Correcting the record
Oct. 6th, 2010 08:03 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
elfsJay Richards claims that no Republican has ever implied or currently believes:
Does Sharon Angle count as a Republican? "The truth about it is that they keep extending these unemployment benefits to the point where people are afraid to go out and get a job because the job doesn't pay as much as the unemployment benefit does." How about Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshir): "You're undermining the economy if you provide unemployment benefits to people who would otherwise be out looking for work." How about John Boehner? "Keeping workers on unemployment plans is not a responsible way to foster jobs growth."
There's a weasel word in Richard's argument, of course: "prominent." I would argue that Gregg and Boehner, and even Angle, are prominent. Contrary to all the evidence that extending unemployment insurance does not discourange people from work, and that unemployment insurance is the most straightforward and successful stimulus the government can offer (it is, after all, spent immediately on consumer items), the Republican attitude toward unemployment insurance is very obviously one in which there is "rottenness" in the system and it needs to be "purged."
We are on the road to serfdom, indeed, and it ain't the liberals who are leading the parade.
Liquidate labor, liquidate stocks, liquidate the farmer, liquidate real estate. It will purge the rottenness out of the system. People will work harder, lead a more moral life.The quote comes from Andrew Mellon, Herbert Hoover's Secretary of the Treasury, after the crash of 1929. Robert Reich claims that the current Republican mindset is of a Mellon-like opinion, and Richards claims that they aren't.
Does Sharon Angle count as a Republican? "The truth about it is that they keep extending these unemployment benefits to the point where people are afraid to go out and get a job because the job doesn't pay as much as the unemployment benefit does." How about Judd Gregg (R-New Hampshir): "You're undermining the economy if you provide unemployment benefits to people who would otherwise be out looking for work." How about John Boehner? "Keeping workers on unemployment plans is not a responsible way to foster jobs growth."
There's a weasel word in Richard's argument, of course: "prominent." I would argue that Gregg and Boehner, and even Angle, are prominent. Contrary to all the evidence that extending unemployment insurance does not discourange people from work, and that unemployment insurance is the most straightforward and successful stimulus the government can offer (it is, after all, spent immediately on consumer items), the Republican attitude toward unemployment insurance is very obviously one in which there is "rottenness" in the system and it needs to be "purged."
We are on the road to serfdom, indeed, and it ain't the liberals who are leading the parade.
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no subject
Date: 2010-10-06 11:47 pm (UTC)Resume submitted to 78 places.
22 of them responded.
40 interviews, total.
I have a PhD in Physics. I have 11 years of cumulative experience developing software.
Still no job. Still not employed. Still looking.
The unemployment insurance I've been getting does not completely cover mortgage+utilities+COBRA. I have no cell-phone plan. My other half,
Were it not for unemployment, and were I single, I would have been bankrupt, financially unable to afford gas or train fare to go to job interviews.
I want these sick fscking Republican basturds to look me in the eye and tell me that I'm lazy.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-07 06:56 am (UTC)You have to understand. They aren't talking about the way things *are*. But rather, they way things are *supposed* to be. Ideology over reality.
no subject
Date: 2010-10-08 01:06 pm (UTC)