San Fran Nan goes mental

[TE999]

"Unemployment checks create jobs"

Check this vid out http://www.breitbart.tv/pelosi-unemployment-checks-fastest-way-to-create-jobs/#idc-cover

This has to be some of the most convoluted logic I have ever heard. No wonder people have no faith in congress, especially with this looney tune in charge.

And she's 3rd in line for the Presidency!

 

[R. Richard]

Let me see if I understand Pelosi's 'logic' correctly. "If you pay people not to work, they spend money and create jobs for other people." Why would the other people not prefer to just get paid for not working?

If you pay people to do something and pay enough for them to survive, they will do they think is necessary to survive. In NYC, FDR paid poor people just enough welfare to survive. It was difficult to make a living for Negros and thus many Negros gave up the struggle and just lived on welfare. The result was many five and six generation Negro families in which no official family member had ever worked, not a single day. Of course, the family structure was destroyed, but the welfare recipients still deify FDR. (Yes, ther were similar Caucasian multi-generational welfare recipients, but not so many as it was easier for a Caucasian to get a job.) After the Republicans held a gun to Clinton's head and he signed welfare reform, Harlem has started to live again!

 

[Huckleman2000]

It makes more sense than the idea that cutting taxes raises revenue.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Let me see if I understand Pelosi's 'logic' correctly. "If you pay people not to work, they spend money and create jobs for other people." Why would the other people not prefer to just get paid for not working?
[...]

Leaving aside your ignorant and racist second paragraph...

Do you have any idea how unemployment insurance works? You can't just quit your job and go on unemployment. You have to look for work to keep getting it. It's a fraction of what you earned at your last job. It's not a living wage.

You seem to think that unemployment is a choice. Talk to Zeb about that.

 

[TE999]

Following Skeletors 'logic train', the more people that are unemployed, the more jobs are created...in reality,employers pay into the unemployment coffers to write those checks...that's money that could be used to expand a business and create jobs.

Employers are not expanding or hiring because they have no idea what future tax albatrosses and regulations Obeyme and his posse are going to hang around their necks...that's why there are no jobs.

We must stop all oil drilling in the gulf for however long until we sufficiently punish BP...um...until we find out what caused the spill...that's why there are no jobs.

The GWB tax cuts expire in 6 months...and we still have the AMT on our backs...businesses are hit hard by the AMT and new taxes will hit them even harder...that's why there are no jobs.

Banks, insurance companies, auto workers and short term construction jobs were 'saved' at a cost of billions and we have a crushing deficit...that's why there are no jobs.

Obeyme and company get their economic advice from college professors, theorists, Socialists, newspaper columnists, career bureaucrats and the like...and it's all the same...it's all tax and spend...we can spend our way into prosperity...redistribute the country's wealth...that's why there are no jobs.

People elect the likes of Obeyme, Biden, Pukelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank, Nadler, Boxer, Shumer, Franken and all the rest of the Socialists who never met a tax they didn't like, never punched a time clock or ran a business. They're career politicians or aspire to that goal...that's why there are no jobs.

Vote the bums out in November and 2012!

 

[R. Richard]

Leaving aside your ignorant and racist second paragraph...

Do you have any idea how unemployment insurance works? You can't just quit your job and go on unemployment. You have to look for work to keep getting it. It's a fraction of what you earned at your last job. It's not a living wage.

You seem to think that unemployment is a choice. Talk to Zeb about that.

Actually, you can quit a job and go on unemployment. You do have to jump some hurdles to do so, but it can be done and is done. No, you really don't have to actually look for work. A guy I knew got laid off in San Diego. He was a computer programmer and he would go and personally apply for job for which he was way overqualified. You don't get a professional programmer job by cold applying in person, you send a resume. A control desk girl also got laid off and she would 'apply for a job' by writing a letter. You don't get that level of job unless you apply in person.

The guy who got laid off moved in with two other guys who were also living on unemployment and they surfed the summer away at low cost. At the end of summer, they used connections and got new jobs.

You say:
"It makes more sense than the idea that cutting taxes raises revenue."
First, cutting taxes DOES raise revenue, provided that the taxes are not cut to zero and people actually pay the taxes. JFK cut TAX RATES and raised more revenue. Bush cut TAX Rates and raised more revenue. Unfortunately, Congress spent more money than was received in revenue.

