Administration eyes ways to help laid-off workers

Administration eyes ways to help laid-off workers
AP

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/us_obama

By CHARLES BABINGTON, Associated Press Writer Charles Babington, Associated Press Writer – 1 hr 59 mins ago

WASHINGTON – The Obama administration is considering steps to ease the burdens of laid-off workers, including possible extensions of unemployment and health benefits, officials said Saturday.

The administration has stopped short of calling for a second economic stimulus package to augment the $787 billion measure approved this year. But with the jobless rate continuing to climb, President Barack Obama said Saturday he is exploring "additional options to promote job creation."

Anytime I hear "promote job creation" or "increase incentives to do X" I always think of corporate welfare. How about just giving them jobs? Worked for FDR.

or give them enough "replacement money" to allow them to continue their lives as close to normally as possible.

The thing that's forgotten in this issue is this.. A WHOLE lot of laid off workers these days are not "producers" of products.. they are "service" people or paper-pushers. It's highly possible that their jobs are superfluous from the beginning, and may never return.

In boom-times, all kinds of "new" jobs open up, but as the boom ends, the jobs at the edges are the first to go, and the last to return.

remember when workfare replaced welfare? Those make-work jobs are probably all gone by now.

There will ALWAYS be a certain percentage of the populace who are virtually unemployable, and a society has to decide how to tend to these people. We can either help them and support them (willingly or begrudgingly) or we can ignore them at our own peril.

the Labor Department said, and 7.2 million jobs have been eliminated since the recession began in December 2007.

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If they don't do something soon the numbers will be too large to reverse, or maybe it's already too late. 15 million people who used to work but don't any more.... That's a lot of people.

She says it discourages people from finding jobs. She said this on "This Week" when she was on.

Not that I give a rat's ass what Malkin says -- it only reveals how empty the RW portfolio of solutions is.

There are hundreds of applicants for every good job. Any time a business expands, people line up thousands deep to apply.

IIRC that's what the others on the roundtable told her. They basically made her look ridiculous -- not that she needed any help.

Hey, companies say they're all smarter than us... (though the products and services coming back rather show otherwise...)

Oh, wait, you're an elitist. You have no fucking clue what's going on in the real world. You'd also say that if people ran out of any 6 month cushion they saved up, you'd blame them for not having 7 months' worth...

Go sip some wine with your other tabloid media buddies. Go away already.

Get something for the money spent and give people the dignity of work.