The 99-Week Myth.

Not a big fan of Paul Krugman -- not a non-fan either, but most of his work, what he writes about, doesn't concern me.

I'm more a common-sense thinker, and as anyone who's taken more than the introductory university economics knows, it's best to throw your real-life instincts and common sense out the window if you want to win in the economics game. There is one thing Krugman's been pushing lately -- popping the austerity myth, where frugality is automatically rewarded -- that I must say makes good sense to me.

Now to backtrack: I've always been a saver. And a worker. First jobs: delivering The Shopper route (a free Wednesday paper) door to door (they wanted it doorknob hung, not tossed on the porches) with my siblings, pulling the wagons weekly.

Then, concurrently, my sister and I took on the Hammond Times afternoon daily and Sunday morning routes. (We split the bigger town route into two that were bike-able for us. Two trips each on Sundays for the heavier paper; walking in winter when the pavement proved unkind to thin 10-speed tires.) I think I mentioned this before: though we lived in Thornton -- a Chicago south suburb, many of our customers were steelworkers and factory workers, eager to understand whatever was being reported on upcoming closings and the industry's decline, circa the late 70s, early to mid 80s.

We delivered, collected (the part I hated most), and banked our money. I think we were getting at least 5% or 7% at the time, a healthy interest rate where, when you saw what your money was making, it wasn't hard to inculcate savings as a lifelong habit.

Skip ahead to 2010. Still a saver, still live on the lower-end economy where the prices of items matter to me in calculating their true worth. (ie/ We never played with cheap plastic toys, that were built to break days after opening their packaging.)

Oh, I'll pay a good price if something has value to me. I still disagree with you get what you pay for, necessarily -- too easy for others to jack up the prices, and yes, there are still bargains if you find the right shopping situations. (One reason I've always said it's good not to loose track of your roots: your dollar often goes further if you were brought up thriftily and can still go back to those peoples and places).

Which brings me around to Krugman's column today: I wish he might have addressed this 99-week myth. Now it's my understanding that while Congress, the feds, decide whether there is money available to bail out the workers affected by the poor corporate decisions and ethical failures made by the management responsible for keeping the business end afloat... the states determine according to their policies what the weekly rates will be.

Here in Wisconsin, it's $363 a week, maximum, for 26 weeks. Plus a $25/week federal stimulus. Then, as Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) kicks in, a Tier system is set up -- at least 3 or 4 tiers extension, which can extend out to 99 weeks.

Now those 99 weeks: folks have only exhausted those if they were laid off at the very beginning of this cricitical economic period, drawing full benefits weekly. But if Congress indeed cuts off funding now, there's this myth that the only people affected are those who've been on the dole for that full period. Not true.

If you've exhausted your state's allotment, and you were counting on those tiers to keep your household budgets afloat until the economy starts hiring again, in many states, those are gone too. Congress not renewing, means a person can exhaust the current state minimum, yet not be eligible for the EUC, because it's gone. Dryed up, the Democrats and Republicans unable to come to an agreement about whether this should continue to be funded via the million (billion?) stimulus package Congress passed last year (as the Republicans prefer) or from fresh funds (as Krugman and the Democrats wish.)

Personally, I didn't take the fed-funded COBRA extension, preferring to use what I've saved in premiums toward out-of-pocket medical expenses, like dental. And I've always worked -- even through my merit-scholarship-paid, law-school-retraining adventure. (I scored in the 92nd percentile on the LSAT, apparently attractive to schools looking to up their overall test numbers. But mine was a tuition-only scholarship -- not living expenses like food, utilities and rent, which were considerably higher in Madison -- so I took library jobs to pay the bills without having to eat too much into savings. Luckily, I've never been one to live beyond my means, so no debt collectors to worry about...)

I've paid into the state unemployment system, and have no qualms about using those benefits to pay my monthly bills as a single woman living alone. Renting -- $450 for a 2-bedroom to sleep in, and a room of my own to do personal non-remunerative work out of. (Some day, dreams will pay off. I continue to believe in the American Dream, despite setbacks.)

