State stops accepting/processing new unemployment claims (Michigan)

[Ruby the Liberal]

Source: WWMT News Channel 3

Michigan has stopped taking and processing new benefit claims.

Congress failed to pass legislation to extend jobless benefits beyond November 30th.

Governor Granholm urged lawmakers to reconsider their vote.

More than 330,000 people in Michigan rely on benefits to survive.

Read more: http://www.wwmt.com/articles/stops-1384331-mich-unemployment.html

[de novo]

1. Look at the bright side, new jobless claims will go down next month!

And,we can all cheer the good numbers!

[peacefreak]

2. Sorry, not funny.

I lost my benefits last summer. It put me from being in a difficult, but live-able situation to one of desperation. Maybe you should try walking a mile in their shoes, mm-kay?

[phasma ex machina]

7. It seems that many more may end up walking in your shoes before this crisis passes.

The immorality of America cutting off people's life lines disgusts me.

[dkf]

9. Yet Democrats put us in this position by passing HCR over jobs.

We lost track of what our main priority should be and now we have no options because we no longer have control.

[littlewolf]

12. ding ding ding ... we have a winner .....

[Winterblues]

29. This is the sort of short sighted BS that is destroying the Party

Democrats passed immediately (within two months) one of the largest jobs programs in History, it was called the American Recovery Act, and next they attacked one of the greatest reasons Business's are letting people go, Health Care Costs...Democrats have been working non stop for a better economy and more jobs. The House has passed over four hundred bills that have just died in the Senate because we don't have sixty votes there and Republicans are doing everything they can to make Democrats fail in their endeavors..Except for putting more money into the Stimulus Bill, what would you suggest they could have done? There is no way they could have enlarged that Bill and were amazingly successful in just getting that passed..:shrug: I think most of America has completely lost sight of reality...

[de novo]

18. I am on your side.

I was pointing to the absurdity of 'the numbers'. We see the numbers trotted out month after month. 'It is getting better' we are told ad nauseum. But, I know, and you know better, that the numbers are illusions. The numbers do not convey the reality.

I did not mean to belittle you or make light of your situation. I meant to expose the idiocy of those who proclaim that things are getting better through the reliance on 'numbers'.

I really hope that things turn around for you. I also think that our political leaders care more about looking good on paper than actually helping you.

[dencol]

23. Sorry to hear this so profoundly affected you.

But I honestly don't believe the person you responded to was suggesting it was funny. I thought it was a statement about how twisted our values are as Americans... we are easily fooled by these numbers.

[Donnachaidh]

3. And expect that to be blasted all over the waves!

We'll be seeing the *recovery is working* spin all over the place. :puke:

[Abq_Sarah]

5. Ouch

There's a whole lot of truth to that thanks to the bogus way we measure joblessness.

[The Northerner]

6. +1

[phasma ex machina]

4. .

[jtuck004]

8. How long should we extend benefits? 10 years? 20? That is

$60 billion a year, a portion of which is shipped off to China. And with these benefits stopped there will be more people laid off. And how long can we keep housing artificially propped up with FASB rules that say the banks can keep them at a mythical value, instead of marked to what they will sell for today? That was put in place with the assumption that things would get better in a year or two, but there is approximately 10 years worth of unsold inventory in homes today, and about 7 or 8 million more still in the foreclosure pipeline.

We aren't going to see a significant number of the unemployed in good jobs for at least the next 10 years, perhaps more than 20.

I want desperately to see this fixed. But there are 30 million people either unemployed, underemployed, or too disheartened to continue to be rejected in their job search (that last number increase by OVER 400,000 people last month). Unemployment benefits are only going out to about 2 million people.

This discussion is distracting people from the bigger problem.

It's time for a damn jobs program to replace the excuses.

[DBoon]

10. We should provide the same benefits of all other civilized 1st world countries

A citizen of any European country would find our approach to unemployment benefits barbarous

[jtuck004]

14. That makes me have to ask - would these be the ones looking for a

bailout? Cause that would include several of the largest small economies. Part of the reason many of those are not doing so well is because they depended on us to buy their exports. We have kinda slowed down on that. The other part, of course, is that like a bunch of little children we let the financial bullies beat up everyone, their economies included.

