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The Cliffs of Unemployment, Robert Reich and BleachersFollow

#1 Dec 11 2013 at 12:13 PM Rating: Good
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Last night as the hubby and I were watching the news, a little story about stolen bleachers comes on. Someone actually removed the aluminum benches from a set of bleachers at a nearby rural high school. Having just gotten an oil delivery and being reminded that the price was up to $3.50/gal, we surmised that the aluminum seat theft was due to some scrapper that came up cold on cash to buy oil to run the furnace.

My mind was on the idea that the economy is rebounding back so very slowly - in these parts anyways.

Current news also reminded us that if our lawmakers can't come up with a budget deal, one that includes provisions for extension of unemployment benefits, a million or so out-of-work Americans wills be dropped from the program - effectively becoming non-working Americans. This is, in fact, the most likely scenario atm.

Just now on my fb feed was shared this pondering from Robert Reich:
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Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) says extending unemployment benefits would be a "disservice" to the 1.3 million jobless people who will lose them December 28, unless Congress acts this week to extend them. The conservative mind believes that the unemployed and the poor need less money in order to be adequately motivated, while the rich and wealthy need more money for adequate motivation. In reality, the so-called “recovery” is the most anemic on record, leaving behind a record number of people who have been jobless for more than six months. America’s long-term unemployed have been trying desperately to find jobs, but the economy still has only one job opening for every three job seekers. And a big reason why employers aren’t hiring more is because America’s vast middle class and poor don’t have enough purchasing power to justify more hires. Which is exactly why extending unemployment benefits (along with food stamps and a higher minimum wage) are not only the decent and humane things to do, but also important to help restore demand to the economy as a whole. Progressives may have soft hearts, but they also have hard heads. Right-wing Republicans like Rand Paul possess the opposite attributes.
Man this guy has some haters, but I think, for the most part he's right about the impact of not extending unemployment benefits - at least at this moment in our economic timeline.

I hate to see Mainers become so desperate.
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#2 Dec 11 2013 at 12:30 PM Rating: Good
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Old news here, lots of people stealing copper and aluminum and sometimes killing themselves trying to steal the power lines for trains. Old metal is starting to get really valuable so more and more people want to steal it.
#3 Dec 11 2013 at 1:20 PM Rating: Good
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Robert Reich is close to functionally retarded. Also comically tiny, but that's unrelated. His argument is correct for other reasons, primarily that you absolutely CAN spend yourself out of this particular set of economic circumstances, but his phrasing along the lines of "giving people money makes more jobs" isn't terribly helpful. I'd pay to see him joust Nicolas Sarkozy on pigs, though.
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#4 Dec 11 2013 at 2:24 PM Rating: Excellent
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Whatever happened to those people who stole a bridge for scrap?

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#5 Dec 11 2013 at 2:26 PM Rating: Good
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someproteinguy wrote:
Whatever happened to those people who stole a bridge for scrap?

Their escape plan was foiled when they found that the bridge was out.
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#6 Dec 11 2013 at 2:35 PM Rating: Excellent
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Elinda wrote:
someproteinguy wrote:
Whatever happened to those people who stole a bridge for scrap?

Their escape plan was foiled when they found that the bridge was out.
I hope they sent a nasty letter to the DOT. These things should be listed on a website somewhere.
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#7 Dec 11 2013 at 2:39 PM Rating: Excellent
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What I'm getting from this is that Maine ran out of manhole covers.

Or maybe they don't have manholes in Maine. Do you guys have storm sewers and stuff there yet?
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#8 Dec 11 2013 at 3:43 PM Rating: Good
Manhole covers are steel. A whole aluminum bleacher probably weighs less than a manhole cover.
#9 Dec 11 2013 at 5:14 PM Rating: Excellent
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But pound for pound, steel is worth far more.

There's a reason metal thieves go for manhole covers, sewer grates, tree grates etc.

Edit: Actually, I think they're iron more than actually steel but that's not especially important. In so much as any of this is important.

Edited, Dec 11th 2013 5:15pm by Jophiel
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#10 Dec 11 2013 at 6:14 PM Rating: Good
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But pound for pound, steel is worth far more.

What? No it isn't.
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To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

#11 Dec 11 2013 at 6:32 PM Rating: Excellent
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someproteinguy wrote:
I hope they sent a nasty letter to the DOT. These things should be listed on a website somewhere.


