What Is Your Take on Extended Unemployment Benefits?

My grandfather was not an educated man. He grew up in northwestern Louisiana on the family farm. He had to quit school after 6th grade to work on the farm. But, like so many from that era, he was loaded with common sense and wise in the ways of the world.

During the Depression, he traveled from project to project. Each week he brought his earnings home to the family. He wanted to make more money, but the times were difficult. He did his best and the family survived. Regardless of the situation, he felt good about himself and, more importantly, the family felt good about him. There was no shortage of pride and no self pity.

All of this brings be to the Obamacrats efforts to extend unemployment benefits to 99 weeks. Let’s just round that number up a bit and call it two years. At some point, government subsidies stop becoming incentives for employment and become enablers for non-employment. At some point, it is easier to sit on the front porch and wait for the mailman than to be gainfully employed.

Most people, and I include myself in this category, are driven by deadlines. In our tax practice, the volume of tax returns increases as April 15 approaches. I fail to see how lengthening the unemployment benefit aids in creating new jobs. There is no sense of urgency. There is no cause for activity.

The money paid to these folks should be put into projects that create immediate jobs. The money should be made available for businesses to borrow. Business growth is what actually creates jobs. Working creates pride. Pride creates desire. A March 2010 economic report by Michael Feroli of J P Morgan Chase Bank examined this issue. Their finding was “that lengthened availability of jobless benefits has raised the unemployment rate by 1.5%.”

The Tuesday, July 20, 2010, Wall Street Journal reported that a “record 6.7 million people have now been out of work for at least six months….that number was 23.4% in February 2009. Americans tend to support jobless benefits on compassion grounds, but at some point such a policy becomes the false compassion of welfare by keeping people of the job market and thus not learning new skills.”

Perhaps we should tie unemployment benefits to some level of activity. Activity is not going to TWC once a week and signing in on the computer. Activity is real job training programs, picking up trash on the highways, washing police cars, etc. Government claims to be strapped for manpower because of reduced tax funding. All of these people on welfare are being compensated by the government, let them work.

The more you get something for nothing, the more of nothing you are going to receive.