You mean, the unemployed weren't just lazy moochers after all?

[Adrahil]

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/losing-benefits-isnt-prodding-unemployed-back-to-work/

The cutoff of federal unemployment benefits doesn’t seem to be helping the long-term unemployed get back to work.

More than a million Americans saw their unemployment benefits expire at the start of the year, after Congress failed to renew the Emergency Unemployment Compensation program. The program, which Congress created in 2008, had provided federally funded payments to unemployed workers when their state-funded benefits ran out, usually after 26 weeks.

The Senate recently voted to restore the benefits, but the House shows little sign of following suit.

Some economists had argued that the program was doing more harm than good by discouraging recipients from looking for work or taking jobs. They said that because the job market was improving, the time had come to cut off benefits. That would prod the unemployed to get back to work, perhaps leading them to accept offers that seem less than ideal.

So far, however, the evidence doesn’t seem to support that theory. Rather than finding jobs, the long-term unemployed continue to be out of luck.

More at the link.

[2naSalit]

1. The point that

the oiligarch-funded Rs want to make clear is that they want the middle class to be replaced by the desperate class so they will be so hungry that they will accept wages as low as $2/day and somehow be thankful for it. If you have no financial resources, you can't afford communications, travel, reasonable housing (then they can keep the desperate in barracks), representation in the courts or in government because you can't afford the time to vote or even think for yourself. That, IMO, is what the repuglican utopian dream would be... as described by Mr. P90X Rand.

[uppityperson]

2. Oh I was. I preferred to go way into debt on unemployment rather than having a job

that would pay my bills and allow me to buy some food also. Those low wage entry level jobs that people say to take? Overqualified and not hireable as they knew I was not a lifer. Professional jobs like I was laid off from? Sorry, you are unemployed and also are over 50 and we have lots of younger currently employed people to chose from.

Yup. I sure as shit enjoyed being a moocher and going into debt.

Cut off the unemployement, COBRA ran out, am hoping to have my health insurance bills paid off in another year or so.