Fuckleboy, have you ever actually lived in NYC and gone to Harlem? I have. I know what the situation was there, on the ground. Harlem wasn't the worst example of the destruction of social fabric by welfare. Without looking up the acronym, tell me what DDP stands for. You can drive down the Jackie Robinson highway to the South exit and see the result. The Latin Kings are in much the same situation, except that the LKs make enough selling dope that they mask the real poverty of the non-LK residents of the area. First walk through the areas alone, at night and then argue with me about my take on the situation on the ground.

 

[JackLuis]

Following Skeletors 'logic train', the more people that are unemployed, the more jobs are created...

-rant edited-

Vote the bums out in November and 2012!

Eh, who's gone mental?

 

[TE999]

Eh, who's gone mental?

Thanks for your incisive contribution to the discussion.

Care to refute anything I've posted? Sensibly, that is.

 

[Liar]

Does increased base goods consumption create jobs?

Yes or no?



Now... is it the best way to create jobs? That was not the question.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Here are some statistics:
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn312/Paul_H_Rosenberg/Zindi-tbl-2-expanded.jpg
And the accompanying analysis (note: source is from Moody's, not Open Left) (bold added):

Increased income support has been part of the federal response to most recessions, and for good reason: It is the most efficient way to prime the economy's pump. Simulations of the Moody's Economy.com macroeconomic model show that every dollar spent on UI benefits generates an estimated $1.63 in near-term GDP.x Boosting food stamp payments by $1 increases GDP by $1.73 (see Table 2). People who receive these benefits are hard pressed and will spend any financial aid they receive very quickly.

Another advantage is that these programs are already operating and can quickly deliver a benefit increase to recipients. The virtue of extending UI benefits goes beyond simply providing aid for the jobless to more broadly shoring up household confidence. Nothing is more psychologically debilitating, even to those still employed, than watching unemployed friends and relatives lose their sources of support.xi Increasing food stamp benefits has the added virtue of helping people ineligible for UI such as part-time workers.

 

[oggbashan]

The UK situation is also broken.

Yes, you can get unemployment benefit, and with that, if you have no other income, you can get other benefits as well.

But, if you take a part time job, or two part time jobs, or a low paid full time job, not only do you lose some or all of the unemployment benefit but the other benefits as well. In practice, as a reward for getting a job, the government can take as much as 90% of your earnings between the basic amount you were getting on unemployment and the total amount you were getting on unemployment with the other benefits. That is the so-called poverty trap. You can't afford to start at the bottom with a new employer, to take a McJob, nor to work part time until a full time post comes along.

One of the features of unemployment is that it can be a cause of reactive depression. If you are clinically depressed, presenting yourself as a potential employee is difficult. If you are accepted, and the pay is within the poverty trap area, you can't afford to take the job, but if you don't accept a reasonable job offer you can lose the unemployment benefit...

The new coalition government has promised to look at "the poverty trap" but the previous government also promised to look at it. They did - for years - and did little about it.

It is difficult enough being unemployed and wanting to work, without the UK's government adding hurdles in the way of you getting a job, and then demonising you as "work-shy" when it is their policies that are stopping you getting work...

Og

 

[Huckleman2000]

[...]One of the features of unemployment is that it can be a cause of reactive depression. If you are clinically depressed, presenting yourself as a potential employee is difficult. If you are accepted, and the pay is within the poverty trap area, you can't afford to take the job, but if you don't accept a reasonable job offer you can lose the unemployment benefit...[...]

I think in psychological studies that is called "learned helplessness", the idea that any choice you make leads to punishment.

 

[oggbashan]

I think in psychological studies that is called "learned helplessness", the idea that any choice you make leads to punishment.

I would suggest that the depression is more than "learned helpnessness".

To lose a job can destroy a person's self-worth particularly if status is/was important to them. Many people define themselves by the work they do, and if they are fired, not only have they lost their job but their status in the community AND in their family.

For example, if you were a highly skilled car worker, and the car factory in your town closed down, not only would you be an unemployed car worker but you would have skills that are now worthless where you are.

