Extended federal benefits for long-term unemployment came to an end for 1,300,000 Americans on December 28, 2013, and now "only one in four unemployed Americans receive jobless benefits — the smallest proportion in half a century."
I don't have anything brilliant to say about the reality of this situation and what it means to millions of American families. These are huge numbers, with terrible misery behind them.
10,900,000 Americans are counted as unemployed by the Bureau of Labor Statistics, as reported December 6, 2013.
75% of them adds up to 8,175,000 unemployed Americans who get no unemployment benefits.
So it's hard, hard times for a great many people in the USA, and most of them worked regular jobs for most of their lives.
But it may still be worthwhile to mention that this brutal fact provides us with an unusually exact location of the Overton Window around unemployment.
The percent of the unemployed who get no benefits passed 75% only after the latest big bump, when benefits for 1,300,000 Americans expired December 28, 2013, and before that moment there were only...
8,175,000 - 1,300,000 = 6,875,000 with no benefits, and that, my friends is the Overton Window of plausible discussion and negotiation about unemployment.
That's the always-wavering front line of this war! That's where the action is!
The Republicans won the last battle and now the line stands at 8,175,000!
Meanwhile the Democrats hope to regain their last stable position at only 6,875,000.
And below that line, outside the window...
6,875,000 Americans don't even figure in the conversation!
They don't even exist for official Washington and the mainstream media.