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Guest Post: Unemployment Insurance Schemes And The Dependency Of Welfare
Submitted by James Miller of the Ludwig von Mises Institute of Canada
Unemployment Insurance Schemes And The Dependency Of Welfare
In the Garden of Eden there is no scarcity. Food, clothing, and shelter in are abundance. Resources merely fall from the heavens upon command. It is economic paradise precisely because economics does not exist. The universal laws that hold in the world of scarce goods vanquish in the land of the plenty.
The vision of Eden is the politician’s main source of employment. That is, promising to lead the suffering masses toward utopia by government decree makes for great electoral results. The voting fodder ignorant of economics falls in line to cast a ballot to grant themselves other people’s money. But of course many voters don’t see it this way. Their vision of the state is that of Eden. They see the bureaucrats and enforcers capable of tapping an infinite pot of wealth to pass along prosperity to those subservient enough to put them in office. This in turn has lead to the establishment of the welfare state and its plethora of entitlement programs.
For those who see the modern day welfare state as corrosive to the productive capacity of any given country, no where is this theory more evident than the scheme of unemployment insurance. In a recent National Post article, the entitlement attitude was on full display:
Jenna Somerton views her layoff from a job at Algonquin College in June of 2010 as a blessing in disguise: She lived on employment insurance benefits for eight months, took stock and decided what she really wanted to do with her life.
Of course, she admits to taking advantage of her EI cheques at the beginning, after hunting for a job with no luck.
“I was thinking ‘Free money, the government owes me, I paid for school … I deserve this,” the 27-year-old Ottawa resident says now.
She soon got serious, using the subsidized income to hatch plans to start her own web development business. Some of her friends, she said, have not been so diligent.
“I’ve known lots of people on EI and I know a lot of them just stayed on EI and as soon as it ran out they started freaking out and then they started looking for jobs…. [The government] makes it so easy.”
In Ms. Somerton’s view, it is the government that owes her and she is rightly deserving of the “free” money. Her error is unfortunately not unique. The notion of the government not restricted by the amount of resources it is able to squander from the private sector is hardly touched on in what passes for informed opinion. The reading of the editorial section in today’s highly regarded newspapers often contains numerous recommendations on what the state can and should provide. What is never eluded to is the real cost of government expenditures. While it is a simple task to rattle off the dollar cost of a program, to truly gauge the price of the state, one must look at what may have been foregone to provide for the payment of taxes.
The proper understanding of government is that it is parasitical in nature. It can only spend what it first forcefully takes. Because the political class is beholden to how much theft it can get away with before sparking an enraged uprising, it also invents new schemes to not be reliant on tax collection alone. This includes borrowing and accumulating debt; which is nothing more than the promise of future taxes. And there is inflation which benefits the first receiver of new money, that is the state, to spend freely before prices adjust economy wide.
Whatever the devious method, each comes at cost to the taxpayer. Again, the nominal price of taxation by itself is easy to calculate. What is often neglected is what the pilfered funds could have been used for if left in the necessarily more prudent non-public sector. It was recently came to light how the great technological innovator Apple Inc. sets up branches in cities with low corporate tax rates in order to lower its tax bill. This is of course a great thing as Apple, constrained in income by how much it receives from consumers, is a better steward of scarce resources then the state. Apple’s tax avoidance is obvious. The further technological innovations financed by money the government bandits don’t help themselves to is not readily apparent.
The general public is blind to this state of affairs. Many have been conditioned through years of public schooling to see the state as Eden. The short term benefits of government transfer payments override any conceivable long term gains of genuine wealth creation in the private sphere.
Decades of the predominant welfare state have not only created a reliable voting constituency dependent on handouts, it has perpetuated the Santa Clause-like image of the state. What isn’t considered is the overall social degeneration that is a byproduct of the so-called “social safety net.” As noted economist Thomas Sowell explains:
While liberals may think of the 1960s as the beginning of many “progressive” trends in American society, cold hard facts tell a very different story. The 1960s marked the end of many beneficial trends that had been going on for years — and a complete reversal of those trends as programs, policies, and ideologies of the liberals took hold.
Teenage pregnancy had been going down for years. So had venereal disease. Rates of infection for syphilis in 1960 was half of what it had been in 1950. There were similar trends in crime. The total number of murders in the United States in 1960 was lower than in 1950, 1940, or 1930 — even though the population was growing and two new states had been added. The murder rate, in proportion to population, in 1960 was half of what it had been in 1934.
Every one of these beneficial trends sharply reversed after liberal notions gained ascendancy during in the 1960s. By 1974, the murder rate had doubled. Even liberal icon Sargent Shriver, head of the agency directing the “war on poverty,” admitted that “venereal disease has skyrocketed” even though “we have had more clinics, more pills, and more sex education than ever in history.”
As for black economic advances, the most dramatic reduction in poverty among blacks occurred between 1940 and 1960, when the black poverty rate was cut almost in half, without any major government programs of the Great Society kind that began in the 1960s.
Why be productive and take of yourself when someone else picks up the tab? This isn’t a cold hearted question but a basic recognition that in most cases, leisure and immediate pleasure are preferred to delayed satisfaction.
