Let's be honest about (one reason) unemployment remains high in the US:

[Triana]

If Republicans don't want to pay UI or SNAP, then they need to do something about this issue. OR -- pay UI and SNAP. What they advocate doing (but will never SAY) is just letting people remain starving, homeless, broke, sick, and desperate. It's the very definition of corprat psychopathy. They manufacture all sorts of excuses: "big guvmint!" or "guvmint waste!" or "lazy takers!" - but the fact is these Republicans are PSYCHOPATHS who care not one whit about their fellow human beings, their own country, its economy, or the planet they live on. Their GOD is MONEY and nothing else matters in their world - and they don't even SEE our world - the REAL one - the one the rest of us live in. It's just a profit center for them.

The word IMMORAL comes to mind. I bet they go to church on Sunday. I'm just not sure why they bother.

[lumberjack_jeff]

1. They're testing boundaries

How much money can the 1% extract from the economy without triggering anarchy? Occupy was the first time their needle moved, so we can expect more of the same until they begin to see more effects.

The problem is that the above social experimenters are now aligned with tea party nutjobs for whom anarchy is a desired state of affairs.

[ChisolmTrailDem]

2. 80% of Congress are psychopaths. n/t

[freshwest]

3. It's good fof business to maintain that 'thiifty working class' as in the Victorian age. Pyschopaths

are regarded as necessary tools to increase profits, as it requires a blind eye to the effect on the living, in favor of the digits of monetary advantage.

They have always been with us, long bofore this monetary system with the bankers people love to get going on about nowadays. It took psychopaths to ignore the humanity of others and steal their land, rape their women to produce more warriors or maintain 'morale' of their armed forces, to build empires that gave room to develop new ideas to enrich themselves.

It is no different to clear cut and mine fthrough mountain removal removing all living things for just that one narrow purpose, and then leave an ecosystem devastated. It's focus on the one thing, necessary for most things, but in most cases, destructive of the whole for the few.

The few that survive and rule and teach their offspring the same ways. It's always been this way, it takes a united people to tame them. I don't see much of that most days, or at least they don't make the news.

But they are still there, unthanked and working as hard as they can.

[cantbeserious]

4. The Oligarchs, Corporations And Banks Own And Control The World And We Are Now Their Serfs

eom

[dickthegrouch]

5. And much of that 3rd world poverty will be visible in the USA soon

As if it isn't visible in parts of the South East already.

As vast numbers of over 50 can't get new jobs and have their retirement savings eaten away early, we will see more and more people needing welfare and other social services to survive through their expected 78 years.

[Wounded Bear]

12. Not just the South East...

Detroit, much of the rust belt have fallen to these levels.

[ctsnowman]

6. Nailed it.

[green917]

7. something that doesn't get spoken of often enough in any circle

The sad reality is that high unemployment benefits corporations because we are willing to work for less when there is less opportunity! This is why they have waged an unrelenting and expensive (and, sadly, successful) war against organized labor over the last 50 plus years. Straussian, lessez faire, unregulated capitalism has been proven to be a massive failure over and over again since the 1980s and yet, anyone who proposes anything else (Keynesian economics, for instance) is not taken seriously in the media or on capitol hill because the powers that be have dictated that it be so (and the fact that they have benefited financially to levels that should be considered obscene is supposed to make the rest of us lend them even more credence as "the serious ones" who are "in the know&quot . It's a rigged game and sadly, there is very little recourse for we the people to do much about it. If we don't fix the economic issues with our politics (private money out of public elections for instance), we will be regulated to being just another banana republic with the "veneer" of democracy but nothing relating to real freedom.

[Triana]

11. You are no doubt absolutely correct! n/t

[snot]

8. AND under less stringent environmental and other regulations.

(Not that I don't care about the exploitation of workers; I just don't want to leave out quite so many of the ways in which the game's now rigged in favor of multinationals.)

[Blanks]

13. That's what I was gonna say...

The environment abuses that they are guilty of overseas is probably more abusive to the workers than the low wages.

When they argue that they can't afford to manufacture here because of the environmental regulations - they're talking about gutting the EPA.

The longer the tea party is in existence - the more their message changes to 'eliminate the EPA and bring these jobs home.'

Keep an eye on them

[Boom Sound 416]

9. Federal trade pacs have a little something to do with

[QuestForSense]

10. Democrats should be out in full force saying just this.

But what do we hear? Silence. What are people going to do -- starve in the streets? There are no JOBS! There has been no JOBS bill! There has no attempt to create JOBS! They could kill two birds with one stone just by putting some resources toward our crumbling infrastructure. But no, just a lot of bullshit about people being lazy and wanting to live high on the hog with their measly unemployment check. They used to say that there is no greater sin than hardness of heart. But apparently not anymore.

[Blanks]

14. The other factor involved in infrastructure improvement...

Is that the government can require the construction materials be manufactured in this country. Kind of a double bonus.

[mstinamotorcity2]

15. I think they have used the Southern strategy

on the Country as a whole. And they did it Willie Lynch style. At least it feels like it.

[Cha]

16. K&R!

[Enthusiast]

17. We do not want the fucking TPP, Mr. President.

[TBF]

18. They will use words like "transition to information age" -

and "globalization". The reality is that these changes have resulted in the nature of work in this country changing dramatically in the past 50 years. The democratic party sees these changes, embraces them, and to it's credit tries to create some sort of safety net with college tuition credits, long term unemployment insurance, basic health care. The republican party pushes these changes faster (after all they are profiting handsomely) and figures the baby boomers will die off in the next couple of decades so no big deal.

We can see how the various approaches work. One is not great, the other is abysmal.