Judd Gregg's Big Daddy-ism Wins the Day

seriously, Judd? (0.00 / 0)

Do any of the deficit peacocks stop to think about how we'll reduce the deficit if no one has a job or any money??


member of the professional left  

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by: susanthe @ Fri Jun 25, 2010 at 21:11:49 PM CDT

How could unemployment benefits (4.00 / 2)

which are very low in New Hampshire especially, encourage someone to not look for a job?

Oh, THAT'S right.

Judd, along with most Republican Senators, voted for a minimum wage of $0.00.

To recruit workers in Judd's utopia, all other options must be crushed.  

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by: elwood @ Fri Jun 25, 2010 at 21:19:14 PM CDT

has Judd Gregg ever had a non-public sector job? n/t (0.00 / 0)

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by: measurestaken @ Fri Jun 25, 2010 at 21:22:55 PM CDT

Or. . . (0.00 / 0)

An income that did not land in his lap by virtue of his family's prominence and wealth?  

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by: Dartmouth Dem @ Sat Jun 26, 2010 at 05:58:10 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

we should set up a tent city (4.00 / 1)

In Judd's yard.  

member of the professional left  

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by: susanthe @ Fri Jun 25, 2010 at 21:27:50 PM CDT

It's not quite accurate to say Gregg's (4.00 / 3)

claim that unemployment benefits encourage people to stay on unemployment, is "unproven and unprovable."

We have history and data.

If Gregg's claim were true, we would expect:

• The "discouraged worker" phenomenon, in which people who have been unemployed for many months stop looking, to not exist. That's when unemployment benefits run out (and in NH, if you stop looking, you lose them even if still eligible. But discouraged workers are more common now than in previous decades.
• Unemployment rates to be higher today, with our supposedly cushy benefits, than they were in the early 1930s, before Roosevelt created unemployment insurance in 1935.

But these these did not and are not happening.

Gregg's eighteenth-century view of life isn't unprovable, it is disproven - just as clearly as claims that health insurance causes cancer are.

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by: elwood @ Sat Jun 26, 2010 at 06:01:12 AM CDT

Just to add to this.. (4.00 / 2)

There are a greater number of "discouraged workers" right now than what statitsics suggest.  It would be a mistake to presume that all discouraged workers arise from a Benefit-eligible, involuntary unemployment situation.

There are a large number of frictionally unemployed workers (graduating students, women entering after raising children, people who have moved due to foreclosure, Katrina refugees, adjunct teaching positions that were not guarenteed and not renewed...and people like my partner who was terminated after moving outside the city limits of boston, which requires boston-residency for city jobs.)  NONE of those people are eligible for unemployment benefits, and MANY of them have entered the ranks of the "Discouraged Worker' simply because they can not find a job.

In other words, these people can not remain on unemployment whether its extended or not...because they are not eligible in the first place.

As a further tweak, Dean, there actually is some data that suggests that the longer and better the benefots, the longer the unemployment rate remains high. It's called the "reservation wage' and it has been used to explain chronically higher unemployment rates in Europe vis a vis the USA.

Putting all that economicese jargon aside...the sad part is the assumption built into Gregg's statement that people prefer to stay on Unemployment rather than take a job...which makes one wonder if he has ever actually spent any time speaking with those who have lost their jobs and and have ben looking and are struggling to pay the electric bill.....  

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by: Thomas Simmons @ Sat Jun 26, 2010 at 07:42:28 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

* functional n/t (0.00 / 0)

Annie 2012!

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by: JonnyBBad @ Sat Jun 26, 2010 at 09:43:52 AM CDT

[ Parent ]

Yes. This is the heart of the matter: (4.00 / 1)

the sad part is the assumption built into Gregg's statement that people prefer  to stay on Unemployment rather than take a job...which makes one wonder if he has ever actually spent any time speaking with those who have lost their jobs and and have ben looking and are struggling to pay the electric bill.....

How one could even think that way is so beyond my understanding.

birch, finch, beech

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by: Dean Barker @ Sat Jun 26, 2010 at 13:34:59 PM CDT

[ Parent ]

Deprivation is caused by deprivators. (0.00 / 0)

The reason they get away with it is because we assume that criminals intend to derive a personal benefit by taking what someone else has.  People who derive satisfaction from another's misfortune, of which they are a partial cause, just don't fit into our expectations of what normal human beings do.

We expect children to grow out of taking delight in pulling the wings off flies.

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by: hannah @ Sat Jun 26, 2010 at 15:41:48 PM CDT

[ Parent ]