Unemployment Extension Passes Hurdle in Senate...

[Minimalist]

[Crossless2.0]

Of course, the Senate is not the chamber where good ideas go to die these days; that distinction belongs to the House. I doubt the teabaggers will endorse anything as humane as extending unemployment.

[Minimalist]

Yep...how dare these unemployed fuckers want to eat!

[Cato]

The article quotes Boehner:

"One month ago I personally told the White House that another extension of temporary emergency unemployment benefits should not only be paid for but include something to help put people back to work. To date, the president has offered no such plan. If he does, I'll be happy to discuss it,"

.

Lip service. The Speaker of the House could have accomplished this by now without a proposal from the President. We deserve better.

[Lek]

Congress has been extending unemployment benefits since 2008. Now they want to extend them for three months? What good is that going to do? We've always had unemployed people; sometimes more and sometimes fewer. We have more now, but are they suffering more than the unemployed were in say 1993? Why didn't we extend benefits then? Maybe we should just have never-ending unemployment benefits. How do we determine when it's time to halt the extensions - when the unemployment rate reaches a certain level or when our financial system finally is crushed under the weight of our massive national debt?

[Minimalist]

Maybe we should just have never-ending unemployment benefits.

First good idea you've had since you've been here.

[Gish]

Maybe we should just have never-ending unemployment benefits.

First good idea you've had since you've been here.

No perverse incentives here. No sir-ee.

Couldn't the state just let entrepreneurs keep that money and use it to produce things? That would give some of these people jobs.

[Minimalist]

[Gish]

[Ryantology]

Are you daft? Employment is a cost. Entrepreneurs rarely "sit on profits" anyway. They spend them. Increasing your own personal wealth is the entire point of entrepreneurship. Even if an entrepreneur were to sit on profits because the value money more than actual wealth, they would be helping poor people by increasing the purchasing power of their money.

It's like I'm talking to a creationist.

Nothing helps poor people like employers making more and more money. Why, the best thing that ever happened to a WalMart employee was the Waltons making 30k times what they do while they rely on a second slave-wage job and government assistance to survive.

What good is the purchasing power of money you don't have?