Benefits of Unemployment

(Updated on Nov. 22)

Nearly everyday I head down to the jobs center where I sip champagne and sample caviar with my fellow unemployed people and we chuckle about all those taxpaying working rubes who are footing the bill for our overly generous unemployment benefits. You can really live the high life on the $276 per week I get and I plan to ride the gravy train for as long as I can rather than try to get another job.

That outlook isn't much of an exaggeration from that of Republicans who on Thursday blocked a vote on extending unemployment benefits. This year Republican leaders have repeatedly said that unemployment benefits give the jobless an excuse not to find work as if we would prefer to remain unemployed.

It's true that after 20 years as a journalist, I have primarily sought work in what is admittedly a dying industry although I have applied for non-journalism jobs such as a security guard, a job counselor and in public relations. I haven't  sought the kind of minimum wage jobs I worked when I was a teenager because they wouldn't pay much more than my unemployment benefits and wouldn't allow me much time to apply for jobs.

Perhaps it's a rationalization, but after years of contributing to unemployment benefits through my paycheck, I think I'm entitled to them especially since, like most unemployed people, I didn't choose to be out of work, I had the rug pulled out from under me by my boss. Forget the daily humiliation and depression of being unemployed and the fear of being destitute and thrown out on the street, unemployment benefits actually stimulate the economy.  Unlike the billionaire hedge funders who the Republicans want to give a tax break to, unemployed people don't save money or invest it offshore, we spend it creating an economic ripple effect. For ever $1 of benefits, $1.61 of spending is created: http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/employment/2010-07-15-unemployment15_CV_N.htm

But according to the Republicans and their supporters, my unwillingness to seek minimum wage jobs makes me a deadbeat. Among those blocking the vote on the extension were my congressman Republican Rep. Fred Upton. Upton, who is from St. Joseph, MI., is the grandson of the founder of the Whirlpool Corp. the $17 billion dollar corporation whose headquarters are in neighboring Benton Harbor although much of their manufacturing jobs have been shipped to China and Mexico.

Upton, whose personal wealth is about $32 billion, is a country club Republican who has been in Congress since 1987 and is a supporter of the widely discredited "trickledown economic" theory that says tax cuts for the rich will make them invest and spend with the benefits eventually trickling down to people like me. The theory is the equivalent of someone pissing down your back and telling you it's spring rain.

Upton's rationale for blocking benefits is that they would increase the deficit which he helped create by turning a $260 billion surplus left by President Clinton into a $1.3 trillion deficit left by President George W. Bush. Upton voted for the Bush tax cuts which largely benefitted the wealthiest Americans, the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq and the Medicare Part D Plan which was resulted in windfall profits for the pharmeceutical industry. Those votes  and the Great Recession - largely due to a lack of financial policing of Wall Street during the Bush era - are the primary reasons for the deficit, according to the non-partisan Congressional Budget Office.

Upton is an affable guy who've I've enjoyed interviewing as a journalist, but I won't get the chance to anymore. Or play a $150 round of golf next summer with him at the new Harbor Shores Golf Club that was largely built with taxpayer dollars and that is Whirlpool's plan to revive the local economy that they shipped hundreds of decent paying jobs out of.  I'll be moving out of St. Joseph at the end of the month because I can't afford to pay my rent. You never know where life on Easy Street will take you.