Back to unemployment insurance, no matter how much it is denied by entitlement apologists, there is no escaping the truth that if someone is paid not to work, they will generally not work. As Murray Rothbard writes in his magnum opus Man, Economy, and State:
For almost all actors, leisure is a consumer’s good, to be weighed in the balance against the prospect of acquiring other consumer’s goods, including possible satisfaction from the effort itself.
People will always be economizing beings who make choices between how they spend their time and where they dedicate their labor. The National Post article makes mention of this consideration among those on the dole as small business owners…
have found themselves competing with the EI system for workers who are weighing opportunity costs: Would I toil in a hard labour job for $10 an hour or not go to work for roughly the same amount of cash?
This reluctance to work was documented in a 2009 survey which found many businesses unable to hire those on the unemployment rolls:
A CFIB survey published in September, 2009, found 22% of small businesses owners had trouble hiring people who are on EI, as workers said they would rather continue collecting benefits than work in the more hands-on jobs. Another 16% said that in the past year, they had had an employee ask to be laid off so he or she could collect EI benefits (these rates were higher in Newfoundland and Prince Edward Island).
This is all a consequence of the welfare state which has institutionalized poverty instead of relieving it. The real beneficiaries of entitlement programs are not the recipients but those who maintain their positions as gatekeepers to the money. The saddening dependency of others and the government’s monopoly over coercive tax collection is what provides them a steady stream of income.
As long as the public still operates under the fallacious assumption that the state is costless, they will continue to vote themselves into destitution. Living standards will decline as productivity gains begin to taper off. A generation of the entitled will soon find themselves deserving of nothing because the real wealth producers will have long since abandoned their efforts to serve others.
Host bodies only ever have so much blood to give.
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and favoured foreign countries...
It's okay for some parasites to kill the host as long as other parasites exist? People rightfully rail against corporate handouts and banking corruption, but to use that to justify ones favored handout (in this case unemployment benefits) boggles the mind.
I have a novel idea - stop subsidizing banks, corporations, and people. How about we all fucking take care of ourselves.
Bullseye! State sponsored welfare is bad whether it is directed towards the people or businesses.
The State has crowded out the traditional form of welfare: Charity.
The Church is a stronghold of Charity.
Hundreds are fed each month and dozens each week.
I agree. Unfortunately, the Church's ability to provide has (on the whole) declined as donations have waned. This can be partially attributed to the common view that the State should provide "safety nets"; people are less likely to donate to charities when they believe people are being taken care of by Uncle Sam.
..or when Uncle Scam & the Bloodsucking Lobbies already stole their disposable income, leaving them with nothing to give.
Can anyone here actually come up with stats on the US taxpayer's cost of "extended" unemployment, beyond what the last poster correctly pointed out was paid into as premiums, (yes I am a SB employer and PayChecks bills me AND the employees for UI) benefits?
Is it as large as the corporate welfare queens?
ADM would not have made a dollar, ever, if not for fed subsidies. According to the Cato Institute (ironically founded by the oil welfare queen Koch), the U.S. federal government spent $92 billion on corporate welfare during fiscal year 2006. What about since, mainly to the banks (as if they are separate from the government) and "defense" "contractors" and Fatherland "security" http://www.economist.com/blogs/gulliver/2011/09/costs-homeland-security?
I am a licensed contractor, just not the kind that has lobbyists to 10x my revenues. Maybe I should apply for a DHS grant http://www.dhs.gov/xopnbiz/grants/
Is it as large as the corporate welfare queens?
Well, if there were 20 million unemployed collecting NYS's max $400/week, that'd be $8B per week, so over the course of 2 years it would total about what the TARP jackpot was.
Does that help?
Great points, Jumbie.
Let's see.
There is a cost for working a crew in the fair weather and letting them rest, refit and get strong over the chain season months.
I have been along with my crew able to enjoy this. My Parents hated it very much. (Until they finally hit Social Security at 65)
I used to run hard in the fair weather months to make enough over and above so I don't have to work between Late Oct and early March.
Or in the years that was not possible, ran freight in the far south. I spent 6 months at times down there in the worst of winter without seeing a snowflake or ice.
Essentially providing for my own home time. At my expense.
A worker on shit minimum wage job loaded down with the modern crap of keeping up with the joneses cannot ever realize being able to slow down and stay home during the winter.
I am a SB employer in Arizona and I don't know how it works in other states but here it is EMPLOYERS who pay into state and federal unemployment, not employees. I have to pay almost 4% on the first 7K of each employee starting January of each year and on any employee who is hired anytime during the year. It works out to about $300 per employee on average. Arizona caps the monthly unemplayment payment at $245 per week or $980 per month. Not much to live on unless you have three roomates sharing a 1 or 2 bedroom apartment.
And Atlas shrugged, also.
And you joined a cult. How quaint.
Sucker! I'm no Randian. It's just what the book was about. And you'll have to admit it was about that. In the book the "producers" gave up.
On the subject of fictional charity and the fate of men I am somewhat more bloody-minded:
http://madscienceunlimited.com/fiction/actsOfCharity.html
Just what would a man commit to in order to live another day? Read it and find out.
Rand of course got her occult schooling from the Rothschilds among others.
+1
I prefer Adam Smith as he was not a "tribe" member.
You never read any Adam Smith, you poseur.
Who wrote this???
