It would be terrific to find a job for which you already possess the proper skill-set or training, but if you don’t have another job lined up your only choice is to file for unemployment and continue your search as if it were a full-time job. If the time finally arrives that you are forced to accept a less-lucrative job, you further risk endangering your financial livelihood by taking that lower-paying job, which can be as bad for you as it is for the economy. Unemployment won’t cover mortgage payments and probably not most car payments, so it makes sense to search, at least in the beginning, for jobs where you are already a good fit. Training and re-education programs aren’t cheap either and unemployment certainly isn’t enough to cover that. When you combine those facts with ageism and other currently existing forms of discrimination, the odds of finding a job in our current economy go down quite quickly.
The Republican morons who voted down this bill should be ashamed of themselves. Theirs is an elitist attitude which they usually express by clever use of that well-worn-out conservative catch-phrase ‘I got mine, go get yours’. It’s the mantra of opulent misers and uncaring assholes which rewards no one and punishes honest hard-working people of every stripe whose only transgression was being unfortunate enough to lose their job. Everyone who files for unemployment is acutely aware that such aid won’t last forever and most use what little they get to cover bare necessities and eke by while actively searching for another job. Sure, there are a few bad apples, but you can say that about any group of people and I’d much rather invest in people’s futures than waste money on previously-rich Republican representatives whose only interests involve lining their own pockets with the difference that might be saved.