People can define themselves as "an unemployed car worker". What they should be defining themselves as is "an employment seeker". Until they recognise that the totality of their previous skill set is not wanted and start looking for jobs that they could do, instead of jobs that no longer exist locally, then depression is a real threat.

Og

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Here are some statistics:
http://i307.photobucket.com/albums/nn312/Paul_H_Rosenberg/Zindi-tbl-2-expanded.jpg
And the accompanying analysis (note: source is from Moody's, not Open Left) (bold added):

Statistically speaking this comparison is a wash, the only difference is who gets to spend or save the money.

Did you even take the time to add the numbers to see which did better?

 

[TE999]

The UK situation is also broken.

Yes, you can get unemployment benefit, and with that, if you have no other income, you can get other benefits as well.

But, if you take a part time job, or two part time jobs, or a low paid full time job, not only do you lose some or all of the unemployment benefit but the other benefits as well. In practice, as a reward for getting a job, the government can take as much as 90% of your earnings between the basic amount you were getting on unemployment and the total amount you were getting on unemployment with the other benefits. That is the so-called poverty trap. You can't afford to start at the bottom with a new employer, to take a McJob, nor to work part time until a full time post comes along.

One of the features of unemployment is that it can be a cause of reactive depression. If you are clinically depressed, presenting yourself as a potential employee is difficult. If you are accepted, and the pay is within the poverty trap area, you can't afford to take the job, but if you don't accept a reasonable job offer you can lose the unemployment benefit...

The new coalition government has promised to look at "the poverty trap" but the previous government also promised to look at it. They did - for years - and did little about it.

It is difficult enough being unemployed and wanting to work, without the UK's government adding hurdles in the way of you getting a job, and then demonising you as "work-shy" when it is their policies that are stopping you getting work...

Og

Essentially the same contradictory policies are at work over here...if an unemployed person does get a low paying job and it's reported to the state and the feds...POOF!...your benefits are drastically reduced or simply evaporate...not only your unemployment check, but food stamps, Medicaid coverage and other means of assistance.

If a requirement of collecting unemployment benefits included retraining for 'needed' trades or professions, especially in the case of 'vanished' jobs or obsolete skills, it would do much to alleviate the unemployment problem.

 

[oggbashan]

Essentially the same contradictory policies are at work over here...if an unemployed person does get a low paying job and it's reported to the state and the feds...POOF!...your benefits are drastically reduced or simply evaporate...not only your unemployment check, but food stamps, Medicaid coverage and other means of assistance.

If a requirement of collecting unemployment benefits included retraining for 'needed' trades or professions, especially in the case of 'vanished' jobs or obsolete skills, it would do much to alleviate the unemployment problem.

If an unemployed person here wants to take a low paid job and is willing to declare it, to be above board - he/she still gets penalised by the poverty trap. If they don't declare it they can be prosecuted for fraud.

The retraining offered here to unemployed persons has almost always been useless, since the 1970s when I first encounted the "retraining" as an employer. Attending retraining can be made a condition of continuing to receive unemployment benefit but if that is the only reason for attending, then the motivation is very low.

One of my friends, now deceased, was mentally handicapped. His mental and physical skills were not so bad that he could be classified as unemployable but in practice he was. He went through dozens of retraining courses, willingly. Every time he started a course with high hopes that this one would enable him to support himself and his family. They never did.

He started a bricklaying course. After the full six weeks training (I know, you can't make a professional bricklayer in six weeks but the government thought they could) he couldn't get a wall to stand more than three bricks high without collapsing. He tried. He did his best. It wasn't enough to be keen and to work hard.

He started a plumbing course. He was thrown off that midway through the second week when his soldering set the workshop on fire.

The Job Centre enrolled him for an electrician's course. The training college refused to take him. They were still recovering from his attempts at soldering.

Each course, six weeks long, was supposed to make him employable as a tradesman's assistant - bricklayer, plumber, electrician.

He lacked basic common sense and crucially had no sense of danger or risk. He would walk in front of moving traffic, or try to get off a bus moving at fifty miles an hour.

He was willing. He wanted to work. He wanted to be a contributing member of society. Throughout everything, even through the cancer that killed him, he was cheerful, happy, always willing to help anyone - if they dared risk accepting his help.

