Finding Jobs for Welfare Recipients
* Re your Aug. 27 editorial, “Welfare Reform: Just Who’s Going to Create All the Jobs?”
Legal and illegal immigration is part of the solution. Illegal immigrants are willing to risk their lives for jobs in the U.S. There must be plenty of jobs, particularly if we limited both kinds of immigration. Or is it beneath the dignity of U.S. citizens and welfare recipients to do the kind of work the immigrants work at?
ROBERT MILTON
Corona del Mar
* The editorial is right on the mark. If there is a sequel editorial, you might address another critical area: How can you tell people on welfare to get a job when Alan Greenspan and the Federal Reserve Board consider 5.5% unemployment the same as full employment? How can you pump up the economy with a tax cut (either Republican or Democrat) when Greenspan is waiting in the wings to dampen the economy with one of his one-man tax increases (an interest rate in- crease)?
The 7.4 million unemployed do not tell the whole story. The last time I heard (from Robert Reich about a year ago), we had 13 million unemployed and underemployed (looking for full-time work but unable to find it). Even if that number is down to 12 million or 11 million now, it’s still too high. As you say, where are the jobs?
GEORGE KISEDA
Los Angeles