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Ouze wrote:

Frazzled wrote:

Ouze wrote:

Frazzled wrote:I am sure the Me generation would love a chance to to do that. It would obliterate social security of course, but we always knew they would do that.

If your generation didn't want the young people who have to live the consequences of your fiscal irresponsibility to make tough economic decisions like this, perhaps your generation should not have driven the country to the point of insolvency?

Whats this 'your generation' crap?

Aren't you a baby boomer? Truthfully I know you're older, but not precisely.

nope no boomer be I.

I call it fun enjoyment

biccat wrote:
So it was wrong of me to assume that the people not getting a GED (who might do so now) are acting irrationally.

I misread your initial statement, thanks for the clarification.

Frazzled wrote:

Ouze wrote:Aren't you a baby boomer? Truthfully I know you're older, but not precisely.

nope no boomer be I.

And while we'e on the subject of misreading, I apologize for my assumption, it seems I have made an ass out of I.

I also like the idea of mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients.

Can't pass the drug screen? No unemployment, no food stamps, etc.

The theory here is that about 80-90% of employers require someone to pass a drug screen.

So why would we pay unemployment to a person who is on drugs, required to be looking for work, but unable to attain work due to the fact they can not pass a drug screen.

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:
The theory here is that about 80-90% of employers require someone to pass a drug screen.

I've never understood why.

When I hired people I always followed the "Did you show up sober?" school of thought, and told the owner I sent them for a drug screen.

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:I also like the idea of mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients.

I also agree that we should drug test welfare recipients, ideally starting with those who have received the largest chunks of taxpayer largesse. I'd like to start with the CEO's, board of directors, and every employee of the companies on this list, as well as for every congressman and senator. In all cases, with the results posted publicly, with mandatory rehab for a first offense and expulsion for a second.

Can't pass the drug screen? No tax dollars for you.

Ouze wrote:

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:I also like the idea of mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients.

I also agree that we should drug test welfare recipients, ideally starting with those who have received the largest chunks of taxpayer largesse. I'd like to start with the CEO's, board of directors, and every employee of the companies on this list, as well as for every congressman and senator. In all cases, with the results posted publicly, with mandatory rehab for a first offense and expulsion for a second.

Can't pass the drug screen? No tax dollars for you.

Haven't we had a thread about that already? Essentially the cost far outwieghs the benifits becuase the number of drug users on welfare is small and it is telling poor people they are basically suspected of criminal activity just by virtue of needing welfare. The research doesn't back up any notion of a drug problem so much greater than the population as a whole to justify greater taxpayer expense just to get at the small number who do it. It is the kind of legislation that feels good, but actually isn't good.

Ahtman wrote:

Ouze wrote:

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:I also like the idea of mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients.

I also agree that we should drug test welfare recipients, ideally starting with those who have received the largest chunks of taxpayer largesse. I'd like to start with the CEO's, board of directors, and every employee of the companies on this list, as well as for every congressman and senator. In all cases, with the results posted publicly, with mandatory rehab for a first offense and expulsion for a second.

Can't pass the drug screen? No tax dollars for you.

Haven't we had a thread about that already? Essentially the cost far outwieghs the benifits becuase the number of drug users on welfare is small

I'm not sure I agree with that. The annual farm bill is just under 100 billion dollars. A goodly percentage of those dollars are fed as subsidies to major corporations. Billions of federal dollars! I checked and Monsanto has on their leadership team and board 23 executives. Test kits on Amazon are $60, and while I assume the US Government can get a bulk discount, even at worst it's a mere $1400 outlay. I say it's high time we get some of these welfare queens to piss in a cup already. I am sure Shadowseer Kim agrees.

Ouze wrote:

Ahtman wrote:

Ouze wrote:

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:I also like the idea of mandatory drug testing for welfare recipients.

I also agree that we should drug test welfare recipients, ideally starting with those who have received the largest chunks of taxpayer largesse. I'd like to start with the CEO's, board of directors, and every employee of the companies on this list, as well as for every congressman and senator. In all cases, with the results posted publicly, with mandatory rehab for a first offense and expulsion for a second.

