Daily Kos: Republicans Caught in A Colossal Lie About Unemployment Benefits

[Omaha Steve]

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2014/09/12/1329302/-Republicans-Caught-in-A-Colossal-Lie-About-Unemployment-Benefits?detail=email

FRI SEP 12, 2014 AT 02:05 PM PDT

Not that they'll ever read it, but a study released by the Federal Reserve Division of Research and Statistics, Monetary Affairs blows a huge hole in one of the GOP's most enduring fictions about providing jobless Americans with unemployment benefits.

You know the one about how providing extensions just serves to make the unemployed lazy. How it encourages them not to look for a job. and actually fosters unemployment. So cutting off their benefits will make them "get off their butts" and go find work, because they'll have no other choice. This is one of the GOP's greatest hits because it feeds into the (often race-based) biases of their constituents and justifies doing absolutely nothing to help those Americans. And nothing is what the GOP does best.

But a new study by Regis Barnichon of the Centre de Recerca en Economia Internacional in Barcelona and Andrew Figura of the Federal Reserve Board reveals that provision of long term unemployment benefits has no significant impact on whether a person continues to pursue employment:

Extending benefits to unemployed workers beyond the 26 weeks provided by most states has little effect on the unemployment rate and essentially no impact on labor force participation, a recent working paper released by the Federal Reserve Board found.

FULL story at link.

[underpants]

1. I got fired 9/8/08. Bottom dropped out within a week.

I got fired from the job I thought retire from to hire someone's cousin I was told later. Government job. Safe? Apparently not.

The INSURANCE that I paid for since I got my first actual job in 1983 supplemented my wife's income - she pretty much makes twice as much as me.

I was out of work for 11 months. I spent at least 3 hours a day looking for and trimming down job opportunities everyday.

I was about to run out of the benefits that I paid for when they got extended as a part, if memory serves, ARRA.

We didn't survive off them but they allowed us to keep our daughter in daycare with her friends, allow me to be ready for interviews (had a lot but it was brutal out there), and still have access to look for jobs.

I ended up getting picked out of the blue on Monster.com for the position I left last year.

[LisaLynne]

2. Well, I'm sure these are just liberal LIES!

Otherwise known as, you know, FACTS.