Jobless benefits in New York

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.