Gotcher Bread & Circuses Right Here

One way to keep the newly unemployed from being quite so riot-inclined is to pay them more in unemployment benefits. And, since December 2008, it appears that we have been doing just that. Went from $1k average check to $1,800 now (i.e., May), with $2k projected for June 2009.
I dunno, shouldn’t there have been a debate in Congress? Maybe passage of a law?

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5 Responses to Gotcher Bread & Circuses Right Here

  1. Chris Byrne says:

    Peoples republic of haven anyone?

    You know what the maximum unemployment is here in AZ? $240 a week for 16 weeks. That’s it.

    Unemployment should be painful, so you get off it as fast as possible. Not eating is a powerful motivation to get a new job, even if it is bagging groceries.

  2. Antony says:

    Ha! We’re looking like the wrong end of a David Weber novel every month.

  3. DirtCrashr says:

    Does it come with a ticket-voucher to see Bruce Springsteen, Kanye West, Moby, or The Dixie Chicks?

    Gubb’mint, creating more voting dependency-blocs, one generous handout-peratchik at a time.

  4. You know, I’m wondering if there’s nothing more here than that the newly unemployed get a higher unemployment check because it’s based on their former wages — and they were, until recently, at the middle or upper end of the pay scale. That is, I think the check’s calculated at some level as a percentage of your former wages. Anybody know for sure?

  5. Rivrdog says:

    …and your observation doesn’t even include the lengthening of the period of payment. It used to be almost impossible to get unemployment for more than six months. Now it is easy to get it for a year.

    We just took over two of the Big Three auto insurance companies. They have a liability to pay contracted unemployment benefits of 95% of scale, for up to three years, to UAW auto workers from closed plants (most of them now). Since the companies are now US-owned, guess who is on the hook for THAT bit of largesse?

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