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Compassion for the downtrodden

My wife told me about this. She is an honest person, as everyone knows, but I couldn’t help think that she was delusional:

The governors of Connecticut, New York and New Jersey are asking the federal government for a $48 million emergency grant to help thousands of financial industry workers who are losing their jobs.

The governors say the emergency grant would allow the states to give each laid-off worker $12,500 to help them find jobs and relocate, and provide them with other services.

Now, I’m a compassionate guy. I might even support this sort of assistance for laid off workers, but is there precedent for simply giving cash to laid off workers? I assume these folks are eligible for unemployment compensation, so this has to be in addition to that. Why the special treatment? Is there something about the plight of laid off financial sector people that these folks find especially easy to relate to?

These are folks who toiled in the vineyards of an industry in which they were most likely to, or at least had resources to, salt some money aside against the lean years. That’s something precious few of the rest of us can do.

Maybe the details of the proposal are not as bad as the AP summary, but judging by this article it looks like our government leaders just can’t get enough of bailing out anyone who works in that sector of the economy which has brought this country to the brink of destruction.


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