Patterico's Pontifications

9/21/2010

Conservatives at L.A. Times Insult Unemployed

Filed under: Dog Trainer,General — Patterico @ 11:29 pm



L.A. Times, September 21, 2010:

Jobless workers dispute claim that unemployment benefits foster complacency

The idea that extended benefits discourage people from seeking work is an insult, unemployed workers say. ‘Let ’em walk a mile in our shoes,’ one jobless woman says of unemployment critics.

It’s an old theory that’s gaining new political currency: By cushioning the blow of unemployment for nearly two years, jobless benefits discourage recipients from looking for work.

The claim, most frequently advanced by conservative pundits and politicians aligned with the conservative “tea party” movement, is seen as a fresh insult by the nation’s suffering unemployed workers.

Those damn conservatives and their damn insulting conservative claims.

L.A. Times, June 4, 2009:

For the ‘funemployed,’ unemployment’s welcomed

These jobless folks, usually singles in their 20s and 30s, find that life without work agrees with them. They’re not sending out resumes, but instead lazing at the beach and taking long trips abroad.

Michael Van Gorkom was laid off by Yahoo in late April. He didn’t panic. He didn’t rush off to a therapist. Instead, the 33-year-old Santa Monica resident discovered that being jobless “kind of settled nicely.”

Week one: “I thought, ‘OK . . . I need to send out resumes, send some e-mails, need to do networking.”

Week two: “A little less.”

Every week since: “I’m going to go to the beach and enjoy some margaritas.”

What most people would call unemployment, Van Gorkom embraced as “funemployment.”

While millions of Americans struggle to find work as they face foreclosures and bankruptcy, others have found a silver lining in the economic meltdown. These happily jobless tend to be single and in their 20s and 30s. Some were laid off. Some quit voluntarily, lured by generous buyouts.

Buoyed by severance, savings, unemployment checks or their parents, the funemployed do not spend their days poring over job listings. They travel on the cheap for weeks. They head back to school or volunteer at the neighborhood soup kitchen. And at least till the bank account dries up, they’re content living for today.

Damn conservatives!

21 Responses to “Conservatives at L.A. Times Insult Unemployed”

  1. Patterico, you said you enjoyed Gladwell and asked why I don’t, and I gave you you a barely coherent response. Well NFL season has started, so for the bajillionth time I’ve had to confront Gladwell’s famous essay I’m Dangerously Skinny But I Have A Hideous Afro So I Know More Than Everyone , aka Most Likely To Succeed.

    In the process of explaining why the premise and evidence are f#%king stupid, I found this great book review by Steven Pinker. Here’s a few sweet quotes:

    “The themes of the collection are a good way to characterize Gladwell himself: a minor genius who unwittingly demonstrates the hazards of statistical reasoning and who occasionally blunders into spectacular failures.”

    “But Gladwell frequently holds forth about statistics and psychology, and his lack of technical grounding in these subjects can be jarring.”

    “The common thread in Gladwell’s writing is a kind of populism, which seeks to undermine the ideals of talent, intelligence and analytical prowess in favor of luck, opportunity, experience and intuition. For an apolitical writer like Gladwell, this has the advantage of appealing both to the Horatio Alger right and to the egalitarian left. Unfortunately he wildly overstates his empirical case. It is simply not true that a quarter­back’s rank in the draft is uncorrelated with his success in the pros, that cognitive skills don’t predict a teacher’s effectiveness, that intelligence scores are poorly related to job performance or (the major claim in “Outliers”) that above a minimum I.Q. of 120, higher intelligence does not bring greater intellectual achievements.”

    “Readers have much to learn from Gladwell the journalist and essayist. But when it comes to Gladwell the social scientist, they should watch out for those igon[*] values.”

    * This alone should disqualify him among serious people, but our education system is more concerned with ancient literature than algebra, so we get crap like this.

    el duderino (fedc3d)

  2. Well, not only that, but the fact that companies are required to contribute to unemployment takes money away from hiring people who will actually work for them.

    Aaron Worthing (e7d72e)

  3. ~50% of my industry is laid off. Do you really expect all of those architects and engineers to miraculously fine new jobs if you take their unemployment benefits away?

    I can see two things happening:
    1) The older and more skilled workers taking jobs flipping burgers and kicking the youngest and most inexperienced of people out of the work force.
    2) These older guys not being able to find jobs, and with no income they lose have to foreclose on their house. This causes more banks to fail, property values to drop, etc.

