CHESSNOID

I have been critical of our government because they have done a poor job running our country. I hope we vote all the incumbents out who voted for the 2 wars, the stimulus packages and bailouts. They keep telling us if it wasn’t for them things would be worse. The truth is if it wasn’t for them things wouldn’t be so bad now.

The government has spent billions of dollars to supposedly get this economy going and get unemployment under control, but they failed to both ends. I don’t buy the reports that the economy is better or unemployment is dropping when they take actions to manipulate and distort the numbers by simply not counting people that should be included.

Everyday that I step out, I see more homeless people out on the streets.  We have spent over a trillion dollars on supposedly stimulating the economy and creating jobs, yet I don’t see any of that productivity on main street or the real world where average people live.

NY Times:

Warm, outgoing and prone to the positive, Ms. Eisen has worked much of her life. Now, she is one of 6.3 million Americans who have been unemployed for six months or longer, the largest number since the government began keeping track in 1948. That is more than double the toll in the next-worst period, in the early 1980s.

Men have suffered the largest numbers of job losses in this recession. But Ms. Eisen has the unfortunate distinction of being among a group — women from 45 to 64 years of age — whose long-term unemployment rate has grown rapidly.

In 1983, after a deep recession, women in that range made up only 7 percent of those who had been out of work for six months or longer, according to the Labor Department. Last year, they made up 14 percent.

Twice, Ms. Eisen exhausted her unemployment benefits before her check was restored by a federal extension. Last week, her check ran out again. She and her husband now settle their bills with only his $1,595 monthly disability check. The rent on their apartment is $1,380.

“We’re looking at the very real possibility of being homeless,” she said.

Every downturn pushes some people out of the middle class before the economy resumes expanding. Most recover. Many prosper. But some economists worry that this time could be different. An unusual constellation of forces — some embedded in the modern-day economy, others unique to this wrenching recession — might make it especially difficult for those out of work to find their way back to their middle-class lives.

Labor experts say the economy needs 100,000 new jobs a month just to absorb entrants to the labor force. With more than 15 million people officially jobless, even a vigorous recovery is likely to leave an enormous number out of work for years.