Some DOT's have a "Bridge fell in the water" automatic sensor thingy on their bridges. They work well as long as the sensor doesn't fall in with the bridge.
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#12 Dec 11 2013 at 6:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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Smasharoo wrote:
But pound for pound, steel is worth far more.

What? No it isn't.

Whoops, you're right.
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#13 Dec 11 2013 at 6:54 PM Rating: Excellent
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Technically it would depend on the type of Steel. A pound of high grade Carbide steel might be worth more than low grade aluminum. Though most communities don't make their manhole covers out of steel hard enough to use as battleship armor plate for some reason.
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#14 Dec 11 2013 at 7:00 PM Rating: Excellent
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Sheet aluminum is worth 3-4x more than cast iron pound for pound (which is what manhole covers are made of and I was thinking of). I was just wrong. I'd make a terrible scrap metal guy Smiley: frown

Edited, Dec 11th 2013 7:00pm by Jophiel
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#15 Dec 11 2013 at 7:03 PM Rating: Excellent
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No you'd make an awesome scrap metal guy. I'd be bringing you every manhole cover I could find. Smiley: nod
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#16 Dec 11 2013 at 7:17 PM Rating: Decent
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Smasharoo wrote:
Robert Reich is close to functionally retarded. Also comically tiny, but that's unrelated. His argument is correct for other reasons, primarily that you absolutely CAN spend yourself out of this particular set of economic circumstances, but his phrasing along the lines of "giving people money makes more jobs" isn't terribly helpful. I'd pay to see him joust Nicolas Sarkozy on pigs, though.


His argument is retarded as well, and while better phrasing might make it appear less so and make it easier to convince people to go along with said retarded idea, it does not actually make the fundamental idea a good one.

You can't make something out of nothing. Extending unemployment benefits is the economic equivalent of stealing from Peter to pay Paul. It doesn't work. He effectively relabels a broad problem affecting employment in a very narrow way so as to support his position, but that's not really fair (or correct). Employers are not hiring enough people, not strictly because people aren't buying enough goods to justify it, but because it's not financially beneficial for them to do so. While lack of purchasing is one element of this, it's only one. Higher costs to employ is another. Basically every single thing that affects the ratio of "profits per employee versus cost per employee" affects those hiring decisions (which includes things like increased taxes, and increased costs via Obamcare, just to name a couple super relevant causes).

He's chosen to zero in on the least rational cause, and propose the most ridiculous solution possible. The problem with extending unemployment as a means of keeping money flowing into purchasing is that it obviously isn't working now, so it's unreasonable to assume continuing to do so will change anything. Every dollar that flows into an unemployed persons hand has to be taxed out of the economy first, and is a dollar that would have been used to either employ that person or purchase the same dollar amount of goods in the market that the person might buy with the unemployment dollars. It's insane to think that by shifting the means by which the money arrives in the buyers hands that it will change the overall economic picture. It wont. It is, as I stated earlier, robbing Peter to pay Paul. It accomplishes nothing positive.

It does, however, create a negative. See, the problem with extending unemployment is that it creates an opportunity cost against employment itself. Assuming we're looking strictly at the set of people who could work but currently can't find employment, then the problem isn't that they can't find *any* work, but that they can't find work that pays sufficiently to be worth taking. But "worth taking" is relative. If you're getting X dollars in unemployment benefits, you aren't going to take a job that pays X dollars. You likely wont take a job that pays some amount of dollars more than X either. You'll only take a job that pays enough more than X so as to justify the difference between spending time working and not spending time working. So the problem is that by paying X dollars in unemployment to this group, we're actually eliminating X*Y amount of labor from the market (with Y being some percentage of X that represents the opportunity cost of expending the effort of working versus not working). We're effectively reducing the total dollars in the economy, which in turn could have been used to purchase the very goods and services that Mr. Reich claims is needed to get the economy up and running (and to pay for the jobs themselves).

Put another way, unemployment is a straight negative. We pay X dollars, but get zero productive output added to the economy. Jobs are "free" in that for every X dollars we pay to the workers, we get X*Y productive value back. Anything that shifts people from unemployment to employment will help the economy recover and ultimately help the workers in the long run *even* if initially they take a dollar revenue hit as a result.