He was a credit to the Job Centre. He had pestered them for more and more retraining, and applied to every job vacancy locally no matter how unqualified he was. It didn't bother him that some of the other unemployed people on his retraining courses knew and said how useless the training was. He was "working" or being trained to work.

In the last few years the UK government has invented a new mnemonic - NEET - Not in Education, Employment or Training - for people who are the failures of their job finding schemes. My friend was never a NEET because he was always training for jobs he could never do.

I miss him.

Og

 

[TE999]

In the last few years the UK government has invented a new mnemonic - NEET - Not in Education, Employment or Training - for people who are the failures of their job finding schemes. My friend was never a NEET because he was always training for jobs he could never do.

I miss him.

Og

That's a really sad tale...my sympathies on the loss of your friend, Og.

It's a shame the 'system' couldn't (or wouldn't) differentiate between his enthusiasm and his mental acuities when it came to the trades. Over here, persons such as he (and the more severely mentally disabled) are often employed in jobs involving repetitive tasks such as packing boxes, filling cartons or gift bags and performing simple sub-assemblies. They are never bored and have feelings of accomplishment and self-worth, especially on payday.

 

[JackLuis]

Thanks for your incisive contribution to the discussion.

Care to refute anything I've posted? Sensibly, that is.

Well I would point out that most of what you blame Obama for was started by George (The Imbicle) and when you write this:

Following Skeletors 'logic train', the more people that are unemployed, the more jobs are created...in reality,employers pay into the unemployment coffers to write those checks...that's money that could be used to expand a business and create jobs.

Employers are not expanding or hiring because they have no idea what future tax albatrosses and regulations Obeyme and his posse are going to hang around their necks...that's why there are no jobs.

We must stop all oil drilling in the gulf for however long until we sufficiently punish BP...um...until we find out what caused the spill...that's why there are no jobs.

The GWB tax cuts expire in 6 months...and we still have the AMT on our backs...businesses are hit hard by the AMT and new taxes will hit them even harder...that's why there are no jobs.

Banks, insurance companies, auto workers and short term construction jobs were 'saved' at a cost of billions and we have a crushing deficit...that's why there are no jobs.

Obeyme and company get their economic advice from college professors, theorists, Socialists, newspaper columnists, career bureaucrats and the like...and it's all the same...it's all tax and spend...we can spend our way into prosperity...redistribute the country's wealth...that's why there are no jobs.

People elect the likes of Obeyme, Biden, Pukelosi, Reid, Dodd, Frank, Nadler, Boxer, Shumer, Franken and all the rest of the Socialists who never met a tax they didn't like, never punched a time clock or ran a business. They're career politicians or aspire to that goal...that's why there are no jobs.

Vote the bums out in November and 2012!

That sounds like a mental lapses to me. Or were you trying to sound rational and missed? I agree with you on voting the bums out,(particularly Boxer and Peloci), except Kucinich and a couple of others.

 

[Huckleman2000]

Statistically speaking this comparison is a wash, the only difference is who gets to spend or save the money.

Did you even take the time to add the numbers to see which did better?

Add what numbers? The chart makes comparisons between different options.

For each taxpayer dollar spent on unemployment benefits, the impact on GDP is $1.63. For an across the board temporary tax cut, each dollar spent only impacts the GDP $1.03. That's a difference of 58%, hardly insignificant.

Pelosi is right, extending unemployment benefits provides more short-term economic stimulus than any tax-cutting measure.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

Add what numbers? The chart makes comparisons between different options.

For each taxpayer dollar spent on unemployment benefits, the impact on GDP is $1.63. For an across the board temporary tax cut, each dollar spent only impacts the GDP $1.03. That's a difference of 58%, hardly insignificant.

Pelosi is right, extending unemployment benefits provides more short-term economic stimulus than any tax-cutting measure.

Add up all the tax cuts and all the government spending and the results are a wash. If all the tax cuts listed are done vs all the government spending it's a wash...so close it doesn't matter which track you take the train down, except for who does the spending. The taxpayer or the pilferers in Washington.

