We need jobs, not entitlements

Remember that third party presidential candidate that warned of that “giant sucking sound,” the guy who warned us that those long ago entitlements, those American manufacturing jobs of ours were going to be being sacrificed for the greater good that would be an interconnected “world economy” that is now poised for a titanic collapse?

Remember that he was mocked at nearly every turn and publicly belittled by the politically entrenched only because he rose from the ranks of the third party folks that were not invited to the malfeasance and mismanagement that is Washington D.C.?

Let them eat cake, imported or otherwise.

From Propublica.org:

With Federal Benefits Set to Expire, Unemployed Workers Face Shrinking Safety Net

Unless Congress acts to extend programs for those who have exhausted regular state unemployment benefits, millions of jobless workers may soon be phased out of emergency unemployment benefits [1].

Unemployment benefits from states typically last for 26 weeks, but since 2008, Congress has on four occasions [2] passed emergency provisions that use federal funds to extend benefits for jobless workers by up to 73 weeks [3], depending on the state’s laws and unemployment rate. These benefits are set to expire tomorrow unless lawmakers intervene.

The way I see it, we wouldn’t need to be goofing around with our health care delivery system if people had meaningful, family-sustaining jobs. And we wouldn’t need extended, extended again, and then extended--still-some-more unemployment benefits if people had meaningful, family-sustaining jobs. And we wouldn’t need newly created, but ill-timed and prohibitively expensive safety nets if people had meaningful, family-sustaining jobs.

But what we got was what the career politicians told us we needed. What we got were ill-thought out trade agreements the likes of N.A.F.T.A. and G.A.T.T. And now, we have the scant remnants, the last vestiges of the long-shrinking manufacturing base that cannot be replaced by the once highly-touted service industry jobs, despite what we were told.

We do not need ill-conceived government-provided health care programs, nor do we need profligate government-supplied artificial income. What we need is a growing manufacturing base. What we need is an abundance of well-paying jobs that provide not only benefits but retirement plans as well. And we’ll never receive what we need until the fools that misguide, misuse and misinterpret the powers of the Fedrule Govmint finally realize that outright tyranny severely restricts economic output every time it‘s tried.

Surprising as it may seem to most; a long, long time ago, Ross Perot was the smartest guy in the room.

We need jobs, not entitlements.

Sez me.

Later