    The older guys will still lose their job if #1, but just a little bit slower.

    Newtons.Bit (be0597)

  4. Great. Crissyhootenany and the bradblogettes will be by to squeal about how 2+ years of unemployment is the best possible stimulus plan.

    JD (bbce34)

  5. You can’t expect the journalists at the LA Times to believe their own newspaper! To be a liberal is to wake up each day to a brand new world.

    Arizona Bob (e8af2b)

  6. one of the most ironic comments is from krugman “the magnificant economist”

    His textbook – intro to macro economic includes the statement to the effect that unemployment benefits lessen the incentive to return to the workforce and have the effect of creating a semi permanent unemployed class of people.

    His columns in the NYT are filled with his call to extend unemployment benefits

    Ironic that he cant read his own textbook

    Joe (6120a4)

  7. The way the porkulus was wasted is a disgrace. Instead of going to preserve patronage and featherbed union jobs, it should have been the real unmployment benefits. Even if it was just makework. Just having people tutor school children. Or plant flowers by the highway. Or be crossing guards. Or clean grafitti. Or guard bald eagle nests.

    nk (db4a41)

  8. BTW, Patterico, I never took that “funemployment” thing seriously. You either have a work ethic or you don’t. That guy was likely talking about the one person in a hundred who worked as a hobby in the first place.

    nk (db4a41)

  9. There is nothing wrong with taking a few years off as sabbatical when the economy isn’t great and you can get some really good deals on travel and such.

    As long as you’re funding it with YOUR OWN money.

    In Michigan you have to be actively seeking work in order to maintain your jobless benefits. This means keeping track of where and with whom you’ve applied. It also means if you are offered a job and you refuse, then you need a really good reason why or else you’re off benefit.

    Nate_MI (8efdaa)

  10. There are a lot of people who use entitlements as their major means of support and love it. There are a lot of people who loath the thought and would do anything to avoid the disgrace. What entitlements do is prevent people from taking “something/anything” while they look for the ideal fit. As far as I can tell the two articles are in no way contradictory and both have a certain amount of truth for certain populations. If the shoe fits.

    quasimodo (4af144)

  11. Last time I was between jobs, I didn’t bother with unemployment; my severance amounted to nearly six months pay and I was old enough to take the pension. I know I didn’t start seriously looking for a new job until my bank account started getting low. I didn’t travel, it was just a long, restful time-off.

    LarryD (f22286)


  12. The fact that conservative or right-wing is so regularly used as an obvious descriptor in front of the word “pundit”, or “congressman”, or “columnist”, or “think tank”, or “news network” is constant testament to how the MFM (both print and on-air) position themselves as the only normal while trying to influence the gullible. I’ve been trying to watch for ANY examples where the descriptors liberal or left-wing are ever used in front of the same words to helpfully alert viewers as to whether there might be any bias to factor in. Answer is: you don’t ever see that. It’s Nobel winner Krugman or long time California Senator Boxer, or Washington Post political analyst Ezra Klein.

    elissa (fd598e)

  13. Gubmint checks do discourage some people from seeking work–I’ve heard more than one person say, Oh I got laid off, so I’ll take a little time off on unemployment, then look.

    The question is, what is the good versus the bad?

    Patricia (9c62d9)

  14. Just curious: but is the Dem attitude towards unemployment benefits designed to fudge the number of unemployed? For months the unemployment rate has remained stable,despite the fact that jobs lost still exceed the number of jobs created (private sector or otherwise). The only thing that can cause this is if people who had been previously looking for work simply give up looking further.

    Now normally, a person taking unemployment benefits must show proof that they are seeking employment which, by definition, would place them into the ranks of the unemployed. But is that still going on? There was that undercover operation that showed that the census operation was a huge scam, with employees specifically instructed by their supervisors to claim they performed more work than they did, just to justify the number of census workers hired; is something similar taking place here?

    Sean P (4fde41)

  15. From today’s WSJ-Online, a comment re Elizabeth Warren’s appointment to Czarina:

    WASHINGTON, DC – Congress is considering sweeping legislation which will provide new benefits for many Americans. The Americans With No Abilities Act (AWNAA) is being hailed as a major legislative goal by advocates of the millions of Americans who lack any real skills or ambition including the President.

