Originally Posted by BBQMan

Tbugs, you have dodged the most important issue by saying, 'I don't know how long someone get unemployment benefits.' This is the question that MUST be answered going forward. Should my ideas suddenly count, I would recommend that the 99 weeks be continued through December and the number of weeks be cut by one week per week starting in 2011. This would pull it down to under one year by January 2012. You may disagree and say that unemployment benefits be made available to an 18 year old and continued until that person qualifies for Social Security. Since 99 weeks is not enough, is eligibility until Social Security too long?

You also use the very tired and very old liberal mantra, 'we must to it for the children'. The guilt trips have resulted in us doing some surprisingly damaging things. Chief among these these is the LBJ program of Aid to Families with Dependent Children. It was very well intended, but turned into a nightmare. In 1960 the illegitimate birth rate in the United States was 5.6 percent of total births- today it is more than 40 percent. We have matriarchal households that produce children who wanted a 'real family with a real father. They found this in the gangs, Black males are more than six times as likely to wind up in prison than their white counterparts. Why, gangs? They provide a 'real family with a real masculine leader.'


There is another simple truth that we must understand: "If you subsidize something, you will get more of it." This has been borne out time and time again. We subsidized mortgages and got urban sprawl and MacMansions far beyond the reach of any mass transport system: we created a subsidy for single mothers and got more single mothers - then why are we surprised when we create benefits for being unemployed and have more people unemployed?

Perhaps it is time to do less social engineering with the tax codes and government programs and greater encouragement of individual responsibility.

Just some thoughts