More Jobless Checks a Cure for Economy?

I can understand the reluctance of some senators to tack on $161b to the "stimulus" package, but this is a no-brainer. If a person is out of work, the unemployment checks will be spent immediately.

They won't be put into a savings account. They won't go into the kids' college fund. They'll be spent on food, rent, perhaps beer, wine, but every cent will be injected straight into the economy. Duh!

For a bipartisan majority of senators, providing three months or six months of extra unemployment checks to more than 1 million jobless people is a better way to dig the economy out of a recession than just printing tax rebate checks.

Some economists agree, and undoubtedly, so do the nearly 1.3 million unemployed workers who face losing an average $282 a week in benefits before June.

But there is strong opposition leading up to a Senate vote in the week ahead on whether to add an extension of jobless benefits to a $161 billion House-passed combination of tax rebates and business tax cuts.

This is also a fucking compassionate thing to do. If a person or family has no income they need help. Help them, assholes.

Don't be fooled. The business tax cuts will go straight into the pockets of the CEOs, other executives, shareholders and may not enter the economy for years.


BTW: This was news to me. It makes abundance sense. Unemployment payments are sometimes credited to ATM/debit cards. That has to be a pretty large cost savings over printing out and mailing a check and then tracking whether it was cashed.

Via AP.