    “Roughly 50 percent of Americans like me, do not possess the competence and drive necessary to carve out a meaningful role for themselves in society,” said California Senator Barbara Boxer. “We can no longer stand by and allow People of Inability to be ridiculed and passed over. With this legislation, employers will no longer be able to grant special favors to a small group of workers, simply because they have some idea of what they are doing.”

    In a Capitol Hill press conference, House Majority Leader Nancy Pelosi and Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid pointed to the success of the U.S. Postal Service, which has a long- standing policy of providing opportunity without regard to performance. Approximately 74 percent of postal employees lack any job skills, making this agency the single largest U.S. employer of Persons of Inability.

    Private-sector industries with good records of nondiscrimination against the Inept include retail sales (72%), the airline industry (68%), and home improvement “warehouse” stores (65%). At the state government level, the Department of Motor Vehicles also has a great record of hiring Persons of Inability (63%).

    Under the Americans With No Abilities Act, more than 25 million “middle man” positions will be created, with important-sounding titles but little real responsibility, thus providing an illusory sense of purpose and performance.

    Mandatory non-performance-based raises and promotions will be given so as to guarantee upward mobility for even the most unremarkable employees. The legislation provides substantial tax breaks to corporations that promote a significant number of Persons of Inability into middle-management positions, and gives a tax credit to small and medium-sized businesses that agree to hire one clueless worker for every two talented hires.

    Finally, the AWNAA Act contains tough new measures to make it more difficult to discriminate against the Non-abled; banning, for example, discriminatory interview questions such as “Do you have any skills or experience which relate to this job?”

    “As a Non-abled person, I can’t be expected to keep up with people who have something going for them,” said Mary Lou Gertz, who lost her position as a lug-nut twister at the GM plant in Flint, Michigan, due to her lack of any discernible job skills. “This new law should really help people like me.” With the passage of this bill, Gertz and millions of other untalented citizens will finally see a light at the end of the tunnel.

    Said Vice President Joe Biden: “As a key member of the White House Key Personnel With No Abilities, I believe the same privileges that elected officials enjoy ought to be extended to every American with no abilities. It is our duty as servants of the people to provide each and every American citizen, regardless of his or her adequacy, with some sort of space to take up in this great nation.”

    I’m sure the Funemployment specialists onstaff at The Dog Trainer will approve.

    AD-RtR/OS! (156830)

  16. It’s the most basic concept in Economics, the relationship between supply and demand. If you pay more for unemployment, more people will define themselves as unemployed. The same dismal rule works for Welfare, Food Stamps, and washing machines.

    ropelight (f3737b)

  17. 2) These older guys not being able to find jobs, and with no income they lose have to foreclose on their house. This causes more banks to fail, property values to drop, etc.

    If property values drop, housing becomes more affordable.

    Michael Ejercito (249c90)

  18. His textbook – intro to macro economic includes the statement to the effect that unemployment benefits lessen the incentive to return to the workforce and have the effect of creating a semi permanent unemployed class of people.

    His columns in the NYT are filled with his call to extend unemployment benefits

    Ironic that he cant read his own textbook

    I think it’s a lot more likely that Krugman’s wife is ghost-writing or heavily editing most of his articles these days.

    http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2010/03/01/100301fa_fact_macfarquhar

    I can’t think of any other reason he’d refer to World War 2 as the economic “miracle of the 1940s,” argue against austerity measures, and forget to include that the US followed a four-year austerity program during the war.

    Another Chris (2d8013)

  19. Conservatives are evil because they actually believe that economics have meaning. The LA Times thinks economics is a fantasy that they can ignore whenever they feel like it.

    Economics tells us that incentives affect behavior.

    Economics, it works bitches.

    SPQR (26be8b)

  20. Why am I not surprised that LAT liberal activist Robin Abcarian wrote this? She has seen hundreds of her MSM colleagues laid off from LAT, and her chick-talk failed radio station. Conservatives are enjoying the demise of those jobs, that much is true. But her claim in the story is just another straw-man, told using the voice of sympathetic characters.

    Just two weeks ago, the LAT was telling the story of a young slacker who was happy for the time off from his grind of a $140,000/yr job. His story wouldn’t quite fit Abcarian’s narrative.

    TimesDisliker (972c61)


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