Monday, December 19, 2011

The Great Recession - Job Creators and the Unemployed in Republican minds

Something I've noticed recently - some "leading" Republicans, and their side-kick pundits - seem to want to have it both ways economically.

On the one hand, they want to continue hacking away at the tax code so upper tier income earners (the now legendary 1%) and large corporations pay little to no federal income tax (or any other federal tax for that matter). This, along with further deregulation, is supposed to be driving that segment of the economy to create new jobs that will lift us out of a recession.

On the other hand, they also want to slash long-term unemployment benefits because they see the unemployed (philosophically) as lazy louts who would work if only there was no government social net under them.

So here's my question - if the unemployed are lazy because of Unemployment Insurance, and you cut it, what jobs are they going to go out and get, since unemployment seems to be hovering around 9% in spite of the "Bush-Obama" tax cuts for the upper income tiers? In other words - the "job creators" aren't creating jobs inspite of our tax and regulatory roll back, so how is cutting UI going to get people to work in jobs that don't exist?

Oh, wait, I'm thinking analytically again. And using facts. Bummer for me, huh?

1 comment:

Mike Dwyer said...

I recently read somewhere that long gaps in a person's employment history is being seen as a red flag on job applications. Potential employers would rather see someone that worked at McDonald's because they lost their job than someone that collected unemployment for 6 months. I think that sort of explains some of the logic around this conversation.