Whats wrong with demanding your unemployment when you become unemployed? I pay for car insurance, and if my car gets wrecked, I demand that the insurance policy fixes or replaces my car! So she used it to figure out what to do with herself. BFD! Shes now back on her feet and paying taxes again.
Now, I do have trouble with the leeches out there, who never worked a day in their life, popping out babies by the boatload while getting plastic surgery for her ugly mug ala Octomom, and I have to pay for that????? I have to pay for some politician to make hundreds or thousands of dollars a year so they can cut backdoor deals to their their cronies, so they can promise worthless unions more funding and legislation in their favor, and take bribes from them and other special interest groups, so they can pay some department to run shrimp on a treadmill to see if they perform less when their ill, so we can watch as billions of hard earned dollars are spent on colossal scams like Solyndra????
GMAFB!
I have an entitlement program for you:
I, and everyone else who works their ass off is entitled to better than that.
I think the author may have failed to distinguish between time-limited UI of old and the newer paid-4-life version. The latter is proving to be somewhat corrosive, to say the least.
The time limits of old 26 weeks was based on a healthy and certain amount of cutting off the deadwood.
If you could not find work in 26 weeks, you literally saved what was left and scheduled a trip out of state to find or take on new work.
Some Immigrants cross whole oceans to get work and a new life.
I suppose it is possible to go to each of the 50 states, work until you make sufficient gross to get Unemployment and then sit 6 months planning your next.
50 years....
will your car insurance pay you more than the value of your car regardless of what you paid in
No. But it wont buy free cars to people who didnt pay in.
What is wrong with saving your own money for the times you are unemployed? Why do you buy the premise that the government is better at it than individuals?
Absolutely nothing wrong with saving your own money for unemployment!
Oh how I Wish! The government will never let that happen,
I could've saved that portion of my taxes myself. Id sock it away alright, but not in fiat currency.
Right. The problem is the forced payment (robbery)
That depends.
It is easier to toss you a couple thousand for a shit ca5r and tell you, THANK YOU!
Oh by the way the new policy is going to cost you.
Another wreck? so solly, no policy for you.
If there is a wreck, forget the fucking car, watch out for the tens of thousands in trauma/ER billing you are about to receive.
exactly, just like using your insurance and your premiums going up, so is the labor market. Nobody wants to hire somebody that uses insurance.
Because poor houses were so much better! More drivel!
By the way since everyone who works in Canada pays into EI, it is not so much the government giving free money as it is you getting back some of what you paid and or some of what others paid.
Oh and by the way, since Canada has a more generous system you would expect Canada to have a higher unemployment rate than the US .... BUT .. it is in fact LOWER. Heads explode!
Canadians still have a bit of the work ethic, plus the tattered remains of an economy.
I guess it's easier to get a job when there ARE SOME.
Those were called Rooming Houses back in the day. The good ones had a bus show up to take people into the City to work.
The bad ones had needles in the staircases and police 24/7 with easily audible disturbances at all hours.
You know... I had a room mate who concealed a credit card life style because he could not afford his rent. (His monthly payment was half his salary while my half was less than 12%...)
As soon I found out the issue, I canceled the lease and told the roommate that he is free to go to school and build a life.
To this day, he has done precisely that and raise a family to boot. Outstanding.
Now if I stayed and gotten married there.... I would not be very interested in the world beyond 1000 loud neighbors knocking on your door at all hours and stealing your clothes in the common laundry down below.
Interesting thing about Canadian employment rates... me thinks they "cook the books" just like the US..... ever try to find the "non seasonal" adjusted "raw data"???? If you can find let me know! It would be great if Biderman would cover Canada!
Also, is it possible that Canada is doing a little printing and QE on the side????
That generous system is getting ready to experience some real world pain, it will be interesting to see how resilient it is.
Well, some 14 year olds started working for tips in Windsor once upon a time...
Pretty damn good...
Cashed in a 60K retirement account and paid the tax penalty. Went into sciences got a two year degree. At the end of two years of employment, we were faxing documents to India, Tata Consulting Services.
You bet I drew unemployment, the big $300 per week, and when my UI Office asked me to volunteer, i said NO. Republican tax cuts are in place. Calling Republicnas liars is all I'm going to do, and that goes in my UI Office folder. Never stopped receiving UI benefits.
Cashed out of stocks and other 401K related stuff.
Paid off our home and debts at the time.
Suddenly we found ourselves taking in more than what was paid each month. Therefore two or three jobs were no longer necessary but a luxury.
i can say this with a lot of certainty: the mobility of capital compared to that of labor will forever require the need for some type of social insurance, paid for by someone else.
in good times, it's easy to pay for. when a lot of people are out of work, it's expensive. i'll say it, we all need to chip in during good times and bad.
In theory, another option is to restore the traditional relationship: if labor is MORE mobile than capital, people go where the earning potential is.
That's how things worked until the 20th century.
i wish i could give this thousands of ^s.
i yearn for the days when it took the same amount of time for a chest of gold coins as it took a bunch of adventurers on the same boat to go across the ocean!
I dont long for the time where cities smelled like shit and the average life span was early fifties at best
well we're talking about a 400 year time window. what about like, 1776? fresh (LOCALLY SOURCED) meats and vegetables. muskets. pirates. beer wenches. ales. pubs. dark corners of pubs discussing revolutions with beer wenches. sounds like fun mayng.