Who is doing so well that they can insulate a full third of their entire workforce on unemployment, at anywhere even close to the level we live at? And who will pay the taxes to support the teachers, firefighters, police - the billions in infrastructure costs that come from the work of our neighbors?

To that point, I really can't think of a country that comes even close to the numbers we have. On the other hand I can think of several who look to us for help, and if we don't produce enough we aren't going to be any help to them at all.

Maybe we should re-focus on jobs instead of ways to pay out money we don't have? (Well, we do have it - since all we really do is create zeroes in a computer. But that will eventually lead to a lack of belief in our currency). And that would include, if it is possible, ending our proclivity to war, which costs us in many ways. Unless someone can come up with a way to support the worlds people without any production. Haven't seen that one yet.

[Heywood J]

11. >"How long should we extend benefits?"

Until there are sufficient jobs available for all legitimate claimants and such jobs are able to provide a minimum standard of living that does not include abject poverty or destitution. Instead of looking to cut off unemployment claims arbitrarily because of the lack of funding, we should be addressing alternate sources of funding that place the cost at the feet of those who caused the problem. For example, a windfall profit tax or an outsourcing tax.

As you mention, an interim CCC-style program wouldn't be a bad idea. At the very least, we might get our roads and buildings fixed.

[jtuck004]

15. Who is going to pay for it? with just 2 million people on unemployment

that is $60 billion a year, 600 billion in ten years, 1.2 trillion in 20. Who is going to pay the taxes to support federal workers, teachers, etc, all the infrastructure we depend on, several of which, at the state or municipal level, are, by any measure, bankrupt. They are only surviving with accounting tricks, taking on more debt, money from the federal and state governments which is simply debt that the taxpayers who are left will have to pay.

We have 30 million people unemployed or underemployed including those that can't face more rejection. We have, roughly, 125,000 people entering the workforce each month, so we have to have jobs for them before we can cut unemployment.

So let's just say we want to employ 20 million of the unemployed, bring us down to around a 5% to 6% unemployment rate. If we create 250,000 private sector jobs EVERY month, it will take us 13 years and 4 months to accomplish that.

We have never created even close to that many jobs, month-in and month-out, in the history of the United States.

If we don't get a jobs program together, we are very likely to suffer a financial shock that we may not recover from. Because there are not enough jobs to be created in the next 2 DECADES to pull us out of this.

[happyslug]

25. And Congress gave $700 Billion to the Banks in 2008, so $600 Billion over 10 years is nothing

$600 Billion over a ten year period compared to $700 Billion to the banks in a two week period. Long term the $600 billion will keep the economy rolling, the $700 billion will just go into "bonuses" and then into savings with little affect on the over all economy.

Thus we have the revenue to give away $600 billion over ten years for we gave away $700 Billion in 2008. Thus the price is NOT that high.

[jtuck004]

26. Actually they loaned them between $17 and $23 trillion dollars, part

of that in treasuries form which the banks are and continue to garner hundreds of billions in interest.

Barry Ritholtz estimates in his book that they will keep about $3.2 trillion of the borrowed dollars - we won't know for years.

But just because they gave them that doesn't mean that throwing away more money doesn't add to the total, and those dollars increase
our debt which has to be paid back. That in and of itself is not a problem, because we manufacture the dollar. But we will reach a stage when
all the countries we buy and sell from will lose belief in our currency, and then we are in real trouble.

We should also be aware that all this government service comes on the back of other taxpayers. Because of the drop in collections we are losing
teachers, firefighters, police, road building and repair, money for hospitals and medical care.

We need a jobs program that rebuilds our industries, training so that people understand it was what they spent their money on
and their reliance on credit, as well as their ignorance of the hollowing out of their industrial base that was responsible
for part of the weakness in this country.

If we don't, people are really, really not going to like the price that is coming.

