US Politics Mega-thread - Page 698

12. Unemployed workers who received benefits were more likely to have been proactive in seeking work than those who did not receive UI. UI recipients reported more hours devoted to the job search and more frequently contact friends and examine job postings.

On December 10 2013 00:43 Liquid`Drone wrote:
I actually don't think paid support is what people in desperate situations generally need the most. I think what they need the most is for society around them to not blame them for their own desperate situation. And once that happens, a greater set of unified, empowering policies which would alter education and revolutionize the penal system could be set in motion to possibly in the future make real, large scale social mobility a possibility.

I'm not holding my breath though. But the notion that poverty and desperation is a personal choice is so distant from my own perspective, and so fundamentally illogical, that I don't even see the point in addressing the point of view that poverty and desperation can sometimes also be empowering tools for the exceptionally gifted.

On December 10 2013 01:26 kwizach wrote:
For those claiming that receiving unemployment benefits leads people to get lazy about finding a new job, here's a study showing the exact opposite:


Source (excerpt of the key findings on p. 2)

On December 10 2013 01:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Pretty sure if you are on UI you have to be engaged in a job search or you'll be dropped. It might vary by state.

On December 10 2013 01:26 kwizach wrote:
For those claiming that receiving unemployment benefits leads people to get lazy about finding a new job[...]

On December 10 2013 01:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Pretty sure if you are on UI you have to be engaged in a job search or you'll be dropped. It might vary by state.

On December 10 2013 01:59 xDaunt wrote:

Yeah, that's the case in most states.

On December 09 2013 19:57 jellyjello wrote:


You really need to get out and see how folks in some of the developing countries have to do to get by on daily basis. Can't find a job because the job market is hard? Give me a freaking break.

I just had a friend who got laid off - was given three months of notice, who couldn't find a suitable replacement job because the entire time he did not invest in himself. But even someone like him can find a job, although it may not be what he wants, but it's a job. He was actually offered a job of his profession in other locations, but Instead he's decided to stay put and just live off the unemployment for next two years while trying to better his resume. Can't blame him - why move to the other side of country with a pay cut when he can stay and collect unemployment?

Somewhere along the way the Americans became so spoiled that they must have a house, a car, fridge full of food, can't work weekends or more than 40 hours a week. Completely ridiculous. I've seen a 70 year of grandpa work two jobs so that he can buy enough food for the night's dinner while living in one room basement, after his entire saving was thrown out for a cancer treatment (what a great socialized healthcare system this S.Korea has, huh). I've seen a 14 year old kid who work three part time jobs so she can provide food to her younger brothers and keep them in school. Those are the ones who need the help, not some recent college grad with no social skills or aging grandpa who's life was all about spending the paycheck as they come.

But sure, keep on extending the unemployment benefits because, you know, after all the job market is hard and lots of people "can't find a job". If all fails, we can always tax the hell out of the rich folks, right?

On December 09 2013 22:06 coverpunch wrote:

To be fair, the resulting tenacity that comes from such desperation is a big part of the reason that Koreans dominate StarCraft. It's not that different from hearing stories of everyone from boxers to Barack Obama about the desperation of their youths and how it gave them the strength of character to push through any adversity.

On December 10 2013 01:54 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Pretty sure if you are on UI you have to be engaged in a job search or you'll be dropped. It might vary by state.

On December 10 2013 02:10 kwizach wrote:


So you both agree that the idea of dropping unemployment benefits in order to "motivate" people to find a job is a silly one?

On December 10 2013 02:11 aksfjh wrote:




When a society/economy/person grows rich enough, you expect certain hardships to diminish or cease to exist. Can you imagine being a millionaire, but once a week you just can't find any food? You can throw all sorts of justification that the one day of starvation makes you stronger by reminding you that worse things exist, but in reality, when you actually look at the problems that one day of hunger causes, you see that it hurts your performance overall. The same thing happens at scale.

Specifically on coverpunch's point, the costs outweigh the benefits. You get these awesome stories of people with drives that overcome adversity to do amazing things, but you also have people that have little to no adversity do similarly. The "rage that helps them succeed" doesn't actually make them better, just raises them to the level of the elite. Those rags to riches stories make for good entertainment, but are hardly something we should strive to create more of. In fact, I'm not even sure it's a sincere argument, because you're not asking we punish affluent kids without resolve by stripping them of their connections and money to motivate them to do more with their resources.

