I thought So Many People Where Looking For Work

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

Your post lacked a little substance around that, but I see where you are going. He's right, many people lost jobs because an entire company went under, or it suffered so badly in the downturn that it had to cut so deep that they had to lay off even very good employees.

But many does not equate to most. Most (not all) of those laid off from work were laid off by companies looking to trim costs. When making cuts, companies might cut 5 or 10% of the workforce. To decide who stays and who goes, they go through a basic cost benefit type of thinking. "Management has told me to cut $60,000 in salaries. I could cut Frank and Bill who make $30,000 each. Or I could just cut John who makes $60,000."

If Frank and Bill combined are more productive and useful than John, then Frank and Bill stay. If John alone is more useful than Frank and Bill, then he stays.

So usefulness comes into the thought process. The whole point of layoffs is to reduce costs while maintaining as much capability and productivity as possible. So for those chosen as layoff victims, there's often a usefulness problem. That's where the stigma comes from, and rightly so.

Now, AGAIN, this is the case for most but not all. Obama's trying to do right by those good employees laid off by no fault of their own. But in doing so he gives the rest of the unemployed a reason to reject the notion that maybe they were laid off because of relative ineffectiveness. And it will all come along with nuisance lawsuits.

The problem I have with what Obama said was the highlight part, "absolutely no sense," So by saying that he thinks that 100% of the people unemployeed are hard at work looking for a new job and its just bad luck they have been without work for a few years.

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by firstdown

The problem I have with what Obama said was the highlight part, "absolutely no sense," So by saying that he thinks that 100% of the people unemployeed are hard at work looking for a new job and its just bad luck they have been without work for a few years.

I think your interpretation of his meaning is incorrect.

"Absolutely no sense" does not mean that he necessarily believes that 100% of unemployed people want to find a job. I think what he was getting at was that allowing any type of discrimination against the unemployed makes no sense because it defeats any efforts aimed at getting them back to work.

[firstdown]

Originally Posted by Schneed10

I think your interpretation of his meaning is incorrect.

"Absolutely no sense" does not mean that he necessarily believes that 100% of unemployed people want to find a job. I think what he was getting at was that allowing any type of discrimination against the unemployed makes no sense because it defeats any efforts aimed at getting them back to work.

Well if he is wanting to pass a law making it illegal then he thinks something along those lines.

[Schneed10]

Originally Posted by firstdown

Well if he is wanting to pass a law making it illegal then he thinks something along those lines.

Well it's ridiculous to think that most people don't want to work. Collecting unemployment is OK but you don't end up collecting more on unemployment than you were paid by the job you were laid off from. Few people want to continue experiencing that lower pay rate, most want to get back to earning what they did before being laid off.

You're right, there are some people that don't. But that's not the issue, and it's not true that MOST don't want to work. Obama just wants to make sure employers don't freeze the long term unemployed out of the workforce.

Again, I don't agree with that in the least, just clarifying his position for you.