[coalition_unwilling]

28. Are you familiar with the general macroeconomic equation? I ask

because I think it answers your question(s):

GDP = C + BI + G + (X-I)

where

GDP = Gross Domestic Product
C = Private Consumption
BI = Business Investment
G = Government Spending
X = Exports
I = Imports

The implications of this equation are quite simple. For any given level of GDP, if C (Consumption) and BI (Business Investment) decline, only an increase in G (Government spending) or a net increase of X over I can maintain that level of GDP.

Right now, our U.S. macroeconomy suffers from an excess of productive capacity and an excess of housing stock. Seen through another lens, though, those excesses are, if you will, a reverse image of inadequate consumer demand and insufficient business investment.

Unemployment Compensation is one component of the 'G' variable in the equation and, as such, serves to maintain a given level of GDP. If you cut unemplohyment compensation, as seems highly likely now, GDP must decline in the absence of any increase in the aforementioned 'C' or 'BI' (or 'X).

Edited for typo.

[jtuck004]

31. Of course, and it is a good example of why we cannot continue unlimited unemployment.

It shows this in a couple of places. Government Spending is not a monolithic creature - they have "spent" somewhere North of $17 trillion on propping up the banks, yet the GPD hasn't risen as it would have if the had, say, put the 30 MILLION unemployed or underemployed people back to work, because the equation only applies when the reckless behavior of criminals isn't sapping the system of it's resources and gathering it into private hands. That spending didn't create anything other than nominal increases in GDP because it just filled the vacuum created by their criminal behavior, aided by their cohorts in the government.

It doesn't take into account the attrition in our manufacturing. Sure we have a lot of manufacturing capacity unused. Especially the stuff that builds low-mileage cars and SUV's, record players, 8-track tapes. On the other hand the last few billions in spending for updated manufacturing technologies n polysilicone and alternative energy has occurred in China. In that respect we are far behind that country which EQUALED the manufacturing output of the U.S, which took us over 200 years to accomplish, in 30 years. That doesn't bode well for the next 30.

The equation doesn't describe what happens when the outputs on the right don't subsidize the left. Government spending, although we operate a fiat currency (thank goodness) must, at some point, be replenished. The government cannot pay unemployment ad infinitum to millions of people who are not replenishing the system with their taxes. And even though the unemployment is taxed, it is coming back at nowhere near the level of what is going out.

The import side of this is heavily imbalanced. China doesn't put anything back into the mix, and without change they will eventually wind up with ALL the marbles.

That equation is totally inadequate to describe what is going on now. We cannot simply continue for decades to pay people for being unproductive. Their numbers will increase until the world loses complete faith and we can no longer feed ourselves. Stupid.

Germany had a great system, until they couldn't pay for it anymore. Note that they have recently scrapped that unemployment system for a new one that requires work by people getting checks. People don't like it, but children have to grow up sometime, and we are going to have to grow up as well.

The equation does show we need government spending, but it has to invest in people, train and teach them how to live in a globalized world, create wealth. It is doing none of those things today by sending our wealth to China, investment banks, the wealthy, and a bunch of people no longer creating anything in this country.

[coalition_unwilling]

35. Keynes famously quipped at one point that it was preferable to

pay unemployed people to dig holes and fill them back in rather than have those unemployed do nothing and not help sustain and increase aggregate macroeconomic demand.

However, no serious Keynsian has ever advocated paying unemployment (with concomitant budget deficits and increases to the general debt levels) indefinitely. Instead, when C and BI in the equation decline, G needs to increase to maintain GDP, even if the cost of so doing is that governments run temporary deficits. Once full employment is restored, then one can start talking about reducing deficits (thereby reducing 'G') and paying down long-term debt (the debt a people owe themselves in reality).

In short, now is absolutely the worst possible time to be decreasing the levels of fiscal stimuli like UC; calls to do so by the Repukes are a good part of what make their anti-intellectualism and willing ignorance all the more galling to anyone with more than a passing understanding of macroeconomics in the modern world. In a worst-case scenario, removing two million Americans from the UC roles might have the effect of so reducing aggregate demand as to precipitate a double-dip recession (defined by economists as two or more successive quarters of negative growth of GDP). And all of this in the name of 'fighting deficits,' according to these tea-bagging Yahoos.

