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Politics : View from the Center and Left -- Ignore unavailable to you. Want to Upgrade?

To: Katelew who wrote (140604)	7/10/2010 1:02:39 PM
From: Steve Lokness	Read Replies (2) \| Respond to of 541753

Katelew; You ask many fairness questions about extending welfare. But the cruelest unfairness is that unemployed self-employed usually are not entitled to receive it. So they pay taxes but aren't allowed to receive it? How is that fair? steve

To: Katelew who wrote (140604)	7/11/2010 5:34:22 AM
From: cnyndwllr	Read Replies (1) \| Respond to of 541753

Kate, I wouldn't address the narrow issue of how to deal with those who lost their jobs and are currently unemployed as a separate issue. It's all part of a bigger problem and it needs a much broader approach. The answer is not to try to fix the bottom by putting rockets on the other 80% of the economy and hoping that some of that acceleration takes hold and trickles down, the answer is to look to the problems facing some of the most hard hit groups and address them directly. What do you do about the "too old to retrain" workers in their late 50s and older? What do you do about the strong back workers who are too numerous for the limited number of strong back jobs? How much bang for the buck can we get with retraining? How much bang for the buck can we get with necessary public works programs? What are we willing to do for the marginally employable in terms of assuring them work and a decent wage? I don't know the answers but we should at least acknowledge the problems and ask the tough questions. Simply relying on the dogma that the free market economy will take care of the problem is just crazy. Maybe we should do what the state of Oregon does and prevent people from pumping their own gas. That puts about 120k people to work in that state, I've heard, doing work that anyone can do. In the meantime, I'm for extensions that help keep some people afloat. Ed