How long? 8 months and still no job, yet you think we should be paying his mortgage, car payment, bar tab, and lottery tickets? Where does it end?
This article isn't about someone who had some bad luck, lost his job, and used unemployment until he got something better. This guy had a job AFTER all the crap went down that Larry is ranting about. He has been on unemployment for 8 months.
After 8 months, why couldn't this guy do something about it? NC has a high unemployment rate, and that isn't likely to change any time soon. Why not move somewhere with jobs? ND has a 3.3% rate. I bet he could find something there. Do you know why he doesn't try? Because people like you feel that we should keep paying his bills until he finds the job he wants, where he wants.
And he is also a guy who figured it out through '08, '09, '10, '11 and '12. Do you call that 'trying'? Or, just what do you call it? Or, just maybe, quantitative easing, the Stimulus, TARP, the never rending wars, $100 oil and Obamacare simply haven't worked and it all finally caught up with him?
I have no idea what you do for a living, how much education you have or how good your decision making process is. What I do know is that the harder things get, more and more and more people WILL fail. It's just that simple, and you seem to, at the very least, have no clue how tough it has been the last 5-6 years.
Your comment that set me off was;
A 53 year old lawn care worker who can't find work in the beginning of summer? Sounds like he should have gotten an education.
...and what would more education have done for him? It, likely, would have helped him as an individual but, if there are not enough jobs, not enough vibrancy to the economy, not enough wealth to be earned, all he would have done is displaced some other poor schmoe, the state of the economy not having changed ONE bit, other than whatever the cost of this education you think he should have gotten and the work time lost from achieving it and the NEXT guy would be suffering and your answer would be...'well, sounds like HE should have gotten an education." and the whole argument goes round and round and round because that 70,000 number would STILL be 70,000.
On an individual level, you are correct; he, as an individual, would probably be better off with more education. What kind? I dunno. You never mentioned a degree
and nor did I. However, the point remains, the problem remains; the economy is a mess and individual success, people willing to do more than the next guy does not, can not, address the larger issues that are plaguing us.
You don't like the idea of giving the guy X amount of benefits? Well, neither do I. Welfare is the WORST way to help the economy. Not only is an individual not working, not producing anything but, they are sucking wealth out, exacerbating the problem exponentially. They go, for the sake of argument, from earning $10 an hour, producing at least that much wealth, carrying their own weight, to producing nothing and taking $10 an hour out of the economy going from, at minimum, a net zero, assuming little to no profit was earned from their work, to costing the economy what they were producing as well as flat out costing $10 an hour, a net drain from the economy of $20 an hour. Zero, at worst, working, to -$20. This is an enormous drain.
Now, that said, bailing out GM, TARP, the Stimulus, Obamacare, the 'green' boondoggles, quantitative easing, all of that is nothing but welfare, giving people money for producing nothing. The argument is the same; gotta keep those banks afloat, those car makers, those teachers, those 401k's, etc, so that everyone who lives off of them, butcher, baker, flower maker, still have THEIR income just as we 'gotta' keep Schmoe afloat so he can pay his mortgage.
But Schmoe, see, he doesn't have the education to be part of the right group who get bailed out when their part of the economy gets ruffled and that's the thing; you, rightly, want Joe Schmoe to deal with it, figure it out but, what about all those 'educated' folks? They didn't have to figure it out. They just got bailed out. They just took it. They made mistakes far greater than an unemployed lawn man can fathom but, because they are so educated, they ain't suffering not one bit. And they keep on taking it and THAT has sucked the life out of the economy this past 5 years so that dumber people, lazier people get...what? Moved to North Dakota?
Again, this guy made it this far. He has been figuring it out. Up to now. Perhaps he even did as you suggest and got more education and it helped him get this far but, as I say, if the challenges continue to grow, battling immigrants, corporate demands for productivity, living costs, energy, food, out sourcing, jobs simply up and leaving the nation (Kinda surprised you didn't suggest he just move to China; lots of jobs there, I hear) people WILL fall by the wayside. It is inevitable and it doesn't matter how much education folks get because, when the economy is a mess, all they can do is, at best, displace someone above them and THAT guy has now reached his limit, reached the end of HIS rope.
The economy is a shambles because it is a top down economy that has been centered on ensuring the success of the successful; people already with education and better decision making skills and more determination; Too Big To Fail. The economy is a shambles because the cost of ensuring the success of the successful has fallen, devastatingly, on the shoulders of the lesser among us.
You build an economy that is centered around seeing to the success of people who are going to succeed in good times or bad, I'll show you a rich guy who was gonna be rich anyway and I'll show you an economy where the lesser among us will suffer more and more and more. By definition.
You build an economy that is centered around seeing to the general welfare, where the lesser among us at least have productive work, and I'll show you a whole bunch of rich guys, maybe not as rich, but, they will live in a society where everyone is pulling their weight.
I mean, you come off as absolutely clueless how bad things really are. It is not a difficult concept to understand that even people who are trying everything WILL, inevitable fail when broad based opportunity is so restricted and distorted.
Put it this way; If you train your whole life to run marathons, 26.2 miles, continuing education, market place awareness, willing to do what it takes, whatever it takes, then, a 5k or a 10k is nothing for you. Things get tougher, you can still handle a 15k or 20k. Hell, you've been preparing for a 35k so, even if things get really tough and becomes a real marathon, you are GTG.
However, everyone not quite as smart as you or educated or what have you, as the race gets tougher and tougher, as people who've prepared for a 5k all of a sudden find the race is now 10k, or a 10k becomes 15 as you approach what you thought might be the finish line, some will be able to keep going, find another gear but, more and more WILL fail. Will give up. Inevitable.
And no amount of education is going to help you, or me, if what you and I have done to get this far suddenly becomes the bare minimum to qualify just to sweep floors. At some point, I will fail. At some point, you, my friend, will fail.
We NEED everyone below us to be doing at least OK and that is no longer the case.
yeah .....