Incidentally, I tend to agree with your final paragraph entirely, with the exception of the perhaps unintentional China-bashing. Standard international economics is built around a theory of 'comparative advantage.' If the Chinese can make gadgets and gizmos of equal quality for lower cost than we in the West can make them, it is a global 'good' at the macro level that the Chinese do so. They will have to recycle the dollars they earn from selling those gizmos and gadgets into something dollar-denominated like software to run their factories. movies to keep them entertained during their leisure time or, perish the notion, U.S. government debt.

Edited for typos and for clarity.

[jtuck004]

36. That last paragraph wasn't China bashing, intentional or otherwise -

just a statement of fact. If we continue sending a significant portion of our money to them (or anyone else) without investing in our own people and creating wealth, they eventually wind up with all the marbles. That's not China bashing - that's just stupid on our part.

In the post above there is a line:

"However, no serious Keynsian has ever advocated paying unemployment (with concomitant budget deficits and increases to the general debt levels) indefinitely"

So where is the line? Barring a significant new program, which would likely have to be in the trillions of dollars, there is a strong possiblity that we will see 10-12% unemployment by 2012. There is almost no possibility that we will see 5 to 6% unemployment for at least the next two decades. That is AT LEAST 20 years, maybe longer. The only thing on the horizon that might change that is a huge influx in home health care aide jobs and medical technology work - ALL of which is a zero-sum game, because they require huge amounts of government input. They create NO wealth. None. Nothing is created or made.

And we are only paying 2 million people unemployment - there are 30 million people unemployed or underemployed, numbers which are increasing as we speak. Nearly 1/2 million new people appeared on the rolls of the discouraged workers (who simply cannot face more rejection) just last month.

That would slowly but surely deflate the economy we have managed to achieve by at least a third over the next 2 decades. Schools closed, communities and whole states bankrupt, pension funds bankrupt, sections of whole cities needing more services going without, municipal and state infrastructure and homes falling around everyone's ears, increased crime, less police and fire protection.

Though if you read my writing, I am not calling for a decrease in governemnt spending. I want them to set aside and spend $17 trillion on a 22nd century WPA, rebuild manufacturing, turn it over to the workers to own and operate, more education that includes the economics of operating in a globalized world, jobs that create something and have historically taught people to create others, other ideas.

What we are doing now is dropping cups of water down to a group of people stuck in a well. No ladder, no rope, no hope. And when it ends they will still be in the well, along with more people, because instead of creating a means to get out, we just kept enlarging the well. Short-sighted policies, the same ones that got us here.

[coalition_unwilling]

37. Sorry, it's just that back in the days of Perot, we used to hear the

phrase 'sending jobs\money to Mexico'. Then that morphed into 'sending jobs\money to China'. I'm a pretty firm believer in the theory of comparative advantage in international economics. Both phrases insidiously attack members of the working class, whether those working class members be in Mexico or the U.S. My interests lie with the international working class, not with international capital and the nationalism it deploys to cover its tracks and disguise its agenda.

I'm with you on the $17 trillion 21st Century Marshall Plan for America's economy. Of course, there is no one on the current stage with the stature of a Marshall (or an FDR), so we may have to wait awhile for your vision to take hold :)

[jtuck004]

38. That's ok. As far as comparative advantage

Our financial sector has replaced the industrial sector to a large extent, housing has at least a 10 year inventory and a probable effect from future foreclosures that is going to lower prices even further. There are 30 million people unemployed, underemployed, or just too sick of looking for jobs that aren't there to continue...job growth is most rapid in low-wage jobs such as home health care aid, hotels, etc. There are 5 to 6 people looking for each job available, and that doesn't count the other 20 or 30 waiting if the job can be offshored. If we were to create 250,000 private sector jobs every month for years, something we have never done in the history of the United States, it would take us 13 years and 4 months to see a 5 to 6% unemployment rate again. Corporations are reporting record profits, which came about from closing doors, firing people, and increasing their sales overeas while sales here languish. The reckless behavior of the investment banks has potentially destroyed the lives of millions of people, yet the effects would not have been as bad had our industrial job core not been hollowed out over the past 40 years.