Can't pass the drug screen? No tax dollars for you.

Haven't we had a thread about that already? Essentially the cost far outwieghs the benifits becuase the number of drug users on welfare is small

I'm not sure I agree with that. The annual farm bill is just under 100 billion dollars. A goodly percentage of those dollars are fed as subsidies to major corporations. Billions of federal dollars! I checked and Monsanto has on their leadership team and board 23 executives. Test kits on Amazon are $60, and while I assume the US Government can get a bulk discount, even at worst it's a mere $1400 outlay. I say it's high time we get some of these welfare queens to piss in a cup already. I am sure Shadowseer Kim agrees.

I'm fairly sure there are some 4th amendment issues around these ideas. Of course, people on Welfare won;t be able to pay for the attorneys to fight it, unless they are on corporate welfare.

As someone who actually expected republicans to make meaningful inroads towards balancing the budget I see their time spent on this as utterly pathetic. I grow more dissapointed every day.

Scrabb wrote:As someone who actually expected republicans to make meaningful inroads towards balancing the budget

My condolences that they are shattering your fantasies...

I also am all for public employees having to pass drug screens, on local, state and federal level.

We need it here in Oregon. In the past 5 years two state senators were busted for drugs. One for smoking crack in thier car in the capital building parking garage, and the other was high on meth as she tried to run over the current gf of her ex bf.

But why drug test at all?

Why do I care that person X smokes pot so long as they show up to work sober?

Well as a whacky non affiliated Libertarian, I say legalize them all.

In the meantime, if they are illegal, and quite a few of them show a persons poor decision making skills, why would we trust them to spend our tax dollars wisely or do thier jobs properly?

Pot is number one on my legalize it list. I personally hate it, and strongly dislike being around people using it, but notice I said crack and meth.

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:
In the meantime, if they are illegal, and quite a few of them show a persons poor decision making skills, why would we trust them to spend our tax dollars wisely or do thier jobs properly?

How do they show poor decision making skills?

Scrabb wrote:As someone who actually expected republicans to make meaningful inroads towards balancing the budget I see their time spent on this as utterly pathetic. I grow more dissapointed every day.

Truthfully, I think you should have expected this. In 2010, when all those Republicans won governorships, they did it on a plan of jobs-jobs-jobs. Immediately after taking office, they generally focused 100% on chipping away at abortion, and passing anti-union legislation.

Well dogma.. deciding for the first time to try crack, or meth is usually a bad decision. Then people on these drugs are well known to make bad decisions.

I have seen plenty of meth addicts around my area. And I have known a person to used crack. They assured me the one thing crack did, was make them want more crack.. immediately. not when they came down.. but right now.

People on these drugs steal from thier kids, spouses, parents, people they love. I wouldn't trust them with a paper route, much less a Billion dollars budget of tax payers money.

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:Well dogma.. deciding for the first time to try crack, or meth is usually a bad decision. Then people on these drugs are well known to make bad decisions.

If I told you that I know several JDs, MDs, and PhDs who have dabbled in both, would that affect your decision?

Shadowseer_Kim wrote:
They assured me the one thing crack did, was make them want more crack.. immediately. not when they came down.. but right now.

Generally when I drink a beer, I want another beer.

Right now, you've got a lot of people who don't have jobs, and most of them aren't going to be finding jobs any time soon. That's just how it is, and how it will be for however long it takes the economy to recover. While that's going on, it doesn't make sense to have people just sitting at home, applying for the same couple of jobs as 500 other people.

Getting people who are stuck on welfare to go and get their GED is a good thing.

biccat wrote:As for the bill itself, I have a problem with extending unemployment benefits. We're at the point where large number of people have been on unemployment for up to 2 years. I think the 27 weeks states provide is sufficient. One solution would be to move these people to the "welfare" category. Yeah, it sucks, but lets stop pretending that this is a temporary problem and work on dealing with the underlying economic issues.