Yeah an unspoiled continent full of horny native wenches and good food? Ok count me in
As long you were able to have a coach gun or a weapon to take down the robbers laying in wait for you at choke points on your trail.
The rest simply grovel for what is about to be taken from them anyway.
I know, you just advocate for the policies of that time.
There's a disconnect there you haven't quite snapped to, yet.
implying mercantalism is different than capitalism. /fail
Lol life spans improved and shit was taken off the streets long before we had welfare and unemployment insurance
Basic point of simple truth, fuckin' deal with it:
LIFE SPANS IMPROVED IN THE 20TH CENTURY, MOSTLY BECAUSE OF ANTIBIOTICS.
That said...
It would be EASY to give up 20th century quality of life. If that's the kind of thing you'd be psyched for, by all means let's hear the plan.
It's not at all that we can't eliminate most transfer payments and dramatically shrink government and all kinds of good stuff you want done.
It's just that we can't do it by being fucking idiots using stupid examples and bad metaphors.
Antibiotics are approaching technical failure because the docs dole em out too much. Check the CDC website.
As far as life, I rather have 45 years under my own will and power than another 45 years on the fucking IV being tossed about by a young adult stuck in a nursing home because he or she was told it was either that or jail.
I already know where I will die. Right here at home under Hospice if that time comes. I have no illusions about living a long life. I already been there done that.
Now the women... whoo eee... where are them babes at?
Actually the Captain and owners got the lions share.
The sailors got what was left, and it was usually sufficient to cause a city of women to tear blankets on a cradle within a year.
it bears repeating because so many fail to get it: government cannot redistribute wealth that society fails to produce.
This logic reminds me of where everyone chips in $5 a week at work and every week, one person gets all the money...eventually, it will be my turn too. Problem is, why wouldn't I just save my own money each week? Because it's hard?
I'll agree with you when I have the option to opt out of my UI tax.
How much weight to I have to pack on to get me one of them free goverment scooters?
It's not free and it's for Medicaid and Medicare.
Don't pack on obesity for it's sake.
Stay trim and fit so that you may be able to flee those who wish to chop you up and fight those who wish to blow you away without suffering a stroke, MI or something else...
Cardboard City Bitchez.
And a bit of thompson multisurface water seal, plus a climate supportive of 60-70 degrees all year.
Now that is Eden.
Either that or pick out a high spot on a mall roof or a shopping strip that vents warm air in the winter or blows cold in summer.
"Why be productive and take of yourself when someone else picks up the tab? This isn’t a cold hearted question but a basic recognition that in most cases, leisure and immediate pleasure are preferred to delayed satisfaction."
...is the author referring to the banks and their worthless derivatives?...that's what comes to my mind...and these types of articles never mention how central banks will ruin a nation's currency to the point where everyone has to work just to maintain the "lifestyle" that they once had 20 years ago...i've read these types of articles so many times...they come and go like bowel movements...just a bunch of waste.
Poverty sucks if you have to get up and work for it, but if you dont have to work, have no responsibilities and can enjoy free or cheap leisure activities it is great
Many peoPle would love to live in the kind of poverty we have in the usa.
...and they're coming across the border and signing up for that poverty as we speak.
Yeah, it's the high life for sure unemployment is. Make less than $15k a year and you're doing better than Romney. Too bad the Holy Free Market can't create jobs to absorb these people who where thrown out of work. Better off to paint every laid off worker as a Welfare Queen huh?
I suppose some wish Unemployment, SS, Medicare, minimum wage and any other social safety net were gone. That way, all these wonderfully desperate hoards can bid DOWN wages while vying for the few jobs available.
"I suppose some wish Unemployment, SS, Medicare, minimum wage and any other social safety net were gone. That way, all these wonderfully desperate hoards can bid DOWN wages while vying for the few jobs available."
Bingo. And don't forget the elite love those who will degrade and prostitute themselves for money. It's part of the power game, kind of like Conrad Murphy who loves to tell people to suck it. The pool of those willing to do anything for money gets a lot larger when you crash an economy, doesn't it.
UI, SS, Medicare, minimum wage, corporate welfare, Medicaid, federal reserve, foreign aid, and on and on -- end it all. The govt shouldn't be a charity to people, countries, banks or other countries.
BINGO.
Stop maintaining armed forces in well developed European nations for one.
Iraq was good for one thing, moving a Corps out of Germany over the Alps into Turkey and then by ship to the Kuwait.
Now if we can get the rest of it that is not necessary to protect Ramistien etc that will be great.
Hell Europe is full of unemployed youths fighting immigration on a epic scale from Arab lands...
It's gonna blow.
Nothing more satisfying than turning away job applicants who have been mooching unemployment for 2 years and are now desperately seeking work since the teat got pulled away. Go ask Uncle Barry for more Obamabucks loser!
I dont get any extra joy turning them away, but someone with an entitlement attitude who games the system is not the type of employee I look for
So you don't hire average normal people then?
I look for obsessive moralistic types lol
Also first generation immigrants who still have traditional values
I don't care for the moocher who managed to get a Escalade, 50K jordan shoes or have a full equipped cell plus 6 babies or 5 cases of beer.
Burn em.
Now if someone came in wanting work for a reason and is motivated by something other than money, sure.
yeah sure, like you run or own a company..bullshit.. Those of us that actually do, would never say something so stupid.