We get cheap socks.

Is that our comparative advantage?

[Liberal_in_LA]

13. unfair to the newly unemployed. They are due their regular 26 weeks

[tkmorris]

16. Can someone explain this to me?

Why are they not processing NEW claims? Congress didn't extend benefits for those already collecting UI, but what does that have to do with new claims?

[Ruby the Liberal]

17. Thats what caught my eye and led me to post it.

Federal extensions have nothing to do with a state's obligation of 26 or so weeks to the newly unemployed.

[dixiegrrrrl]

21. Sounds like they are saying they have NO money for any new claims.

If Congress cut the Federal spigot to the states off, then the states have no incoming money, right?

[happyslug]

34. This is for processing new claims of EXTENDED Benefits, not Initial Benefits

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/uia/NEW_EUC-Internet__StaffREV11-9_300228_7.pdf

[Lions_fan]

19. I have a question

My sister was just laid off Wednesday. I've read Michigan will stop accepting new unemployment claims Wednesday December 1st. If she doesn't set up her unemployment tomorrow does that mean she won't be able to get unemployment?

[prolesunited]

20. No, she'll get her regular unemployment

This just applies to new claims for federal extended benefits and state extended benefits for states with high UE numbers.

What this means is that anyone on state extended benefits will be cut off after Nov. 30 or ineligible to file. If you are already have progressed to federal extended benefits, you will finish out whatever tier your are on (there are four), but not be able to go on to the next tier.

What this specifically means for your sister is that she will get her 26 weeks, but no more than that. In this economy, it will go quickly and depending on her age and field, may not come close to being enough.

If they approve benefits before the recess, people will get their money retroactively, but it takes awhile to sort through. How do I know so much? I got totally screwed over the summer when they took weeks and weeks to pass the extension. I didn't get any money for weeks and was only able to pay the mortgage by borrowing money from my dad.

If you've got money, waiting for a few weeks or even more than a month for a check isn't that big of a deal. If you are on extended benefits, you've already probably exhausted any savings. People can't pay their bills and may get kicked out of their apartments.

[Tripod]

22. I'm glad I don't need unemployment benefits in Mich.

I'm thankful to have a job. Sympathetic about those struggling without one.

[truthisfreedom]

24. I wonder what that's going to do to crime.

Muggings are way up in my Minneapolis neighborhood (and it's nice... Uptown) and it's winter! Two friends of my personal trainer were mugged at knife point last night.

[Romulox]

27. Michigan is something like 39th in aid from the Federal government--a net tax donor.

:shrug:

[booksenkatz]

30. No problemo, I'm sure Snyder has a spiffy plan all ready for us.

:sarcasm:

I'm grateful my husband still has his job with the Big 3, but I'm wondering if I will ever find work again at my age. It's pretty scary to think that you may never, ever work again as long as you live. Ever. I started a side business out of desperation (sales), it did extremely well in 2007 and 2008, then it went down the toilet after that. Most of my customers lost their jobs or relocated to find work. It's tricky to sell anything other than food, firewood or warm clothing in Michigan right now.

But my household has it GREAT in comparison to these people who are on the brink of disaster, what is going to become of them? What's your plan, Snyder?

[4_TN_TITANS]

32. Once again, I think the solution would be to bring back

the WPA & CCC and trade some infrastructure repair for those unemployment checks. Lord knows we need it.

[happyslug]

33. Here is the official announcement, it is for the EXTENDED Benefits only

http://www.michigan.gov/documents/uia/NEW_EUC-Internet__StaffREV11-9_300228_7.pdf


"Extended Benefits" are those benefits one is entitled to AFTER you have run out your six months initial benefits. These are the benefits voted for and funded by Congress.