Is Unemployment the New Welfare?

[Estrogen Hostage]

What I am saying is that we are fighting the wrong problem.  We are all Americans, we are not the enemy.  The battle is with the economy.  You should not root for one of your fellow Americans to go without a job or take a lower quality job.  This economy doesn’t provide good jobs for Americans anymore.  What we need to be is to fix the problem not plug holes with unemployment etc.
[/quote]

Why is it the economy's fault for not providing jobs. All these people have skills. In a normal economy without all this unemployment people would create their own worrk by being self employed. All of us here would love to find someone to come up and propose that we purchase a home to fix up and they do all the work for half the profit. My realtor has a similar arrangement with a guy. This guy is making about $5000/month fixing up homes with no money invested at all. He can do one in 30 days.

Others can offer their computer networking services or drafting, or any kind of technical white collar jobs at a contract rate, that is usually much higher than what they made per hour before. I just hired a draftsman for a month at a pretty good rate, especially considering I don't have to offer health care and such. He's making pretty good money too.

There's lots of work out there but you have to be willing to try to get it.

[justin0419]

There's lots of work out there but you have to be willing to try to get it.

There's the real problem.  Too many people are content to get their welfare/disability checks each month and just continue to live that way.  There's a proposal in MS now to have people on welfare volunteer so many hours each week in order to keep receiving their "entitlements."  I think it's a great idea.  I've thought for a long time that if people are getting that money, they should be cleaning up the town/county where they live or otherwise doing something productive to help society.

[Estrogen Hostage]

Why wouldn't they be happy on unemployment? I once figured that after paying 42% taxes and $375/week daycare costs I am going home with $60/day from my day job. I make good money, but could make more on unemployment because I don't need daycare.

[motivatedceo]

Man this is an old thread, but I will comment too.

As a landlord with a decent collection of lower income properties in his portfolio (sub $800 rent), I can tell you that its kind of sad seeing the amount of people abusing our social security, and other "definied benefit" systems. Particularly, poorer folks, seem to love doing it. Anyway, I have one lady renting from me - a GREAT tenant - and she gets $1400 a month in social security for her two boys "disabilities", and she works and  makes $1200 a month in "cash" for doing home health work for some old folks. She gets food stamps too. In reality she's making probably making $2600 in spendable income per month, and $3000 a month or $36000 per year if you factor in the food stamp income.

Her boys are not disabled, and are perfectly intelligent. She is probably not reporting a big chunk of her income. So her taxable income is ...  nothing, yet she makes $36k a year. Due to "credits" she probably gets more money back than she pays into the system! She's one of the 49% that actually sucks off society, than contributes to it.

And I have seen similar scenarios above repeated again, again, and again.

[Leonard Vice]

Unemployment is a never ending problem. There are people who gain jobs, and there are those who lose.

[rookieNYC]

The US job market is declining mainly because of unions. And I say this with many friends in multiple different kinds of unions. Public pension unions,municipal unions,trade unions,auto workers unions,teachers union are all hell bent on retaining their "living wage" even if it means they dismantle the business they are working for..Even if that business is the USA ...Example...I have a friend who is a stage hand carpenter..Makes some outrageous salary..Point being the company he worked for was going broke paying these union workers their "living wage" and the company faced bankruptcy because the movie companies started to get the sets built for 1/3 the money in Mexico..My thinking is if YOU were the business owner facing bankruptcy what would you do?..Continue to pay outrageously high "living wage" salaries and put your family in the streets or use non union workers and stay afloat.. And since when is a living wage $50 an hour..Meanwhile he and all his union goons are unemployed for close to 2 years...Another thing that gets me enraged is these union thugs are so quick to demonize the NON union worker and label them a scab,yet they are quick to take side work that is paid in cash and clearly non union and that is ok..

Also someone explain to me why a civil servant gets a multi million dollar pension. Example...A Nassau County NY cop retires on AVERAGE with $100k salary for LIFE after 20 years on the job.. This equates to $4million per cop...WTF?...Who here has a $4million pension...I have to laugh when I see these bozos (Occupy Wall street) protesting the 1%,meanwhile the public pension and municipal pension unions are facing a $3 TRILLION short fall..Yes that is a T...Try and correct this problem and you will see the real 1% rioting in the streets..

