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Unemployment Benefits Extension Moves to Senate |
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The U.S. Senate is expected to act by the end of this week on a bill approved by the House yesterday that will provide an added 13 weeks of unemployment insurance (UI) benefits for jobless workers in high unemployment states who have exhausted their benefits without finding new work.
H.R. 3548, introduced by Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.), passed 331-83, with 66 Republicans and 17 Democrats opposing the measure, which will extend benefits in states where unemployment is more than 8.5 percent.
The official unemployment rate stands at 9.7 percent and is expected to top 10 percent in the coming months. There are six jobless workers for every job that is open.
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) says extending UI benefits in the states hardest hit by the recession
provides families with the assistance and reassurance they need to help weather the economic storm.
Extending these benefits is also among the most cost-effective and fastest ways to stimulate the economy—because the money is spent quickly. Every $1 spent on unemployment benefits generates $1.63 in new economic demand.
The bill provides extended benefits to 314,000 workers in 27 states, the District of Columbia and Puerto Rico who run out of benefits at the end of September. Another 1 million will exhaust their UI benefits by the end of the year.
The bill covers workers in Alabama, Arizona, California, District of Columbia, Florida, Georgia, Idaho, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maine, Massachusetts, Michigan, Mississippi, Missouri, Nevada, New Jersey, North Carolina, New York, Ohio, Oregon, Pennsylvania, Puerto Rico, Rhode Island, South Carolina, Tennessee, Washington, West Virginia and Wisconsin.
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Well it’s sounds good, but the railroad employees are not under state unemployment. We didn’t get the three months extension last time and why should we get time. It’s good news for some but not for all. To bad we don’t have a union that speak for us.
Unemployment, both in the U.S. and the world as a whole, marches ever higher because the field of economics doesn’t account for the relationship between population density and per capita consumption.
Following the beating the field of economics took over the seeming failure of Malthus’ theory, economists adamantly refuse to ever again consider the effects of population growth. If they did, they might come to understand that once an optimum population density is breached, further over-crowding begins to erode per capita consumption and, consequently, per capita employment.
And these effects of an excessive population density are actually imported when a nation like the U.S. attempts to trade freely with other nations much more densely populated - nations like China, Japan, Germany, Korea and a host of others. The result is an automatic trade deficit and loss of jobs - tantamount to economic suicide.
Using 2006 data, an in-depth analysis reveals that, of our top twenty per capita trade deficits in manufactured goods (the trade deficit divided by the population of the country in question), eighteen are with nations much more densely populated than our own. Even more revealing, if the nations of the world are divided equally around the median population density, the U.S. had a trade surplus in manufactured goods of $17 billion with the half of nations below the median population density. With the half above the median, we had a $480 billion deficit!
If you‘re interested in learning more about this important new economic theory, then I invite you to visit either of my web sites at OpenWindowPublishingCo.com or PeteMurphy.wordpress.com where you can read the preface, join in the blog discussion and, of course, buy the book if you like. (It’s also available at Amazon.com.)
Pete Murphy
Author, “Five Short Blasts”
This is great for those that are entitled to the extension but what about those of us that will have no benefits come early January? We didn’t qualify for the last 20 week extension and I am sure we will not qualify for this 13 weeks. What is going to be done about us? These extensions need to be approved befoe they actually run out. Most people collecting the benefit are getting a lot less they they were making when they worked….so to have the benefit run out all together when you are trying to feed your family and keep them warm this winter is very hard.
I think EVERY unemployed worker should get every extension that is allowed–just because there is a perceived “low” unemployment rate doesn’t mean people can find jobs. Here in North Dakota the amority of the jobs are part-time, poverty to sub-poverty and little to look for–include everyone in the extension for unemployemnt benefits!
I live in Connecticut, where the unemployment rate has been 7.9 for the past couple months while for the month of August it jumped to 8.1 we still don’t qualify for any extension. There needs to be some kind of ammendments to the rules to qualify for these extensions. I worked in the automotive industry for the past 10 years, and to find a decent job in this industry now a days is near impossible, all there is out there are part time jobs and positions that pay next to nothing. With Holidays around the corner it would sure help to have some income so at least for a few days we can forget that there is a recession going on and we can provide our children with Xmas they deserve.
I have been looking for work for the past 9 months here in Ventura County. I am a senior and and live alone. I have had to go to the food share for help. We all need to pray for our nation and all the families that are out of work and can not make it.
I am hopeful the Senate acts quickly on this. My benefits have also run out, and as much as I like the fact the Senate is working on Health Care Reform, ABC news with Charlie Gibson had a piece of the news yesterday that said these benefits will also cost money. How are we to pay when we are still one of 15 million of the unempoyed. This has never happened to me before, and I am sure not to a lot of others. Bless you in your look for work.
Are there any new updates to this bill being passed? They need to realize when our checks stop, so does the economy,… again!