 

[TE999]

Well I would point out that most of what you blame Obama for was started by George (The Imbicle) and when you write this:



That sounds like a mental lapses to me. Or were you trying to sound rational and missed? I agree with you on voting the bums out,(particularly Boxer and Peloci), except Kucinich and a couple of others.

Neither of your responses are refutations or rational contradictions of my statements that I challenged you to produce...merely excuses and insults...your usual MO.

I do concur on voting the bums out...and I'd include Kucinich.

 

[R. Richard]

Once again, the government fucks up. Your deceased friend has all of the attributes and qualifications (except laziness) that I have found in most of the mid-level managers with whom I have had to deal. If your government had just trained him (if indeed he needed training) to be a Department Manager, he would have done famously. JMNTHO.

One of my friends, now deceased, was mentally handicapped. His mental and physical skills were not so bad that he could be classified as unemployable but in practice he was. He went through dozens of retraining courses, willingly. Every time he started a course with high hopes that this one would enable him to support himself and his family. They never did.

He started a bricklaying course. After the full six weeks training (I know, you can't make a professional bricklayer in six weeks but the government thought they could) he couldn't get a wall to stand more than three bricks high without collapsing. He tried. He did his best. It wasn't enough to be keen and to work hard.

He started a plumbing course. He was thrown off that midway through the second week when his soldering set the workshop on fire.

The Job Centre enrolled him for an electrician's course. The training college refused to take him. They were still recovering from his attempts at soldering.

Each course, six weeks long, was supposed to make him employable as a tradesman's assistant - bricklayer, plumber, electrician.

He lacked basic common sense and crucially had no sense of danger or risk. He would walk in front of moving traffic, or try to get off a bus moving at fifty miles an hour.

He was willing. He wanted to work. He wanted to be a contributing member of society. Throughout everything, even through the cancer that killed him, he was cheerful, happy, always willing to help anyone - if they dared risk accepting his help.

He was a credit to the Job Centre. He had pestered them for more and more retraining, and applied to every job vacancy locally no matter how unqualified he was. It didn't bother him that some of the other unemployed people on his retraining courses knew and said how useless the training was. He was "working" or being trained to work.

In the last few years the UK government has invented a new mnemonic - NEET - Not in Education, Employment or Training - for people who are the failures of their job finding schemes. My friend was never a NEET because he was always training for jobs he could never do.

I miss him.

Og

 

[Huckleman2000]

Add up all the tax cuts and all the government spending and the results are a wash. If all the tax cuts listed are done vs all the government spending it's a wash...so close it doesn't matter which track you take the train down, except for who does the spending. The taxpayer or the pilferers in Washington.

You're apparently an idiot.

For the second time, although it is obvious if you read Note #2 at the bottom of it, that is a chart of comparisons. The jobs numbers are illustrative if the entire $850 billion stimulus package consisted only of each measure. Adding them up, as you did, means that you're imagining nine different $850 billion tax cuts, or
$7.65 trillion, vs. four direct spending increases, or $3.4 trillion. If, in your scenario, the jobs created number "is a wash" between the two, the government will have spent over twice as much to create the same number of jobs via tax cuts - hardly insignificant.

 

[Zeb_Carter]

You're apparently an idiot.

For the second time, although it is obvious if you read Note #2 at the bottom of it, that is a chart of comparisons. The jobs numbers are illustrative if the entire $850 billion stimulus package consisted only of each measure. Adding them up, as you did, means that you're imagining nine different $850 billion tax cuts, or
$7.65 trillion, vs. four direct spending increases, or $3.4 trillion. If, in your scenario, the jobs created number "is a wash" between the two, the government will have spent over twice as much to create the same number of jobs via tax cuts - hardly insignificant.

My mistake. Your mistake is believing that the unemployed create jobs, in other words believing in government to care for you. I have serious doubts about the number presented. In fact I believe nothing in that chart. Don't ask me why, except when I see a bunch of number all ending in 667 or 333 I become suspicious that someone transposed or divided instead of multiplied.

 

[Handley_Page]

"Unemployment checks create jobs"

Check this vid out http://www.breitbart.tv/pelosi-unemployment-checks-fastest-way-to-create-jobs/#idc-cover

And she's 3rd in line for the Presidency!

Hasn't she got a boring voice? Reminds me of Amy Tuttweiller