Long term unemployment is terrible

The New York Times has a pretty good article on long term unemployment. There are millions of people in America who simply can't find jobs, because they don't exist right now. As a result, they're going into debt, and facing extreme hardship.

Attempting to fix this should really be a no brainer for the Democrats. If people keep suffering, they won't get votes. Right now, a lot of the long term unemployed in America are receiving unemployment insurance benefits, but the article says that will stop for many of them in the coming months unless Congress approves an extension which Obama is asking for.

They really, really should do that. It will of course make them more popular. But also, if people stop receiving unemployment benefits, they will buy less. The economy is already suffering from depressed demand, as people cut back on spending since they lost so much of their housing wealth. Giving money to the unemployed is one of the easiest ways to boost demand, as they need it to live.

So if the Democrats are dumb enough not to approve the extension, then not only will the beneficiaries be annoyed with them, but the economy as a whole will be worse off, which also bodes ill for them.

The article follows one woman who has been unemployed for two years, Jean Eisen. She and her husband depleted their savings, and now have 15,000 in credit card debt. This is a good example of the insanity of the modern american credit system. It doesn't sound like they'll ever be able to pay that off. I'm sure there are a lot of people in the same situation.

Banks are currently listing that sort of debt as "assets". On their balance sheets, they presume that this sort of debt will be paid back. It looks to me like a lousy assumption, about as lousy as assuming that the subprime mortgages were going to be paid back.

Obviously, that credit system should be reformed (it probably won't be). But in the short term, it would make sense for the government to keep providing unemployment benefits to these people, so they don't have to go into debt.

You can look at the lifestyle, choices or lack of skills like Jean Eisen, and think that it's her "fault" that she's in the situation she's in. Maybe she could learn how to cook pinto beans, of which she has ten bags. They're nutritious! And she might lose some of that weight she complains is keeping her from getting a job. And maybe they could move to a place with cheaper rent.

But this sort of speculation is the wrong way to go about it. Whatever you might think individuals should do differently, the problem is structural. People like her used to be able to get jobs. And, they did a good enough job to earn the money they received. Now, no matter how hard they look, they can't because the jobs aren't there. In a weak economy like this, if one person does better and does find a job, that means another doesn't. Better individual choices won't do much to solve a collective problem. Its a miserable situation. Welfare is not much help, because thanks to Clinton's reforms it's much harder to get, and you're often required to be working to qualify.

I had very low expectations for Obama and the Democrats. But one of the things that surprised me was their reluctance to do things very clearly in their self-interest, such as improving the social safety net for the long-term unemployed.

It would help them in the polls, and it would help the economy, which would also help them in the polls. They've done a bit to help, but really they should have done a lot, lot more, purely from self interest.

They haven't. They cut a lot of good things to help the poor from the stimulus, and replaced them with tax cuts. Tax cuts don't help Jean Eisen very much. And they wonder why a Republican took Kennedy's seat.

People are suffering, and the guys in power don't seem to be fixing things, so they vote for the other ones. It might not make sense, but the American two party system doesn't make sense. A competent political party (ie. not the Democrats) would have recognized that if they don't make simple fixes like more unemployment insurance to aid to those suffering in the downturn, people will vote for the other guys, even if they're frothing, raving lunatics. It should be a simple choice, not something they debate and waver about.

Democrats: mendacious, and stupid.

Glenn Beck calls for extermination of "progressives"

Or to be fair, he at least seems to be advocating their re-education. At the recent CPAC conference, he called Progressivism the disease of America, and that it "must be cut out of the nation's political system."

I don't think he specified how it should be cut out of the nation's political life. For the record, I don't think Beck actually wants to round up and exterminate "progressives", or re-educate them. He's just an actor. I have no idea how much of what he says he believes. I used to see his show now and again when he was on CNN, he was much less wacky. But now he's on Fox.

He's a talented performer, and he saw what would sell. One of the things that sells is that "progressives" are destroying America, and in turn they must be....well, you know. To be fair to conservatives, I'm guessing a good many liberals would agree in private with the statement that "Conservatism is a cancer on the American body politic, and it must be ___________. The world would be a better place if conservatives were ____________"

They're pretty polarized down there. What I find amusing about it is that it's not even clear what a "progressive" is. It's someone who wants progress, but towards what? What firm principles does a progressive hold? They used to be called liberals. Then the Republicans made that a dirty word. So, to show they weren't dirty commie liberals, they started referring to themselves as "progressive".

But they still have principles! You can keep your principles, even if you're so spineless that you change your name for yourself if someone starts making fun of it. Right?

If you want to know what principles a progressive has, just look the president whom they support. Barack Obama has plenty of principles!

The principles of progress include:

• Creating a really bad health care reform bill, then failing to pass it
• Keeping Guantanamo open, and maintaining all the other old secret prison sites worldwide
• Continuing the use of rendition.
• Being against (one of the) war(s). Thanks to them, America pulled out of Iraq!
• (right?). We don't hear about Iraq any more....
• Being for the other war. You know, the good one, in Afghanistan
• Bombing Pakistan
• Bombing Yemen
• Bombing Somalia
• Threatening to bomb Iran
• Staffing a progressive administration with bankers, and giving Goldman Sachs and other banks huge profits shortly after they brought the world economy to the brink of collapse.
• Not reforming the banking system. The last crisis was so fun, let's do it again sometime!
• Re-appointing Ben Bernanke, because he's such a cool republican and did such a cool job in not allowing a massive housing bubble or a financial collapse.
• Not doing anything about climate change
• Adopting a new rhetorical attitude towards the Arab world, totally different from that of Bush. The link provides evidence of just how different it is.
• Taking nude pictures of everyone who takes an airplane, to "keep us safe"
• Maintaining Kennedy's embargo against Cuba
• Criticizing Israel a bit, but only if it doesn't make them mad. If it does, time to back off.
• Being wussies, and claiming they need 60 votes to pass things, when Bush passed bills with 50. Progressives recognize that the rules are different for them.
• Feeling like they're much better and smarter than conservatives, because they've accomplished all of the good things listed above.

I'm pretty sure progressivism has some other cool principles, but that's all I could think of. As you can see, they are nothing at all like the policies that George W. Bush pursued.

So with all of those communist accomplishments I just listed, no wonder conservatives think progressivism is a cancer, and must be destroyed.

I look forward to more progress in the months and years to come. Glenn Beck'll be awful mad about it.

Warmer Winters Mean More Snow (On Average)

Waaaay back in December, world governments met in Copenhagen, in an attempt to form a deal to reduce greenhouse gas emissions. It failed miserably. Some were optimistic though, saying that American would pass a bill this year to control greenhouse gas emissions, and then the world could agree on a legally binding treaty later this year in Mexico.

I thought that was silly then, and I'm pretty sure everyone thinks its silly now. For a variety of reasons, Obama and the Democrats in Congress aren't going to pass a bill. But in case they didn't have enough reasons, the snowstorm in DC last week provided another one. Apparently, lots of people are saying that snow is a denial of global warming. They're using this as a further excuse to kill the bill.

It turns out that snow is much more likely to occur in a warming winter. As long as rain is still cold enough to freeze you'll have snow, but if it's not all that cold out, you're likely to have more of it (on average). It turns out warmer winters are wetter, and more wetness leads to more precipitation. See here, and here.

Obviously, any individual storm, or heat wave is not evidence for or against global warming. You have to look at the trends (they indicate warming). So it's an error to point to any single event, as those squawking about the snow storms are doing.

But their mistake is even worse than that, because in a warming world, we should expect bigger snow storms.