I'd be happy to send the lazy bums your way. After I get done negotiating wages with them, only to turn them down, they'll be ready to accept any work you have.
"It says here you want $23/hr. I'm prepared to offer $8.25/hr. I know it's not much, but there's 600 people in line behind you, and if you don't want it, one of them will. In fact, I'm sure there's a motivated, hungry graduate somewhere in this stack who isn't rusty, lazy, and out of shape. Hit the road Welfare Queen!"
What's your HR contact info? I'll get some custom made boots just for interviews that have the info molded into the soles, so when I kick the degenerates out the door, they'll have it imprinted on their ass. Then, when they're sulking over the EBT-purchased filet mignon and pommes frites, they can hit you up on their Obama phone.
http://obamaphone.net/
What large company do you work for? I would bet good money you are a mid-management douche. You do very little all day. You interview people, you fill out forms, you gossip. You bitch about the non-productive as you go to lunch and have martinis. Soon, your job will go away and then you will blame everyone but yourself. You blame the non-productive class as you produce.. nothing.
You sure spend a lot of time commenting on ZH. Maybe you own the company at which Conrad produces nothing.
I started posting tonight after 7, after I got home from my own business. I occasionally take a break during the day (from my own business) and look at ZH.
You? Do you produce ... anythying? Or just bitch because you would rather blame everyone else for your shortcomings.
Take a break from posting and go kick your dog...if it didn't run away already.
Tell me about your productive business, Rander.
Independently wealthy; parlayed a significant sum from faking an injury at government job, then hitting a Lotto. Invested most of it with GS; now just traveling here and there, taking time out to bury some coins and post on ZH. I feel I earned my money just like you.
Okay, I promise I'll read the whole thing but first stop was
"other peoples money"
So, who are these other people? Are they the banksters and corporate interests who are looting our crony capitalistic economy? Maybe we SHOULD make better use of our resources and get it out of their hands!
Maybe somebody should stop punching a keyboard to make binary deposits out of nothing into the banking system that does not know or care where the binary came from other than the mandated tags that must follow VA, SS and other protected from garnishment income.
And what of corporate welfare? How about letting bad business models fail and stop socializing PRIVATE losses motherfuckers? < crickets >
FYI- get it right it is called FASCISM and the only way out is bloody, fucking bring it.
See the key is to take the limited resources and make them work most efficiently.
For instance, in health care, you take out Big Pharma's extra big bite (compared to every other country), Corporate health care's inefficiency, and insurance's uselessness. You end up being able to spread the limited resources in a much more efficient way.
Yes, "the key is to take the limited resources..."
Those limited resources do not belong to you. They are not yours to take, Philllip Dru.
F*ck me.. what is this nonsensical dribble. Did you read this before you posted it Tyler? Seriously?
Random comments from random news paper are a superb basis for analysis.
'Noted economist says liberals make people murderers and drug fiends' WTF... Noted astronomer says aliens are real, ergo, they're real.
James Miller, you're mildly retarded. Stop pretending to be a thinker.
Actually we used to call those "Trainable." They were trained to stop Masturbating because it is not discreet or healthy.
Eventually they descend a spiral into madness and drug induced state of zombie.
Hell, some people don't display mental retardation until a certain amount of the right stressors are put on them.
Come on Thunder, cut Miller some slack. He's a producer, don't you know. A producer. You know, like reports. And opinion pieces. Long ones, too. Some are even bound. That's class. Spends his day suffering under such burdens as font choice and whether to bullet point or not. Have some empathy. Integral to the continued functioning of society, he is. And if those liberals in government don't stop stealing his production and using it to create murderers and drug fiends, he's going to scamper off to Galt's Gulch where he can produce his reports and opinion pieces without the liberals stealing his hard earned wealth. That'll show the rest of us. We'll be sorry.
There is no unemployment issue in America, its an expectations issue, and an "Entittlement" issue. In Amerika you are entitled to an Iphone, a home you cant afford, a big screen TV with 200 channels, 2 cars and a vacation..... I should be able to have all of that with no skills, degree, or ambitition, is the amerikan way today.....
There are plenty of $10 an hour unskilled jobs out there, and plenty of art history / Psych majors to fill them.... When and only when they get hungry will people do work that is beneath them, only when sufficient numbers of folks are in these position, will the ambitious ones rekindle begin learning marketable skills, and starting meaningful businesses. This is the purge Amerika must go through, and until we do there is no hope.
There are plenty of $10 an hour unskilled jobs out there...
Yeah, just nowhere near enough for all America's unskilled workers.
And the 30 temps you need is no where enough to satisfy the 700 applicants about taking up all your time.
You would have to hire someone to manage the applicants while choosing the lucky 30.
Hell, I have seen Temp companies furnish crews that have very low mental ability. They think simple tasks like opening a door on command a great honor, back pain notwithstanding.
The Dream of the Business Ownwer...hunger motivating people to Work For Less.
As if there is something wrong with expecting people to be responsible for earning their own food?
Go away, says the ant to the grasshopper
Amazing you get junked for that, but I guess the NATO riots let out early today. Lots of OWS trash on here today.
Lol its all in fun
.
Best thing you've said all day.
And they will learn to band together to strip a city or neighborhood near you bare of all consumables and anything of value.
