What happened there is a one off, not something that has to be wrestled with every year. There is no way this is a substantial issue for like 95% of the country in any given year and pretending so mostly serves as a protection mechanism for the 5% to the detriment of the 95% and the benefit to 80% is strictly random and highly isolated events like your example.
We can't triage and set policy based on one off outliers in favor of what is happening 90% or more of the time. We are a nation of hundreds of millions, the odds of avoiding one off situations in governing are astronomical at best and exactly why accounting for known factors is crucial and empowering people to identify and deal appropriately with exceptions is a requirement for any system to work in a just fashion.
Your problem was far more rigid stupidity built into the system than the broader rule, in my eye.
Of course you understand why we must have these games instead of indexing and being done with it is because everything else would use that as precedent from minimum wage to salaries to Social Security payouts and "stakeholders" wouldn't be able to hoard all the proceeds of our productivity, not very easily in the framework of the worldview created by such an environment.
There is always a deep unwillingness to tie anything to conditions. Why the hell would we be debating unemployment extensions at all while conditions are worse or even the same as when the stabilizer was passed?
How do we get into discussions about cutting food stamps when both costs and need have increased?
I doubt we'd be cutting military spending when the enemy was landing ships on our shores, in fact no one would be calling for such a thing because to do so would be absurd. All the sudden the concept that resource must balance with need makes a hell of a lot more sense. The foolish school of thought that doesn't believe in demand as primary driver causes this a lot of this. They create a mental model that says supply will create demand that otherwise would not exist. The model cannot be escaped. Feeding the hungry can only result in more hungry wanting to be fed, the fuckers would have found a way to eat if they didn't think they could be fed.
Now, the logic becomes solutions can only create problems which too often even moderates to a fear of such at near or at par with the desire for a solution. Mix in some anecdotes and we can't do anything but stick with the privileged position of the status quo
= new reply since forum marked as read
