GOP Sen. Kyl: Unemployment Benefits Make People Not Want To Get A Job
You can always count on the HuffPo for a sensational headline, whether the actual story backs it up or not. But in this case they have quotes: “In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,” said Sen. Kyl after stumbling across the obvious by noting that unemployment insurance doesn’t create new jobs. Genius. No wonder this guy makes at least $174,000/year with pension and benefits. It’s not as if Sen. Kyl’s honorable [sic] colleagues on the other side of the aisle are actually interested in earning their $174,000/year working for the benefit of the public either. And the worst part is that all across America people are reading that headline and shaking their head in the affirmative. The lazy and degenerate moochers sucking the hard workers dry.
Look out, bitches, you don’t know what the bottom looks like because you believe that if you don’t open you’re eyes it isn’t there. But you’ll find out…
Go find the actual unemployment and underemployment numbers. I’m not gonna do it for you; you’re too coddled from being fed information by National Propaganda Radio and Fixed News. You know damned well that there’s no truth in the news and no news in the truth, but you want to believe. You need to believe. What would there be without hope, right? Let me know when hope starts putting food on the tables of the millions who aren’t working or who are barely working.
Yeah, there are a few people happy to mooch of the labor of others…besides for the bankers, politicians and traders. There are a few raging alcoholics, serial killers, junkies, cokeheads, pedophiles, and all the rest. But when a Sen. who spends most of his time fundraising for the next cycle while collecting his $174,000/year and favors from the industries he represents starts bitching about the no-good lazy workers trying to get a free ride…and heads all across this once-great nation start nodding…during a time of massive real unemployment, well then you know that we are well and truly fucked.
Because the majority of those people on unemployment benefits want to work. They want to support their families. They don’t want to see their kids get sick and not be able to afford care without turning to “government handouts.” Let’s pause here, since health care is a topic of conversation. If we really were the richest nation on Earth, then we’d probably all have the best health care in the world at an affordable rate. Maybe Sen. Kyl could look the fuck into that, eh?
How many people lost their jobs, have two kids and a mortgage? How many of them would go completely under without those benefits? Should they go on welfare? Eat the damned kids? Exactly what, dear leadership, should these people do?
Maybe nobody in Washington understands that this shining consumer/service economy that they’ve been touting the benefits of (for the benefit of all the neo-liberal Randians, see above: bankers, politicians and traders) requires everybody to have plenty of disposable income. The civil engineer gets laid off in a country with crumbling infrastructure. He does the logical thing and tightens his belt. Fewer discretionary purchases lead to less revenue for the corporations that employ people. And since less revenue hurts the all important bottom line, it must be made up somewhere. So someone else gets laid off.
This is your way of life trickling down the motherfucking drain.
Sen. Kyl probably thinks that tax cuts will spur employment growth, and i’ll bet that he’d be willing to trot out the old “entrepreneurs and small business people on Main Street are America’s economic engine” shtick. Sen. Kyl is a liar. He must know that only Luxembourg ranks below us amongst developed nations in terms of percent of the population that is self-employed. He knows it because like his esteemed colleagues on both sides of the aisle he has been doing everything in his power for decades to stifle the American people.
Like the rest of the sociopath-enamored Randians who purport to love and lead this nation, he’s one of the guys dismembering the American Dream. The murder mystery may never be solved, but the flesh eaters and necrophiliacs are all too brazenly obvious in their tastes.
Categories: Economy, Politics/Law/Government
Progressive Culture | Scholars & Rogues 
The answer for the unemployed is just as obvious to Kyle as it is to Bunning: If you can’t find a regular job, play professional baseball.
Lex what you need is a little passion here.
I know unemployed people doing both, one looking for work and the other admits to coasting on the system. Both have families. I don’t think either has a mortgage, but they still have to live somewhere. It’s a complicated subject, but I wouldn’t agree with the Senator that most people won’t work if the benefits are extended. The one coasting had a job and wasn’t going to quit, the factory just moved to Mexico and he decided to take some time off. There aren’t a whole lot of jobs in my town anyway and when 600 people are put out of work there really aren’t any jobs. The one looking for work has moved to a new town, but still hasn’t found employment. What can you do?
Retro, how on earth can anyone make it on unemployment benefits?? Good Lord. I can’t imagine trying to make it on that pittance.
Lex, this is a brilliant screed against the evil we face. I went to the EXILED piece on Ayn Rand and had much of what I thought about her confirmed – she’s a psychopath masquerading as a philosopher. With millions of acolytes proselytizing her hatred as sound public policy….
