Unemployment Benefits Face Duration Cuts In Multiple States

[cal04]

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/05/22/unemployment-benefits-fac_n_865229.html

Some of the states that have drained their unemployment insurance funds are cutting the number of weeks that a laid-off worker can count on those benefits. Legislators are trying to limit tax increases for businesses to replenish the pool and are hoping the federal government keeps stepping in when the economy slumps.

Michigan, Missouri and Arkansas recently reduced the maximum number of weeks that the jobless can get state unemployment benefits. Florida is on the verge of doing so. Unemployment in those states ranges from 7.8 percent in Arkansas to 11.1 percent in Florida.

(snip)
Rick McHugh, of the National Employment Law Project, argued that legislatures should not shore up their unemployment insurance programs by making workers share the pain.

"It's not a shared-sacrifice situation because, certainly in most states, employer organizations lobbied to keep the programs from being properly funded in advance of the recession," McHugh said. "Now, they're saying the program is broke so we have to cut benefits"

[Jackpine Radical]

1. Well, if I were a Trotskyite, I guess I would welcome this news

because it will ratchet up the desperation of a lot more Americans, creating that much more tinder for the flames of revolution.

But I'm not a Trot.

I just feel inexpressibly sad for what this nation has become, and for this needless addition to the sum of human misery in the world.

[mikehiggins]

2. "you talk about revolution..."

As the Beatles sang...

Well, yeah, and more and more lately.

We live in interesting times.

[socialist_n_TN]

3. Trust me Jack, I would have MUCH rather been

a "salon" Trotskyist and not have to worry about it in my lifetime than to actually have to live it. Geez, I'm almost 60. I'd like to be able to try and radicalize my children and grandchildren so THEY could take over the fight for fairness.

But when it comes, you have to be ready to guide it to a MUCH more fair economic system than we have now. A revolutionary MUST be an optimist. Finally, I hope you noticed that it wasn't us that actually STARTED this.

[jtuck004]

4. Unemployment should be replaced with a jobs program. Paying people

without a plan to exit the program is unsustainable, cruel, and bad for our future. Our current system plays right into the hands of these "cost-cutting-nation-killers".

Over 10 million jobs have been vaporized with no national effort to rebuild them. In addition we are proceeding with the wholesale replacement of good-paying jobs with Mcjobs that cannot sustain our country. The math is simple - we will not see full employment for at least another 10 years (assuming nothing breaks the little progress we are making now, which is probably a bad assumption)

A jobs\education program would actually begin to return our investment in people and rebuild our country.

[RebelOne]

5. Those are Newt Gingrich;s words exactly..

Are you a secret Republican troll?

[jtuck004]

6. Was FDR a Republican troll? The ignorance is astouding. eom

[madrchsod]

7. my dad worked for the wpa as did millions of others.

our state parks were built by wpa workers and there are still post offices with murals painted by out of work artists...yes they put artists to work.do you really want a list of the jobs and what they created during the great depression?

[Jackpine Radical]

8. My father was a foreman in the CCCs.

I heard a lot of stories from that era. I still know where there are fire towers, pine plantations, and such things that he and his crews created.

[jtuck004]

9. We got so much back as a country for that investment, not just in the

material things.

I am amazed at the loss of our ability to understand how investment in our people and country could do so much more for us than
these idiotic cuts that both parties seem hell-bent on pursuing.

[Jackpine Radical]

10. I agree entirely.

We need a new WPA to build a new infrastructure. Private corporations should not have a piece of the action. Obama missed his chance in the first months of hope.

[jtuck004]

11. To come to power in the middle of the loss of 9 million jobs and not

create a jobs program capable of putting 10 million people back to work to pump up demand just seems like such a lost opportunity in history. Might have been able to pass a lot of things that people (looking back) now just say we didn't have the support for. Now we watch unemployment expire with 8 people vying for every job, more losing their homes, more on food stamps and with abysmal health care if any, unemployment not likely to get under 8% for about another 10 years, assuming everything just goes up until then (isn't that how we got screwed by the banks in the housing market, btw?).

I think history is going to look back and wonder why we left 20+ million people under the bus for so many years. We didn't have to.