Happy holidays to all you unemployed lucky duckies (that's what a Wall Street Journal editorialist called the jobless). Thanks to budget-conscious senators, your benefits will run out at the end of the year.

Forget about gifts under the Christmas tree, and forget about the tree, too. Also forget about mortgage payments, utility payments, car payments, groceries and those other luxuries.

Your sacrifice of around $38 billion in benefits equals about three weeks of war in Afghanistan, so I suppose you can rejoice that your loss is Hamid Kharzai's gain. Why should you lollygag around on an average of $300 a week, after taxes? With that kind of easy money, I could pay my mortgage and still have $100 a month to kick back and live off the fat of the land.

Better that we increase the deficit with tax breaks for incomes of more than $250,000; the wealthy need incentives to create jobs (too bad they didn't over the last decade of tax breaks). Those entrepreneurs will now surely ramp up production of goods and services (using offshore workers and forced productivity increases, no doubt).

Unfortunately, you unemployed who have lost your benefits won't be able to afford to buy them.