StreetAdvisor - your street, your voice

Do you think jobless benefist should be increased? The New York Times reports that:

Despite having the support of the governor, labor leaders and advocates for the unemployed, a bill to raise weekly jobless benefits on July 1 and close the gap in the state’s unemployment trust fund was not addressed by state lawmakers before their regular session ended this week. Read more... http://www.nytimes.com/2009/06/25/nyregion/25unemployment.html?hpw

Yes! Everyone's sympathetic to the growing rate of unemployment, but no one's doing anything about it. What are all these unemployed people supposed to do for basic food and shelter? If the authorities waste time waging political battles instead of giving people simple, practical help to help them survive, you're looking at truly terrible social consequences for all--it's not that hard to see how crime increases in direct proportion to tough economic situations.

The city offers incredibly little as far as benefits. You can get food stamps of about $200 a month, which I guess is better than nothing. They also have a jobs program, but on closer inspection it's only a kind of career counseling center. In order to benefit from this program you have to sit through mandatory classes on things like how to write a resume, which sounds like a monumental waste of time since anyone with half a brain can look online for free resume advice. In the end, they aren't able to guarantee any kinds of job assignments, so you get to "graduate" from the program with a spanking new resume and still not a chance of finding work. Seems incredibly feeble, like the government isn't even trying.

It is unfortunate, but the city of New York is falling apart financially. They are barely staying alive. If you notice, many stores have already packed up and moved out. I spoke to a business owner recently, who told me he was planning on relocating his business to one of three places: Brookly, Queens, or Jersey City, NJ, by the spring of this year.

I think what Bloomberg should do is take out some of his money and put it into the city. He has so many millions of dollars, why doesn't he contribute so much to NYC. If he spent just 1/3rd of his fortune on the city, he could get MTA out of its mess or at least keep them from cutting staff and raising rates.

No, I definitely don't want Bloomberg's money, I want politicians who think! I want them to think about how helping the jobless helps us all! I want them to do the right thing, not because I'm a soft-hearted hippie sucker but because I want to feel safe living here, and you only do that when you address social problems effectively. It took a long time for the most notorious slums in this city to slowly disappear and I don't want to see them reappear on my watch, thank you.

New York City is the wealthiest in the country as far as income. If the city is having budget problems then they have only corruption and mismanagement to blame.