So if you're reading about this 99-week thing, especially if you've got a job yourself and are hurting financially too, having seen the price of gas rise enormously this past decade, affecting commute prices and heating costs (I'm not even going to touch the depressing 401k and other alleged stock-savings-plans depreciations) ... don't think that this stimulus money is only going to help the long-term out-of-work.

How do you retrain to find work, if you've pretty well educated already? How do you up and go to where the jobs are, even if you're fairly mobile comparatively, if nobody is hiring? Sure you can piece together part-time jobs if you are lucky: Census work, swim coaching, hiring out for lessons or working piecemeal if you have skills someone else could benefit from ... all stringing out the initial state allotment, by reporting what you've made, and deducting that calculation from the weekly benefit amount.

In short, the people who would be helped by passage of this bill in Congress aren't all 99-weekers. They're anybody who's close to exhausting what their previous employers have paid in on the workers' behalf, who will also lose the subsequent emergency tiers. I don't think the media makes that clear.

Commonsense on the austerity issue: Krugman is right. Now is the time, when the economy is depressed and it's a buyer's market, to be looking for that good, second-hand car. People will drop their prices, and you might just pick up an economic bargain. Now truly is the time ... if you're a lifelong saver -- to be spending. To be investing in your future, and taking advantage of the deflated prices to invest in yourself and move forward.

If you were in the market for a first-time home, maybe you took advantage of that $8,000 stimulus, if you had a stable job and could commit to keeping roots in an area. Maybe your gas-guzzler qualified for the new car stimulus, and you turned in the keys of the old for a new one. (If I had a dime for everyone who asked me why my "clunker" -- a '95 Corsica with 208,000 miles now, but a pretty good body still if you can see past that minor hail damage -- wasn't traded up for a better vehicle, I'd be cruising in style... Answer: She didn't qualify, as she's a pretty fuel-efficient runner.) Maybe you used that COBRA extension to continue paying your family's share of the premiums, subsidized by the stimulus, to ensure you had the security of continual healthcare coverage.

Or maybe you worked for one of the corporations that failed us, and the taxpayers helped stimulate your industry so that you were back in the bonus round before you even felt the pain.

It's a shame workers need jobs to support themselves. It's a shame savings, even thriftily spent with food and household budgets supplemented in any way possible, can't continue to carry one forever.

It's a shame that in America today, we're more concerned with infrastructure-building, and bringing up the quality of lives not for our own peoples, but for those countries who -- truth be told -- don't want us any longer as guests. I wish I had a stockpile of lithium buried under my bed. I wish I had a professional parent (not really) one who could game the system for citizenship, for IRS tax purposes, for guaranteed future employment of offspring ... but I'm an American, and ethically, that would keep me up at night.

I'm not eating $11/pint ice cream, or taking advantage of the exchange rate to spend weeks abroad luxuriating in the finest European seasides on my falsified American passport... I'm just an American worker, who is stagnating with something to offer, wondering when the tide will come to lift all boats. I was raised Catholic, remain catholic, and as an (legal) immigrant's child, I honestly do still want to believe we are all in this together, in this the best of all possible worlds.

Do you?

Still believe, that is?

If so, then don't look away. Don't buy the 99-week myth, that we're all being taken care of for almost 2 years now, and it's sheer laziness, or lack of skills, or lack of want, that has fellow Americans fending for ourselves. I'll wrap here, but maybe in other writings I can let you know what a lack of jobs, a lack of money, a lack of hope ... does to families and communities, like what I saw in south Chicagoland in the steelmill-shuttering, factory-closing days. (My first "real" jobs were at The Daily Calumet and Southtown Economist newspapers.) It's not pretty, but if you keep on going, keep your eyes open, and absorb just a bit of human nature, you can't help but be affected.

The study of economics translated into human stories. American stories. One and all.

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ADDED: Ross's The Day After column is relevant on this topic today too...