I often debate this issue with a friends wife who is a teacher. I have never met a more close minded,ignorant,selfish POS than a union worker trying to hold onto their entitlements. Its ridiculous...Our POTUS needs to correct this massive shortfall because its bankrupting this country.


http://www.cnbc.com/id/41129099/States_Warned_of_2_Trillion_Pensions_Shortfall

12 years ago the private sector switched from pensions to  SELF FUNDED 401k's and you didnt hear a word..Because these thug union workers are so used to strong arming their employers. I applaud Wal Mart for not going union. I might ever have my business dictated by a bunch of thugs..I hope they all remain unemployed..

In Illinois and California policemen and firemen can retire at 52 and get a huge pension. $100,000 to $125,000 per year is typical. Plus free health care. Plus social security income later.

These people have been lavished with pensions five to ten times higher than the private sector. Why should taxpayers put up with this. State bankruptcy would be a good thing. Then these pensions can be reduced.

In both states pensions will, if not already, be the main expense. When are people going to wake up? I say do away with pensions and make government employees "enjoy" a 401K like the rest of us. Citizens must demand that these extravagant pensions are rolled back. Even if bankruptcy or change of the state or federal constitution is required to do it.

Finally NOT ONE PENNY of federal money should be used to bail them out.

Do a search for San Ramon Valley fire
chief. He retired at 51 with a 284k a year pension.To top that off he went out on disability and doesn't have to pay taxes.Just for fun look up San Ramon city manager,for a city of 65k he was making 365k a year,just retired and his pension is 200k.It's criminal out here in Ca

[allagash]

sickening....ain't it?

millions of people in the private sector, (not the freeloaders...althought there are plenty of them)....who, (focusing on their specialty), get SHAFTED relative to their union counterpart riding an entitlement......

that's why I've resolved to just use my wits in both real estate and the markets.....

always grateful for what I can pick up here.....at this site.

-Mike

[rookieNYC]

Pension reform is gaining ground in Albany. I applaud Gov.Cuomo for standing up to these corrupt municipal unions. Its an economic issue and that is proven so by being brought forward from a clearly intelligent DEMOCRAT Governor. Soon these union members will have to live/save like every American. Next step is privatization and bust these unions up. They serve no purpose.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/cuomo-set-government-shutdown-pension-reform-article-1.1037756

[allagash]

re:

Albany

hope they treat me better....this time around.....

fat thumb on my part has already cost me a month in re-submission time for one project...

-Mike

[VanDyne]

For those of you talking bad about "benefits" unemployment and social security.

This is aside from those breaking the law and are fraudulently claiming unemployment insurance and social security insurance. They need to go to jail and if you know who they are and you haven't turned them in then you should go with them.

Mannnnnn more uninformed people. This is why we are in a national mess.

Let me go over unemployment and social security for those who don't take the time to educate themselves, I guess you can say for the uneducated.

Unemployment, like social security, is an insurance program. The federal gov't decided many decades ago to enter the insurance business. They felt that if they could force every working person in this country to have to pay an insurance tax ie unemployment tax your employer pays and your SSI payment you and your employer pays they would provide a policy for periods of unemployment and retirement. They also realized they wouldn't have to pay out hardly any money for social security retirement for quite awhile.

What the elected officials you voted into office decided to do is they could use the money as investment money into America. So they placed the insurance tax premiums into the General Fund instead of into the trust fund like they were suppose too. With all this new money the elected officials you voted for spent the money like a drunken sailor. (don't be insulted by that, I'm a veteran) They didn't realize that some day the investors (or the insureds) would want their money back. They realized what they had done only a decade or two ago. In reality they embezzled the money because they had no intentions of repaying or funding the trust.

Oh ya, they also forgot about the clause that promised that when the tax premiums for the unemployment and social security insurance was collected it would be placed in a trust.

So now they embezzled all the money and everyone wants to screw the insured. Oh ya you want to screw yourself out of the money you have already paid into the these two insurance programs. If a private insurance company would have done the same thing there would be lots of jail time for the executives of the insurance company.

Instead of blowing all that stimulas money on bad companies the gov't should have paid back the social security insurance fund and sent each state the money they are owed on unemployment.

We would be ten steps ahead of getting out of this economic mess.

I hope I don't have to hold an economics class to explain how refunding billions into the social security insurance fund and the unemployment insurance fund would dramatically help the economy rebound.

You see when the fed. gov't creats laws and policies affecting you and I it then becomes their liability and makes them responsible for the adverse effect.

Now I hope you are not going to say you didn't vote your elected official into office. That would mean you didn't vote. In that case you can't complain about any of this.