I once spotted some old time farm equiptment. Nice strong heavy steel that will take two men half a day to transport to the scrap yard.
Turned over the pricetag and realized that the owners of the shop were two steps ahead and priced it well above any scrap income.
Ms. Somerton’s story is a useful example of how helping out the unemployed can lead to increased economic activity. Most people I know who are laid off are having a hard time replacing their old level of salary. Unemployment benefits certainly don't make up for the lost wages. Its a huge hit for many, especially when they are paying a mortgage and raising a family. But if it makes you sleep better thinking of them as fat, lazy slobs, unwilling to take the McJob, I guess you've got that.
You at least got the unwilling to take the mcjob part right. And why should they if they can take money from others with out having to work for it?
OK, here's a solution. Unemployed people should be required to take SOME job within some period of time. If that job paid less than their old one, then they would receive unemployment benefits based on the DIFFERENCE for some period of time. This would save billions of taxpayer money, get people off their ass, and help (I repeat, help) get this fucked up country/economy back in gear. It's a start. Does anyone out there have a better idea?
It does already work like that in most places. If you take a job that pays less than your UI, they subtract what you earned from the UI payout.
A minor problem is that the deducted amount is based on gross, not net. So if you get $400/week from UI, and take a job paying $8/hr, your UI payout drops to $80. You may only actually receive about $240 after the various taxes, not counting the stuff like health insurance.
$240 + $80 = $320, which is less than the initial $400. (To be really specific, I should add that you can optionally have 10% toward taxes withheld from your UI payout, or you can request the full amount. Guess which most people do.)
Also, given that it usually requires some kind of expenditure to go to work, that's additional "loss" as calculated by the potential worker.
People wouldn't stay unemployed if it weren't the best economic option. If you want people to behave like rational consumers, you have to game out the "rational" choices when you construct policy. These things are really not difficult to figure out.
Hmm. "Unemployed people should be required to take some job..." And if they refuse, how should we proceed?
No need for freedom of choice in the new economy! [/sarc]
You already have that. Most everywhere.
The issue is the cash you take in is less than the amount you must report.
You get shafted either way.
If you are not living within your means you will need to reconsider what you are doing with your short life.
It can be tough to find a job when you are competing with people for a job at Subway who have culinary arts degrees.
This article is way too rhetorical and small business owner biased. Most small business owners are lazy, greedy fucking pricks that have prospered by arbitraging cheap labor in a world of 7 billion people.
Lol you dont know many small business owners do ypu?
I've made several of them millionaires many times over.
I will never get a blister anywhere on my body because I have humongous callouses from laboring for the past 31 years.
I ain't the baddest motherfucker but I'll do till he gets here.
You wouldn't believe what I did just today for the paltriest of wages. I humped about 75 150lb doors into some dumpsters,(some of them very nice 4-0-7-0 mahogony solid wood core) loaded some extremely heavy stainless steel equipment onto some trailers that normally requires millwrights,(so some crony could cash in on the scrap metal price) swept up several hundred pounds of black dust and some more shit you probably think I should have done for my measly $120 per day wage.
Look in the mirror pal, 31 years of grunt labour, who you gonna blame but yourself?
Unless you're not complaining, then good on you!
yep all of them should be millionaires because they sit in their little offices and made the right phone calls.
It's hard working AT subway when the Owners are Indian and alternate between beautiful displays of tantric affection and truly fearsome displays of temper at the smallest of health violations...
Those knives look big...
And we all know comprehending the broken and butchered english mixed with street hindu or whatever is a bitch to understand.
I'm all for coercive tax collection of the banksters and other corporate piggies. Those whose profits come at the expense of small local businesses. The way we use the taxes needs to be completely overhauled. Crony capitalistic ties that suck out the resources need to be cut so we can address needs more efficiently.
So tired of the big global corporatists writing shit like this to stir up the little guys, trying to get the little guys to fight their fight. Its propaganda.
as the joker said to the thief
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0fUoqy7y_0c
The planet has over 7billion humans, not all will accept charity much less the depravity of the state.
And quite a few buy and sell caves for 60K in China. Or simply wait until the old ones die off and inherit same.
Caving is not so bad. If you are on good ground and facing east away from the rains.
The proper understanding of government is that it is parasitical in nature. I disagree, slightly. Most parasites evolved to be nuisances but not so debilitate the host that they kill it. A bad government is more like a malignant cancer. It will grow, metastasize, and spread throughout the body until it kills the host.
I think the article was espousing the Austrian view that governments must rely on taxation rather than production to have means to spend...hence the parasite metaphor.
Uneployment runs from about 265 to 384 a week depending on the state. With a girl friend on food stamps and medicare for the kids and "temporary" rental assistance or a section eight voucher and a free cell phone I'm sure it's a breeze- at least for 99 weeks. At the 52 week mark you have to fall down the steps of the trailor to get the windfall disability filing in gear. It's tough for me to blame anyone for taking advantage of a system gone haywire. Why it is a surprise to anyone making policy is what I find ridiculous.
The people making policy never shop at walmart. They live in economically segrwgated communities and stay away from impoverished areas. They have no idea the incentives they have created because they have never actually known a low ses person
That is true.
The State works to insulate those who were elevated to power by making sure the unwashed masses are kept away.
