Posted on 12/04/2010 4:29:38 PM PST by 2ndDivisionVet
As Congress debates yet another extension of Federal Unemployment Benefits, perhaps it is time to examine the system itself and gain a bit of perspective.
No one disagrees that Unemployment Insurance is a necessary safety net – providing a means to continue functioning when a job ends and to allow for a search for new employment. Unemployment Insurance is set up as a STATE run program, providing a minimal income for a set period of time. The maximum payout varies by state, but here in the heartland this maximum benefit is around $300 a week. The maximum term of benefits is 26 weeks, or 6 months.
This is true insurance. Premiums are paid by employers thru a tax, and benefits are paid out when circumstances warrant a claim – up to the maximum benefit.
Unemployment Insurance Benefits are not intended to be an income replacement for a job! They are a supplement to allow the unemployed worker some minimal income to allow him to eat while he seeks another job. After 6 months, the benefits are maxed out and expire.
This is a reasonable system. No one will starve while seeking work. And since the benefit amount is based on earned income over the previous x number of months… someone eligible for the maximum benefit will have earned significantly more than that benefit amount while working. There is INCENTIVE to seek to return to work to maintain the standard of living! (During my last short stint collecting unemployment benefits… the sum total of monthly benefits barely paid my monthly mortgage! I was INCENTED to seek another job, as my other expenses ate well into my savings!)
Things get muddled when the FEDERAL government steps in.
During times of high national unemployment, the Feds institute “extended benefits”. This is NOT Unemployment Insurance. No premiums are paid or collected for these benefits. The program is ADMINISTERED by the states but the benefits are simply expenditures of the Federal Budget.
The currently expiring benefits have run through SEVERAL extensions. For one’s benefits to be expiring now, they’d have had to be collecting unemployment thru nearly the entire Obama Presidency!
Remember, McDonalds is hiring, and pays more than $250 a week! If someone has been out of work for 2 years, they COULD get a job flipping burgers for about the same money that unemployment provides. But WHY WOULD someone who is content to live at that level of income work 40 hrs a week for the kind of money the Feds are giving away for them to sit on their cans?
To be sure, there are people who are NOT content to live on unemployment. Myself, for example! During that last stint of unemployment I mentioned, I was unable to find full time work in my field of expertise, but I DID find and ACCEPT a part-time position! Since I am an IT professional, my part time job nets me, after taxes, significantly more than unemployment benefits pay, though HALF the income I had been earning! I am one of the UNDER-EMPLOYED not recorded on the nations employment statistics… but I am a productive worker, paying taxes and meeting my obligations and expenses – though barely – as I continue to seek a suitable career enhancing position!
The Feds have done enough for the “long-term unemployed”. As they drain federal coffers, they have DIS-incented millions of potential CONTRIBUTORS to the nation’s economy. Workers will not take jobs they consider “below them” when they can continue to collect taxpayer funded subsidy. They will not work 40 hrs at a job that will only minimally improve their lot over what the Feds give them for nothing. The Feds CREATE the long-term unemployment problem!
Necessity is a great motivator. When the benefits expire, these people WILL go out and accept available employment to meet their needs and those of their families. It is time for the mamby-pamby spoiled brat children that make up a goodly portion of the American Population to find out what it is to take a menial subsistence job that is “below them” and be responsible for themselves. The Depression created innovation. The Depression created character. And the children of the Depression became the “Greatest Generation”.
The “Great Society” spawned the “ME Generation”… and these people have become spoiled, lazy, entitled and unproductive.
The Safety Net exists at the State Level. In extreme times, a single extension of an additional 26 weeks might be justifiable. But to extend these benefits ad infinitum is simply the creation of another Welfare program, without calling it so. It is another case of the productive funding and subsidizing the unproductive.
The time has come for Congress to say ENOUGH.
There should be no extension of Federal Unemployment Benefits. Congress must begin to show SOME accountability with the tax dollars they appropriate from the productive people of this nation. And it is time for the American People to start being accountable for their own actions, and responsible for their own outcomes.
And the employer never makes adjustments to pay and benefits to account for this, right?
In my direct experience, even as a well paid S/W engineer, the cost of hiring someone to do menial labor (grass cutting, weed/tree trimming, snow removal, odd jobs) on my property is more per person/hour than my take home - hence I'll do it myself, reduce my hours at work, and be ahead.
Savings are truly phenomenal when comparing my unencumbered day job labor remuneration for time spent on a home plumbing job vs. employing a plumber. Likewise with a number of things I'd rather hire someone to do.
Government is making labor exchange between people ever more expensive, and destroying this once efficient and wealth creating transaction system. "Killing the golden goose" as my father would say.
This is all very true. I recognize it. I understand it. It’s just a little more yucky when it’s as real as you, yourself, being the individual having to pay full freight on it. I’m talking about the whole “A recession is when your friend loses his job, a depression is when you lose yours.” perspective.
Major changes need to be made in short order, as the course we are on will leave us in a dark age of poverty for most, with a filthy rich, hunkered down, ever more insane, kleptocracy squandering the last of our once bountiful legacy: tossing pennies to the crowds, and spending billions rescuing the odd-eyed horn toad.
Tell me I'm wrong. You see it don't you.
There is not one dime of the money I've collected in unemployment that ever belonged to you. That money comes from fees paid by my employers. The rate varies based on certain factors but averages $2,000 per employee per year currently. As you apparently know everything about everything, I don't have to ask if you're capable of doing a little math with me? Wanna give it a try?
