It's What the Healthiest Societies and Economies Do

From NBCNEWS.com:

There was little merry or bright this holiday season for millions of unemployed Americans who are losing their extended unemployment benefits. Many depend on these meager payments, a federal extension of state unemployment programs that expired as of the last Saturday of 2013, to stay afloat. After tapping out their savings, downsizing their living space, and draining their retirement funds, one-time managers and MBA grads bought Christmas gifts secondhand and worry over what the new year will bring. 

[…]The families receiving extended unemployment benefits are generally in dire financial straits, so helping them helps the economy overall, economists say. “Emergency UI has one of the largest economic bangs for the buck,” Mark Zandi, chief economist at Moody’s Analytics, said via email. According to Zandi’s calculation, these payments have a multiplier of 1.49: For every dollar in extended unemployment benefits jobless Americans get, $1.49 goes back into the economy. 

"Nobody wins when we leave people looking for work out in the cold," said Amy Traub, a senior policy analyst at advocacy group Demos. "It hurts the economy when local businesses can’t rely on basic spending… It strains the private safety net when food banks and charities have to serve more people,” she said. “It slows down our recovery." 

---“With benefits cut off, long-term unemployed brace for a new year,” in plain sight: poverty in america, NBCNEWS.com. (1.4.14)

Each new analysis stresses more the social and economic implications of the growing gulf between the haves and the have-nots, the one-percenters and everyone else. America’s middle class is shrinking and falling further behind. But for the long-term unemployed--not those few playing the system, but the vast majority of unemployed who have worked, lost jobs, taken lesser positions only to lose them--those who want and need work, but have been dealt losing hands by the years of financial crisis, recession, underemployment and unemployment, it is an existential crisis that continues and gets worse. 

Mortgage payments are no longer an issue for them; it is now about rent for basic shelter, sustenance, and some semblance of self-respect. Healthcare is a luxury well beyond their means. But it's what civilized and responsible societies provide to those in need; it's what those who actually understand advocate and support to strengthen both the fabric of their society and economic health. It's simply what the most advanced industrialized societies and economies do--the Nordics, Germany and others. It's what we should do, too.

Link to article here or above:
With benefits cut off, long-term unemployed brace for a new year,