Well, well, this article sure didn't persuade many to regard the unemployed as Scum of the Earth. Try again next time.
Amazing the way people just got so damn lazy since the start of the Great Recession. Back before the economy collapsed in 2008 people were working really hard and there was less than 5 percent unemployment. Very few lazy scroungers getting unemployment benefit.
But then BANG as soon as the economy cratered everyone got lazy and the unemployment rates shot up above 10 percent and millions more people starting relying on unemployment insurance to get by.
It's really uncanny - almost like there is some sort of weird connection between how the economy is doing and how many are unemployed and reliant on welfare to live.
But of course we know that ain't true - pure co-incidence! From 2008 on folks just decided to quit their jobs and stay at home watching TV. I call it the 'laziness cycle' which seems to fluctuate over the years. Someone should look into what causes this - probably diet or something.
All I know is we need to make these god-damn, no count, pinko-punko lay-abouts pay for their laziness. Abolish all unemployment benefits right now - that way these folks would've stayed in the work force in the first place. Right?
When Obama signed the health care bill which included a suntan tax for the salons, the sun rose the next day showing all suntan places closed and about 50 newly unemployed persons.
The states without taxes are starting to look pretty good by now.
Wow - that's a really good point. Explains all our problems. Goddamn suntan tax. You are a genius.
Study that tree...there's no forest here.
Or a person could be responsible for one's self and save for such an occurrence rather than depending on money from the State - which has been forcibly taken from other individuals. What would you do with the extra 6%+ each paycheck - save it or spend it?
Abolish transfers from the productive to the unproductive. Have some accountability for one's self.
Transfer payments are universally bad for everyone (on the whole and in the long run).
and Plumplechook gets the sarc/ award of the day!
"What is often neglected is what the pilfered funds could have been used for if left in the necessarily more prudent non-public sector."
I assume that he's referring to the incredibly "more prudent" financial sector of the economy?
My problem is the article knocks the people racing to the bottom who have been laid off en masse from higher paying jobs to much lower paying jobs that are not necessarily available to them. 99 weeks UE is no longer available for one thing--they go by a States UE rate to determine if you are eligible for an extension. Since the gov is lying about the UE rate no one qualifies for an extension anymore. It would be too inflationary what with the need to QE other government spending like student aid for dumb fuck Mises Institute students.
The article is not knocking people at the bottom it is discussing human nature.
I make a comfortable living but i would be the first one to maximize my unemployment and try to get a disability check if the alternative was a low paying shitty job with no health insurance
We mustnt incentivize non productivity
The article is not knocking people at the bottom it is discussing human nature.
I think the human nature of labor has been belabored a bit too much...
I actually agree with Austrian economics from an intellectual perspective but from a pragmatic perspective it falls on it's face. We can't force what we think, "how it should be" on people who have to deal with how it is.
The Libertarians aren't going to shut up until their ideology is instituted. Lucky for them, their constant bickering about people "taking" other's people money, falls right into the Global elite's new mission of Austerity, to pay for the trillions looted from Government coffers, so they just might finally get their way.
Lets cut all programs. Health, education, police, MILITARY (a huge welfare system), and all of it. Then let's cut all the rich people's taxes to ZERO, so they don't leave the country and continue providing Americans all those choice jobs. Let's give Libertarians the reigns.
US citizens will never cut military programs save through coercion.
A military force is way too vital when you run a business in extorting the weak, farming the poor.
B U L L S H I T!
In general, I agree with the post.
But I must say, the smart ones take advantage of the manna while it flows. The poor and those without connections trudge off to work everyday in a collapsing system.
Yes, all of you healthy adults who are still working, you are the "patsies." The welfare queen with section 8 and food stamps, the elderly in their nursing homes and hospitals, the banksters who leech off everyone, they are the winners, the evolutionary successes. And if you can't join them, you were pretty much born to the wrong people.
Maybe you were born to a particular ethnic group, and you can't claim minority privilege and get some lawyers to do a shake down. Maybe you were born to parents who taught you the value of hard work and honesty (how's that turning out?). Maybe you were born to a family with only modest savings and aren't a corporate or banking heir. Maybe you struggled to get a degree from a large state school, and you didn't get an all expense paid trip through Harvard which would have landed you a desk job at some DC bureaucracy or NYC bank.
In any event, you are the American sucker. Learn that lesson, learn it well.
And that is why the european periphery is slowly going Galt little by little. The USA will join them soon. When you have to be a fool to get up in the morning to work then only fools will have a job and the rest of us will contentedly wait for the collapse to cleanse the system. I may go full Galt at some point but right now I am content to galt the system in small ways
Sooo, like if a Austrian Libertarian pays car insurance, and has a car wreck, and he has a choice of getting a $10,000 check to go get his Beemer fixed, or he can get his brother in law who owns a body shop to fix it for $1,500. . . does anybody think the Austrian Libertarian isn't going to take the 10 g and then pay his relative $1,500 to fix the car???
Same thing as people riding unemployment when they get the chance. The employers pay a teeny fee on each employee to cover unemployment, and if you are fired thru no fault of your own, then you get to collect for a fixed period of time. This used to be about 6 months until the GFC. However, for most people, the benefits are not enough to pay the bills. In one state, the max you get is just a little over $200 a month. Plus, this is taxable income for federal taxes.