Man, we’re so screwed….
Hey Jim, wanna write a controversial, best-selling book? Go through Rand’s body of work (I’ve been through most of her essays) and compare her philosophy of human nature with the actual evidence gathered through nearly 100 years of psychological testing and, more recently, neuropsychological imaging. Philosophy loses pretty quickly to science when philosophy is just dead wrong. Rand is as correct about human nature as Aristotle was about the motion of bodies: not at all.
What floors me, though, is the idea that basic human laws common to all large civilizations of which we’re aware could possibly grow out of the human nature she puts forward as “truth.”
Thanks, Jim.
JS, that would be an interesting task. Daunting, not because of the amount of work, but the uphill battle it would be to get people to read it after investing the large amount of work. I have my theories on why she’s so popular…
Retro, this wasn’t passionate enough? I know that some people coast and different people do it for different reasons. I’m of mixed feelings on the coasting. What else are you going to do when there aren’t any jobs in the area and yours moved to Mexico, or China, or India? If Sen. Kyle and his ilk are so worried about free loaders, maybe they should put some effort into making sure there are good jobs for everyone who wants one. Then they can lecture the freeloaders.
I think Retro accidentally left out the emoticon for sarcasm. 🙂
I think that most people on unemployment want to work but there is no reason why they can’t prove it. They should be required to submit applications or go to school for new skills for the work place.
Yes, it was sarcasm.
I have no idea how people live on unemployment, but you do what you have to do. I agree that more effort should be put to finding a way to keep jobs here (where ever your “here” happens to be) because not everyone is college material. And there is nothing wrong with that.
JSO said:
The other problems are: 1. Abject fear that it will run out before you get a job. 2. Coming up with funds to pay the income tax on it (that they don’t withhold — two low blows in one).
All things considered, a terror-filled experience. (I’ve been on it twice.)
Cracked: I can’t speak for modern unemployment benefits, and for all I know the rules are different from one state to the next, but the one time I was on unemployment way back in the 80s, you did have to submit applications/resumes and give a list of those to keep your benefits.
Luckily, I was only on for a few weeks, but like Russ said, it was a nail-biting experience.
I believe that you are required to prove that you’re looking for work (i don’t think taking classes helps at all, but i could be wrong). The exception is if you’re job is considered “seasonal” or if the layoff is truly temporary, i.e. the company says, “You’ll be coming back to work between X and Y.”
I get about 5 weeks off per year. (In two blocks.) Because my job is technically “seasonal” i’m allowed to collect unemployment benefits when i’m off. Simple as calling and cashing the checks; no looking for work. I don’t collect the benefits because i know when these times are coming and save for them, because i believe the benefits are there for people who lose a job. And frankly, by the time those two dates roll around i’m wiped out and consider it more a vacation than being laid off. (I also don’t have kids.)
More like the American “Scream” with Obama in whiteface, red cowl and steel blue knife blade shredding what’s left of the Constitution, our remaining unforeclosed Obamavillas and the life of dupes abroad and the healthy, happy equability of his fellow Americans here at home. What a jackass soul.
Lex:
But that’s exactly the problem – these numbnuts DO think we have the best healthcare system in the world! They say so all the time. As for affordability, if they even mention it they fall back on something like “Well, the one thing we DON’T want to do is let the government take control of it or regulate it more,” blah blah blah private enterprise, blah blah free market, blah blah slippery slope blah blah socialism. They repeat this preposterous bullshit constantly, like a mantra – which I guess is how magical thinking gets firmly established, off in some nether region of the brain where reason can’t find it.
I can barely (and only briefly) stand the Kafka of it all anymore: white is black, and black is white… and apparently, right is wrong and wrong is right. Winning is everything, and “the good of the country” is to re-elect me.
I can tell you for a fact–you are required to prove you are looking for work and/or in training. I can tell you that if your job was sent overseas, you can also get government money to be retrained in a field that is in higher demand. i can tell you that and much more.
I personally want to work…don’t want to be using government handouts…I don’t want to be turning 50 with a nine year old daughter a mortgage and no job…we can’t always get what we want. Try paying a mortgage on $361/week. The is the highest amount you can get on unemployment!
I worked for the same company for 16 years. I love working. I certainly never expected my job to be sent to Pakistan. So here am I one of the fat and lazy returning to school on goverment money looking for a handout.