Its tough to gauge how many unemployed are driving the economy, but what we do know is that there are 14+ million unemployed and over 24 million underemployed! Of course without 6+ million people receiving benefits by 2012 the economy might feel it, I am sure the hundreds of billions placed into extending the unemployment benefits helped out to add a few percentage points to the GDP. Thats one way of propping up GDP figures is to place hundreds of billions more into the unemployed and have them spend it in the economy buying goods because everyone knows 70% of GDP is based on consumption.
Yea I have been reading that its growing pretty strong....more cities and more people every day, at the rate its going by 2012 there could be millions involved in occupy wall street.
an arguement can be made that unemployment benefits help retail as much as the people recieving it. if the demand from 6 million peope disappears business will feel it bigtime.
But it's a really bad argument, and it doesn't help when at least four words were misspelled. Get on back to your local "Occupy [insert city here]" rally. Sugar Daddy Obama won't cut your UI benes unless he's forced to.
I've made that exact argument on here many times. I'm agnostic about the political morality of such a thing, but it's been clear to me from the beginning, that extended unemployment benefits were as much about suppressing rebellion as they were about creating another "backdoor" stimulus. I'm sure that AAPL amongst others were delighted with the unprecedented duration of unemployment benefits.
To elaborate on the previous point, these massively underfunded public pensions are part of the same ruse. They shift demand forward, as public sector employees don't have to concern themselves with the same retirement savings demands as private sector workers who literally "live or die" by the stock market's performance and their 401(k). If the private sector had guaranteed pensions that paid them roughly 50-90% of their income at retirement age, we'd see similar types of consumption and more than likely no real fall off during the past 3-4 years. It also skews alot of the data when we hear about a certain demographic having little to nothing in savings. I've lost count of what percentage of the workforce is employed by the government, but I'm certain it's a pretty startling number. If you account for the fact that these people have little incentive to save anything, then you have your answer as to why there is so little savings and still so much consumption.
This will not likely happen in an election year, especially with many representative and senatorial seats up for grabs, including a Presidency. Democrats/Republicans?...I really don't see much difference between any of these folks...other than cheap rhetoric...that is easily quieted when the favors come their way.
I agree, were not talking about 60,000 or 740,000 people, this is millions and millions of people, I think you would easily see businesses feel it, it would be a trickle down effect. It would certainly shave off a few percentage points off GDP!