Extend unemployment benefits
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I commend the Observer-Reporter for including on its Jan. 12 Sunday commentary page Llewellyn King’s “The shame of denigrating the unemployed.”
King lets us know that there is a human side to unemployment. He suggests that unemployment is no “vacation,” that it “means cold economic fear,” that it “erodes the good times of family life and confiscates future plans,” and that, among other privations, it “pushes out laughter and dreams.” He is also quite eloquent about how the hunger for meaningful work, in the absence of such, is a desire “to belong,” “to be useful,” “to provide,” and is a hunger, really, for “simple dignity.”
I agree. Unemployment affects people. It’s not just numbers. Doing a good job and immersing oneself into the life of a working community does not translate into job security.
Compensation benefits keep people afloat when circumstances beyond their control cast them overboard. I vote to extend them.
Steve Mason
East Washington