Yes. we get X dollars back in the form of purchasing from the unemployed, but we get that with the employed too. The difference is that the employed are adding to the productive output of the economy, while the unemployed are not. Reich's argument ignores the production angle. Sure. Someone has to buy stuff, but someone has to make the stuff we buy too. Both sides are required for a healthy growing economy, but folks like Reich tend to forget that and focus only on demand. And yeah, that's a pretty retarded way of looking at things. Demand with no increased supply simply means increased cost in direct proportion to the increased demand, thus making zero economic gains. You can never increase the dollars available to hire people via increased purchasing dollars handed out to consumers who are not working. I just don't know how much more clearly that can be stated. It's something that should be inherently obvious, but it's amazing how many people just completely fail to grasp the concept.

Edited, Dec 11th 2013 5:20pm by gbaji
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#17 Dec 11 2013 at 7:18 PM Rating: Good
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Few years ago during the beginning of the recession, someone locally tried to steal some ground conductors from a sub station using a pair of bolt cutters. They thought they knew which ones were the ground, but apparently touched the wrong one. They didn't live to face the theft charges...
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#18 Dec 11 2013 at 9:30 PM Rating: Excellent
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You can't make something out of nothing. Extending unemployment benefits is the economic equivalent of stealing from Peter to pay Paul

Stopped here because 1. you're wrong and 2. this is a terrible, terrible, simile. Today, right now, extending unemployment benefits would be the equivalent of doing the most useful thing possible. Not always the case, but happens to be right now. None of the rest of your post, which based on history Ill assume equates macroeconomics to running a lemonade stand or the like likely applies even tangentially.
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Disclaimer:

To make a long story short, I don't take any responsibility for anything I post here. It's not news, it's not truth, it's not serious. It's parody. It's satire. It's bitter. It's angsty. Your mother's a *****. You like to jack off dogs. That's right, you heard me. You like to grab that dog by the bone and rub it like a ski pole. Your dad? Gay. Your priest? Straight. **** off and let me post. It's not true, it's all in good fun. Now go away.

#19 Dec 11 2013 at 9:49 PM Rating: Good
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If they really wanted jobs they could just go out and get them. Duh.
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#20 Dec 11 2013 at 10:33 PM Rating: Good
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Few years ago during the beginning of the recession, someone locally tried to steal some ground conductors from a sub station using a pair of bolt cutters. They thought they knew which ones were the ground, but apparently touched the wrong one. They didn't live to face the theft charges...


Like those guys in Mexico that stole the truck last week with the radioactive medical equipment? Smiley: frown
#21 Dec 11 2013 at 10:44 PM Rating: Excellent
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Catwho wrote:
TirithRR wrote:
Few years ago during the beginning of the recession, someone locally tried to steal some ground conductors from a sub station using a pair of bolt cutters. They thought they knew which ones were the ground, but apparently touched the wrong one. They didn't live to face the theft charges...


Like those guys in Mexico that stole the truck last week with the radioactive medical equipment? Smiley: frown
I heard they all got superpowers and the Mexican government is working overtime on a coverup. Those 6 people they arrested? Just witnesses...

Smiley: tinfoilhat
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#22 Dec 12 2013 at 8:18 AM Rating: Excellent
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#23 Dec 12 2013 at 8:39 AM Rating: Excellent
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Gloranges: The oranges that glow!
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#24 Dec 12 2013 at 8:50 AM Rating: Excellent
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Bah, read post containing word gloranges then reply. My brain isn't working yet.

Edited, Dec 12th 2013 6:51am by Kaolian
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#25 Dec 12 2013 at 3:15 PM Rating: Default
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Smasharoo wrote:
You can't make something out of nothing. Extending unemployment benefits is the economic equivalent of stealing from Peter to pay Paul

Stopped here because 1. you're wrong and 2. this is a terrible, terrible, simile. Today, right now, extending unemployment benefits would be the equivalent of doing the most useful thing possible. Not always the case, but happens to be right now. None of the rest of your post, which based on history Ill assume equates macroeconomics to running a lemonade stand or the like likely applies even tangentially.


Well, if you say so, even with a complete absence of any sort of argument or logic behind it, I guess it must be true!

that's sarcasm btw


Just saying "You're wrong; I'm right" over and over isn't very compelling Smash. Care to try again?
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#26 Dec 12 2013 at 3:19 PM Rating: Excellent
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What if he said he's "absolutely right" or "it's a simple fact"? Would that help?
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