Pretty much. At this point it really is just welfare, so it should be called that.

More generally, I have a problem with the government using legislation as either a carrot or a stick to change incentives for people to get an education or not. If people think it's in their best financial interest to get a GED (or similar) they should do so, they don't need the government 'stick' to help them along.

These people are receiving money, and that means government has the right to tell them how to spend their time. If they don't like it, they don't take the money.

But to pay people what is basically welfare, and just hope they do whatever is needed for them to pick up a job is madness. Provide training. Get them cleaning national parks. Doing stuff stops the unemployment rut.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Melissia wrote:Honestly a high school degree/GED is pretty much worthless. I haven't once had an employer ask me if I had one. They wanted to know if I had COLLEGE degrees, not a high school diploma.

Maybe this is a measure of the jobs you're applying for?

A few of the jobs I've been on interview panels for have had highschool graduation as a requirement, as we were looking for accounts payable kind of work, and a a requirement of graduating highschool worked as a good first filter for the kind of maths and english skills the position would require.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

dogma wrote:That's probably true, but I don't see why people should be disqualified from unemployment benefits due to this. They have, after all, held gainful employment for a period of time sufficient to qualify for unemployment benefits, implying that they have some form of marketable skills, and at least some knowledge of how to market them.

Except these people have been without jobs for an extended period of time, such that it's only by a measure of congress extending their benefits that they're still getting money, so clearly they don't have the skills to get a job in this economy.

As long as government is going to pass bills to keep giving these people money long after they were intitially entitled, I think it gets some say in what they do with their time.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

biccat wrote:No, I meant "irrationally."

Assuming that procuring a GED is in someone's best interest when they are not in the process of procuring that GED is assuming that they are not acting rationally. The problem with this argument, as you've pointed out, is "I can rationally prefer X over Y even if lots of other people think I should prefer Y."

So it was wrong of me to assume that the people not getting a GED (who might do so now) are acting irrationally.

This is a really odd line of thought, by yourself and by dogma. I mean, we know people don't act rationally, especially in high stress situations like unemployment. It can lead to people declining skill improvements through a lack of confidence (or in the reverse, continuing to take on skills program after skills program) because when they're highly stressed people look for the known, for the comfortable.

I have no idea why you'd want to develop any line of thought dependant on the idea that people act rationally in their own interests, when we know that simply isn't true.


Automatically Appended Next Post:

Polonius wrote:I actually agree with this sentiment.

With more unemployed people than openings, making some unemployed people more qualified is just going to increase competition, not net unemployment. there are a few industries with hyper-specific labor shortages, but there aren't 10 million of those jobs.

Except that the present employment conditions won't last forever, and when it ends and you see new jobs getting created, you'll have a more skilled workforce than would otherwise have been the case.

sebster wrote:This is a really odd line of thought, by yourself and by dogma. I mean, we know people don't act rationally, especially in high stress situations like unemployment. It can lead to people declining skill improvements through a lack of confidence (or in the reverse, continuing to take on skills program after skills program) because when they're highly stressed people look for the known, for the comfortable.

While I have never been on unemployment, there was a point, when I first moved to the Midwest, that I had a really hard time finding a job, for a long time (almost a year, in retrospect), during which time my then-girlfriend (now wife) supported me after I ran through the money I set aside. Get enough failed interviews and it starts to really mess you up, at least it did me; you start to feel like you're really worthless and depressed. So even just something to keep people busy while on unemployment, I wouldn't have a problem with, although again I'd change the stick (no benefits) into some kind of carrot (enhanced benefits, tax credits, I don't know, something that makes it feel like an opportunity rather than a punishment).

Edit: I'd like to clarify that when I see "keep people busy while on unemployment", I understand people on unemployment don't have tons of free time with nothing to do, at least theoretically they are spending their free time looking for jobs. However, our current economy is an unusual situation. It would have to be a fluid proposal that adjusted to when the reality is not 10 people for every job opening, or whatever the ratio is now.