Progress, Economic & Otherwise

The nanny state: It's ruined America. We're nothing but a nation of slackers waiting for hand-outs.

The number of unemployed Americans leapt in October to 10.1 million — the largest number since 1983. More than 22 percent of all unemployed people have been out of work for six months or longer — another level not reached in a quarter-century.

Only 32 percent of all unemployed people were drawing state benefit checks in October because of restrictions on eligibility. More than half of all unemployed people drew benefits in the 1950s, and about 45 percent received state checks during the last recession in 2001.

Huh? There was more concern (& money) for the unemployed in the Fifties? How can that be? The yrs. of liberal hand-outs didn't begin until Johnson's Great Society.

Here's one slacker who's about to learn the lesson of the AmeriKKKan economy:

In South Plainfield, N.J., Ken Stelma, 49, has been out of work since January, when he lost his job as a customer care representative for a company that installed kitchens. Since then, he had been living on a $562 weekly unemployment check in place of his roughly $1,200 paycheck. But last month, his benefits ran out.

He is relying on his girlfriend to pay his rent. His provisional health coverage — a carryover from his last job — will end this month because he can no longer afford the $250 monthly payments, leaving him with a tumor in his foot and no insurance. Next, he will stop paying his auto insurance policy.

“What am I going to do, drive illegally just to go out and look for a job?” Mr. Stelma said.

Despite dozens of applications — at Lowe’s, Home Depot and at a home for the elderly — he remains unemployed. “I’ll do anything,” he said, adding that he was contemplating a job as an office mailroom clerk. “We’re getting desperate, man.”

You're just not trying hard enough to make yourself useful to one of your wealthy betters, punk!! Try amputating your tumorous foot, maybe you'll have better luck then. Employers don't want cripples slaving for them!! How are they to profit? Where are the workhouses for the poor, anyway?