First I have to ask if you'll accept that these unemployment insurance costs that businesses incur are passed on to consumers/clients....as well as recovered out of salary offers, bonuses, raise levels and employee costs of benefits? Is that reasonable? I'm not a business man nor an econonmist, but that seems pretty reasonable to me. The cost sure is not paid out from a money tree kept in the owner's/shareholder's backyard. They are well recovered somehow, aren't they?
So, let's split the $2,000 50/50 so that $1,000 is passed on to clients/consumers and as an employee, I was paid $1,000 less overall than I would have if there were no unemployment insurance. Ok? I've worked consistently for 23 years - that's $23,000 (1000 x 23, feel free to use a calculator if the math gets scary). Of course, there's inflation and the fact that I was paid less as a teenager than as a mid-30s adult. Let's account for that as best we can and half it again ($23,000/2).
Work with me, professor, let's try and get to the bottom of this. Let's say I've "paid" $11,500 into unemployment over the 23 years that I've have worked. Well, my check was $422 per week for 26 weeks and that works out to $10,972 and now without any extensions, I am out. Unemployment is still 17%+ and "the system" is still up $528 by my ultra-conservative estimation.
As a result of all these calculations, I proudly extend my middle finger to you, sir or ma'am. You are sad example of a person and when you are in need, you will be alone. I have my family and the most wonderful friends a person could ask for. I will get through this somehow. You, on the other hand, have to live the rest of your life as the scumbag that you are. Enjoy yourself.
Do you think there is a box of cash with your name on it somewhere in storage? That money was spent years ago. Because you were stolen from offers you no righteousness in stealing from others.
I have to say I'm enjoying the flames as it's never ending entertainment listening to people try and justify taking what others earn.
You can call me names but in the end you have to be you.
I agree with you totally. I just don't think I should have to pay for it with my life's savings which will be gone in one month. I see billions in waste in the stimulus bill, billions in TARP, unchecked illegal immigration, more fraud on the way with the "Dream" act, billions in "humanitarian aid" for any country that has as much as a heavy rain storm, $200 million Indian vacations for Barry, Spanish vacations for Mi-shell........and yet I'M the one that gets cut. Me? The one time I really need what I've already paid for? Ummm, no. Sorry. You lose me their when it ends up in my lap.
[Your position is that you are collecting a benefit that you paid for, I tend to agree - though I do not know whether or not the UI payments to the state fund were adequate to cover the risk, I trust that only a free economy might converge to the right answer here. Political decisions tend to be made disregarding real economics - note SS, Medicare, Medicaid, unfunded government pensions, etc. Generally, politicians depend on sticking the taxpayer (and/or the beneficiary) with the bad consequences of their poor (or corrupt) economic judgment.]
And one, of sound mind, might purchase that which would suit one's circumstance. That's what sovereign, free, responsible people do - they navigate this world for better or poorer, and enrich themselves and their society by good, consequential decision making. We and our most precious, live or die in consequence of decisions we make every day. Government fiat can never substitute for this, but can certainly dull this sense. This vital sense is to be honed in an individual.
So I guess you would refuse the (perhaps perpetual) Federal UI extension, paid for out of the taxpayer's pocket, as it is not rightfully a benefit that you paid for.
I agree with you, but the mandate by government does not replace the need to save. UI only "pays" 50% of wages up to a capped amount. This is hardly enough to cover my basic bills. I've had to rapidly burn through what little savings I've been able to keep over the years. Again, I don't disagree with anything you have posted here and recognize it's a reasoned discussion of "what should be". I'm dealing with "what is". That's a fantastic idea to let the private sector offer an unemployment insurance to "the people". That's just not were we are today or what it available to me.
So I guess you would refuse the (perhaps perpetual) Federal UI extension, paid for out of the taxpayer's pocket, as it is not rightfully a benefit that you paid for.
I would hope to be long "re-employed" before that day would have come. As of today though, I'm off at 26 weeks with no extensions available. My last payment will hit my account on Tuesday. I guess I timed my layoff wrong. That's the "what is" for me.
To answer your question - if an extension is passed, yes I will accept it without shame. Mr "I see my hands are my only girlfriend" thinks I'm a thief for that. Somehow I'll try to carry on knowing I've displeased the Mary Poppins (Practically Perfect in Every Way) of this forum.
But thank you, for engaging in a civilized discussion of the issue. Have a nice night.
“I see my hands”, how about if I just tell you to kiss my a$$ instead of thanks? I owe YOU nothing. I have earned what I am receiving both from my service to our country and from having paid into “the system” for well over 35 years. People like you are simply gnats who buzz around annoying people and contributing nothing meaningful. I’m sure you’ll find some seeming clever response wrapped in your clever boxes, which are nothing more than a pitiful cry for attention. I’ll just ignore you from now on.
So far, the Feds have implemented protection of pensions, wages (UI), minimum income (EIC, food stamps, welfare, etc., for the poor), bank deposits, money market fund deposits, old age, illegal alien status, health care (now even for everyone), and apparently home price (for the qualified), fortunate prior owners of junkers, natural disasters, terrorist attack (spotty, but for instance, 9/11 victim compensation). And so on.
We cannot make personal unfettered decisions about light bulbs, toilets, shower heads, seat belts, helmets, vaccination, education, diversity, public religious expression, self-defense, health insurance, vitamins and supplements, wages, appliances, cars, travel, windows, property management. Even what feather or flower one might pick up on a stroll through the woods. We've lost so much freedom to be in this country - it is a joke anymore - "Land of the Free!" Yea, right.
All done in the "name of the children," (isn't that sweet) who are now burdened with debt that will enslave them for life, thanks to the greed and shortsightedness of the current population, who will truck no difficulty, economy, or strife in their life and go along to get along, with Obama's (and the plethora of like-minded politicians') stolen stash providing for their every whim. How nice.
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