From a Washington Post report on the extremely uneven recovery from the recession in the US this holiday season:
At Tiffany’s, executives report that sales of their most expensive merchandise have grown by double digits. At Wal-Mart, executives point to shoppers flooding the stores at midnight every two weeks to buy baby formula the minute their unemployment checks hit their accounts.
And yet Congressional Republicans only grudgingly agreed to a one-year extension of long-term unemployment benefits, at a time of near-10 percent unemployment, in exchange for President Obama’s agreement to continue tax cuts for the highest-earning two percent of the population.
The Republican attitude toward unemployment compensation was summed up earlier this year by Senator John Kyl of Arizona, who argued that unemployment benefits dissuade people from job-hunting “because people are being paid even though they’re not working.”
Unemployment insurance “doesn’t create new jobs. In fact, if anything, continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work,” Kyl said…
Or as cartoonist Reuben Bolling ironically put it:
Of course unemployment benefits are meager compared to what recipients could receive through almost all paying jobs, and they hardly allow for a life of indolent luxury. Consequently recipients end up spending virtually all their benefits on necessities. Imagine how many more people would be unemployed if not for this spending.
And then there was the Tea Party-endorsed (and unsuccessful) GOP candidate for Senate from Delaware, Christine O’Donnell, who said the extension of unemployment benefits was a tragedy comparable to the Japanese attack on Pearl Harbor and the death of Elizabeth Edwards.
Well done to the good people of Delaware for electing someone else.