Presidential ‘Assistance’ for the Long-Term Unemployed: I Don’t Think I Want It

I heard the other day that President Obama’s jobs speech next week may include some proposal that involves “assistance” for the long-term unemployed.  From what I've read, it may be some type of program where the government would pay employers to hire the long-term unemployed; that is, we’d be provided “free” to these employers – the government, not the employers, would pay us – for some period of time (see http://money.cnn.com/2011/08/19/news/economy/obama_unemployment/index.htm). 

As a long-term unemployed person, I dislike the whole idea of this on a couple of levels.  If a company truly must hire an employee, then it will hire one with its own money.  If it doesn’t actually need me, then I don’t want to be handed to them as a “freebie” (“OK, we’ll take her, she won’t cost us anything, what have we got to lose?”). 

The thought of my being the personification of a government handout is creepy to me.  I don’t want someone to hire me because they’re being paid to.  I want to be hired on my own merits, because of my own talent and skills and experience.  As an individual human being of worth, this kind of program seems demeaning to me.

There’s also no assurance that, once the government well runs dry, my employer would dip into his or her own scarce funds to keep me on.  Imagine how that makes you feel: to be let go because you were never really needed in the first place and you're not worth the money.

Do you think I’m being too prideful?  Maybe that’s part of it; but my understanding of how the economy actually works tells me that paying companies to hire people isn’t going to grow our economy and reduce unemployment in the long-term.  When I look at the big picture, this just sounds like a waste of taxpayer money.  Still, I don’t want to judge the President’s plan until he provides the actual details on September 8.

Meanwhile, the government announced this morning that first-time weekly unemployment claims fell last week from 421,000 the week before to 409,000.  Unfortunately, first-time claims have only fallen below 400,000 – a number that signifies job growth – once since April (http://www.rttnews.com/Content/TopStories.aspx?Node=B1&Id=1704871) .

Well, at least we have tomorrow’s announcement of the August unemployment rate to look forward to.  It would be great to see a significant drop in this rate, which was 9.1 percent in July.  I’m not holding my breath for this, though; the Gallup polling organization predicts that the August rate will be higher than July’s (see http://www.gallup.com/poll/149285/Gallup-Finds-Unemployment-August.aspx).

I don’t want to end this on such a gloomy note, so how’s this?  At least we’re not Ireland, where the July unemployment rate was 14.3 percent, or Spain, where the July rate was 21.2 percent (http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20110831-707251.html).  Things could always be worse!