Joe Conason: Our new welfare queens, the undeserving unemployed

[babylonsister]

http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/joe_conason/2010/08/27/unemployed

Our new welfare queens, the undeserving unemployed
Economic punditry on the right offers an insidious meme: The jobless are scamming, so why extend benefits?
By Joe Conason



Neither party has advanced a sufficiently ambitious plan to stimulate the economy and put Americans back to work, but only the Republicans have argued against extending federal assistance to the unemployed. Loud voices among them -- notably those of Sharron Angle and Rand Paul -- think the jobless are "spoiled" and that there are plenty of jobs for those who are willing to work.

Such ideas are akin to the view that dinosaurs coexisted with humans or that global warming will prove beneficial. But the urge to demonize the unemployed is so powerful on the right that even conservatives who understand the grim realities perfectly well cannot resist it.

snip//

Worse still is a post by Ira Stoll that acknowledges "unemployment numbers are grim," but he nevertheless highlights a subject he thinks is neglected by the mainstream media: the undeserving recipients of unemployment benefits. As he points out:

{N}ot every one of the tens of millions of unemployed Americans has a case as bleak as the press, or, for that matter, President Obama's Republican critics (or Democrats who criticize Republicans for not extending unemployment benefits), might have you believe.

You see, according to Stoll there are at least seven categories of undeserving beneficiaries, including substitute school teachers in at least one suburban town in Connecticut, and some in Hawaii as well, who are receiving unemployment. Then there are part-time community college teachers. There are also young people in their 20s -- nobody knows how many -- who are gaming the system by working for a season and then collecting benefits while they smoke their bongs. And finally there are millions of people whose spouses are still working, "potentially" in high-income positions, and why should they receive benefits?

So anecdotally, there are lots of jobs around and lots of workers scamming the system for benefits. If you listen to enough right-wing economic punditry, you might be excused for imagining that the unemployed are merely more welfare queens. So much for "compassionate conservatism."

[mike r]

1. So much fun to kick them poor people when they're down

i.e. Die Soon.

[DCKit]

2. Die Quickly AND Soon. n/t

[babylonsister]

3. It's downright disgusting. I don't understand at all why the

unemployed rethugs aren't pissed off, or are they and we just can't hear it? I don't get it.

[SammyWinstonJack]

4. What an asshole! I hate republicans!

:grr:

[tech9413]

5. Easiest way to blow that idiotic "logic?"

Ask them to check the classified section of a local paper today and compare it to one from a few decades ago. Where there used to be 3 or 4 pages of job listings now you're lucky if it's one when you exclude the ads.
Sure, you could argue that these days people don't find jobs in the classified listings. Whatever the medium advertising for employment, there are usually hundreds of people applying for any job offer.

I'll be honest, I haven't seriously looked for work for decades. Work just seems to find me. I'd love to go back to work in my field of interest (electronics repair)but I haven't seen a company that I would want to be associated with. Add to that, my current work, uncompensated, is to care for my 89 y/o parents and make sure they have nothing to worry about.

[babylonsister]

7. I think companies don't advertise in the classifieds because it's

a requirement for many companies to apply online. Why should companies waste the money w/classifieds? This stinks for folks with no computer or skills on how to use one, but even grocery store jobs are going that route.

[Wednesdays]

6. "...there are plenty of jobs for those who are willing to work"

Note my signature.

[NC_Nurse]

8. Never mind that their benefits cost a pittance next to the tax cuts that these

Same jerks want to extend for the wealthy. They don't bring up the fact that many of the wealthy aren't exactly hard working folks either, many live on inherited money and have never done a days work themselves. But god forbid they lose a small percent of their piles of money! That'd be communism....aaaahhhhh!