Republicans in Congress have continued to hawk the myth of the fat lazy unemployed, living high on the hog off their extended unemployment benefits instead of lifting a finger to actually seek work, despite all the jobs out there.
Here’s a random sampling:
The wrong thing to do is to automatically today extend unemployment for 12 months. I think that’s a discouragement to individuals that are out there to actually go out and go through the interviews.
Q: Senator Gregg, is there a point, you think, when the government has to sort of end these ever-continuing claims?
Gregg: Yeah, right now. This week, however, we’re going to extend it again. And this has become counterproductive. We’re basically undermining the cyclical event. Because you’re out of the recession, you’re starting to see growth and you’re clearly going to dampen the capacity of that growth if you basically keep an economy that encourages people to, rather than go out and look for work, to stay on unemployment.
We shouldn’t turn the ‘safety net’ into a hammock. It should actually be a ‘safety net’.
In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work…
And here are some of the facts and figures that these heartless humanoids are so firmly divorced from:
Unemployment benefits, New York state:
The average unemployment benefit amount for a New Yorker is about $330 per week, according to the Labor Department. The maximum is $405 per week.
$330 a week in New York City. For rent, food and health insurance. I sincerely wish Richard Burr, Judd Gregg, Steve King, Jon Kyl, a retired life that’s just half so comfortably hammock-y.
Unemployment benefits versus the poverty level, from a report issued by the Joint Economic Committee last week (the JEC is a bipartisan, joint committee of the House and the Senate):
Unemployment benefits are not particularly generous—average weekly benefits are just 74 percent of the poverty threshold for a family of four. So it is unlikely that extended unemployment benefits inhibit individuals’ job search efforts. Simply put, even a low-paying job is likely to provide more support than that offered by UI.
That’s how fat and lazy those unemployed sons-of-bitches are. They’d rather kick back and enjoy the 74%-of-poverty-level good life than actually try to find real work.
Here’s a telling horse race: unemployment benefits versus $8 per hour:
In 2008, there were eight states whose maximum unemployment benefit for a single person was less than $8 per hour: Alabama, Arizona, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, Nebraska, South Dakota and Tennessee.
Average national unemployment benefits:
The average unemployment check in America is $293 which, when multiplied by fifty-two weeks, is $15,236 per year…
The state of affairs in high-end suburbia:
The Orange County Register, July 19, 2010:
…the state estimates (that unemployed workers here) get an average $1,216 a month in unemployment benefits…
Unemployment benefits and COBRA:
• Nationally, to maintain single coverage, the average unemployed worker would need to spend 30 percent of his or her unemployment insurance (UI) check on COBRA premiums (see Table 1).
• In many states, the situation is even worse:
• To maintain coverage for themselves, in six states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Louisiana, Mississippi, and West Virginia), newly unemployed workers would need to spend, on average, more than 40 percent of their UI income on COBRA premiums (see Table 2).
• In an additional 11 states (Delaware, Florida, Maine, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, South Carolina, South Dakota, Tennessee, and Wisconsin) plus the District of Columbia, newly unemployed workers would need to spend, on average, more than one-third of their UI income on COBRA premiums (see Table 2).
• Maintaining family coverage under COBRA is an economic impossibility for most newly unemployed workers. Nationally, unemployed workers would need to spend nearly 84 percent of their UI income, on average, to pay for premiums for family coverage (see Table 1).
• In nine states (Alabama, Alaska, Arizona, Delaware, Florida, Louisiana, Mississippi, South Carolina, and West Virginia), the average premiums for family coverage under COBRA equal or exceed total UI income (see Table 3).
• In an additional 32 states (Arkansas, California, Connecticut, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Iowa, Kansas, Maine, Maryland, Michigan, Missouri, Montana, Nebraska, New Hampshire, New Mexico, New York, North Carolina, North Dakota, Ohio, Oklahoma, Oregon, Pennsylvania, South Dakota, Tennessee, Texas, Utah, Vermont, Virginia, Wisconsin, and Wyoming) plus the District of Columbia, premiums for family coverage under COBRA would consume, on average, more than three-fourths of the average UI income (see Table 3).