks prior to benefit exhaustion, in line with
Mortensen‟s (1977) model. These findings highlight the utility of simple search models
for understanding job search behavior and UI.

The authors also found that the amount of time spent on
job searching varied as the end of the worker’s eligibility
approached, which occurs in most state programs after week
26 of unemployment. For workers eligible for benefits, the
time spent on job searching increased dramatically between
weeks 15 and 26, from less than 20 minutes per day to more
than 70 minutes.

Page 160 "Case Study"

http://books.google.com/books?id=B-i...search&f=false Originally Posted by gooose

This is a good find gooose and you did a damn good job; lots of information about unemployment and its causality. One caveat is present though and it is a pivotal one, and that is that in both links and examples we posted, neither one of them mentions the state of the economy on which these findings are based. Now since both of these postings are in macro terms, I can understand why, but considering that, the economy would certainly change how unemployment benefits are distributed and for how long.

I have more to say but I'm out for the night, I'll add later.