On December 10 2013 02:10 kwizach wrote:


So you both agree that the idea of dropping unemployment benefits in order to "motivate" people to find a job is a silly one?

We exploit a policy discontinuity at U.S. state borders to identify the effects of unemployment insurance policies on unemployment. Our estimates imply that most of the persistent increase in unemployment during the Great Recession can be accounted for by the unprecedented extensions of unemployment benefit eligibility. In contrast to the existing recent literature that mainly focused on estimating the effects of benefit duration on job search and acceptance strategies of the unemployed -- the micro effect -- we focus on measuring the general equilibrium macro effect that operates primarily through the response of job creation to unemployment benefit extensions. We find that it is the latter effect that is very important quantitatively.

On December 10 2013 02:13 xDaunt wrote:

No, it's really easy to game the system if one is so inclined.

On December 10 2013 02:33 kwizach wrote:

...but the study I just provided you with shows that people who are on the system are "more proactive in seeking work".

On December 10 2013 01:46 xDaunt wrote:


No one directly chooses to be impoverished. However, people do make other poor choices that inevitably lead to impoverishment. It doesn't have to be one choice, either. Lots of poor small choices can have disastrous cumulative effects. Even something as small as slacking off at work or showing up late too often.

And frankly, I think you have it backwards. The problem is that people aren't judged enough for their poor decisions. There are a lot of reasons for this, but one big one is the general weakening of local communal relationships. Hell, if you really want to help people, it needs to be handled at a local level anyway where people on the ground with actual knowledge of the problem can properly address it. A bureaucrat in Washington throwing money all over the place isn't going to fix anything. In fact, people generally are going to resent their tax money being sent to bums they don't know in communities that are across the country.

On December 10 2013 02:57 mcc wrote:

And sometimes people are poor even though they did not make any poor choices.

As for the often used local level argument. There are plenty arguments for better involvement on local level. But there are good reasons why some things should be kept out of hands of locals. If there is benefit to extensive bureaucracy is its statistical "impartiality". The bureaucrat in Washington does not care about a person on the other side of the country and that is a good thing. Bureaucrats should be as neutral as possible to implement policies fairly and locals are often anything but neutral. There is probably some way to balance it (not perfectly), but claiming like one way is the panacea to everything is flawed. Especially without showing how exactly should the local involvement be increased and how exactly will it help.

On December 10 2013 02:43 epok wrote:
I'm not a conservative or a condemning person but as a web developer/designer I get a real kick out of the amount of problems the healthcare.gov website had when it launched. Why can't you hire some more affluent people to do the work instead of giving some coporate eggheads one of the most important websites in the world? On top of it all, it was so easy to SQL inject that it almost resulted in millions getting their most private information leaked online!

On December 10 2013 02:47 xDaunt wrote:

That study is inapposite to my point, which is that rather than sitting on UI benefits for extended periods of time looking for the "right" job, people should go work elsewhere -- even if its a menial job -- until a better opportunity arises. In other words, people shouldn't need more than 6 months of UI benefits. By the time that those benefits run out, they should already have plan B in place to take care of themselves.

On December 10 2013 03:08 xDaunt wrote:


Shit happens. But barring some unpreventable calamity, people who work hard in school, avoid drugs and criminal behavior, and then work hard for their employers will do just fine in life.

On December 10 2013 03:13 ticklishmusic wrote:


what baffles me is that they even hired a company which had a lousy track record with these sorts of things.

On December 10 2013 02:32 JonnyBNoHo wrote:

Depends what you mean by "find a job" - job search or job search plus acceptance? UI benefits require you to search for a job, but you can work around that by applying to jobs you don't really want while waiting for your dream job to show up. To what extent it is a big deal isn't really known. Some researchers think it's a big deal, others don't.

Link

Others disagree, so it's kind of an unknown. You really just have to assume a trade-off and roll with your personal preferences on this one as far as I can tell. If you favor stronger job creation, worry that UI benefits to too generous. If you favor protecting the unemployed, worry that UI benefits are too stingy.