Geesh, these things the Libertarians find to bitch about.
Squeeky Fromm, Girl Reporter
I don't have the family to fix so I take the 10K, bank it and pick up a used vehicle to replace it.
At some point I will spend a percentage after a year or two of payments to pay off the loan.
What is left in the bank becomes silver or savings against breakdowns.
What a bunch of anecdotal drivel. I remember the days before there was UI in Canada (it started in 1972 or so because of persistenly high unemployment rates [4%], not hte other way around), and far from having a salutary influence on people who lost their jobs (because their company went bankrupt, etc), it destroyed families. You cannot get by without money in a modern city. All these little theories about how to get people motivated.
In the thirties everybody talked about what was wrong with the poor and the unemployed. In the forties and fifties all of these same people suddenly became hard-working citizens. Do you think morality improved, or was it the economy?
I've never met a happily unemployed person. Met lots of lazy people with jobs, both in the public and the private sector. Does this signify that having a steay job makes people lazy? Of course not.
I invite any of these complainers to trade places with one of these unemployed people and start living the life of free leisure they're so jealous of. No takers ? Applying for jobs is terrible for people without choices, and I'm glad I've never had to (they came to me).
The unemployed part is really tough. They are all stressed and unhappy during the transition from unemployment to that first disability check
Once you have been on disability a few years and figured out all the angles I have never seen a single person give it up.
It must be really terrible system if out of the hundreds I have seen and treated not a single one has given up their free health insurance and government checks and subsidies to go back to work.
Unfuckable common sense! You should write articles instead of these emotionally disturbed sociopaths.
+1000. The problem is that it's MF like that that have access to the printing press and the media. The same people that write blogs here appear on CNBC.
GTFO. Zero Hedge is the anti CNBC.
Don't bring anything that looks like common sense to a religious discussion, you mind fuck both sides.
If gvt is a parasite then why not the slaves that live under it?
maybe those who call out the parasite should get off their lazy azz and do something to rid them of the parasite and then see if the people would follow.
The facts tell a different story. Less than 50% of all unemployed are collecting or are eligible for benefits. In some states the % of unemployed collecting benefits is less than 30%. Many employers, especially in construction and smaller firms, can simply argue the process and delay benefits for months. Millions who work temp jobs, under the table gigs and the self employed can't collect benefits. While some do take advantage of unemployment, anecdotal stories and fact challenged reports simply show that most have no clue about unemployment. The average unemployment benefit on the low end is in MS at about $195 a week and on the high end in MA about $425. NY highest benefit has been $405 for years.
50% of college grads are unemployed or underemployed and not eligible for benefits, since they haven’t worked. The maximum number of weeks that someone laid off now can collect is between 60 and 79 weeks. In September the max will be 73.
According to the BLS: In March 2012, there were 3.7 million job openings, which was 71 percent higher than the series low in July 2009. The level was still well below the 4.7 million openings at the peak in March 2007. 3.7 million jobs for 13 million unemployed, 8 million underemployed who want full time work, and 2 million discouraged workers. 24 million unemployed/underemployed and 3.7 million jobs. And who knows how many of those 3.7 million jobs are part-time jobs. Sure, some unemployed milk the system, but there is little evidence that the vast majority are doing so.
True
Arguing over UI is just a fun distraction
The real problem is the military parasite sucking the life out of us and unfunded future healthcare liabilities
Facts?!! We don't wanna hear facts! We just want our prejudices confirmed about lazy unemployed slobs milking the system. Spare us your statisctics - we'd rather listen to unsubstantiated anecdotes about unemployed living high-on-the-hog. Enough of all this banker and oligarch bashing - its time to blame the victims!!
The number of people I have encountered who have lost there job in the UK, only to find they are better off on welfare and don't understand how this is possible and have a real sense of bewilderment - people who had work and want to work and cannot understand how work is no longer worth it because it pays so little compared with a life on welfare. One of the new Governments policies to cap maximum welfare at £26k per house hold (thats about £39K before tax, 1.5 time average national wage give or take) and yet this is a "contraversial" welfare restriction.
The idea this has no detrimental effect on jobs or the economy is clearly deluded. We should have a safty net, but it should incentivise work. What we have is a ponzi scheme where decreasing number of tax captives have to pay more and more for those who can't or wont work.
HANG YOUR HEAD IN SHAME GORDON BROWN. I CHALLENGE YOU TO COME ON TO THE ZERO HEDGE BLOG AND EXPLAIN YOURSELF
I'd like to sign up for citizenship at the UK please.
Are you a muslim with 4 wives and 12 dependent children? Right this way, sir. We have some wonderful townhomes we'd like to show you.
Religion is not the opiate of the people. Unemployment insurance, food stamps, free health care; free social benefits are the true opiates of the people.
Stopped reading after "universal laws", sorry bud econmics doesn't have laws, it has theories.
Jesus Christ needs to appear after a huge lightning bolt right on the fucking White House's front door step and just whip some fucking ass! Have you ever thought about how fucking pathetic the US really is?
I don't know about that. The locusts and blood in the water is a bitch long before that happens.
Then go get a job you lazy sack of S.
Anyone see ODB (RIP) on MTV collecting unemployment/foodstamps while home in NYC between tour stops with Wu-Tang?Dont hate the playa.
Hate the playas and their game.