Excellent logic.

Thanks J and khalling!

From the perspective of the novel, do you see yourself fulfilling a non-violent reparations scheme of which Ragnar Danneskjold might approve?

Don't want to argue about your receiving benefits. Don't know if I agree with Ayn Rand's answer. How can you oppose something from which you benefit?

The only thing I was clarifying is that employees do not pay the premiums like other insurance programs. That's all. :-)

I agree. The only thing I was clarifying is that employees do not pay the premiums like other insurance programs. That's all. :-)

hear, hear

"I even meant to pay the amount back to my employer when I got a job. "
Claims don't come directly from the employer. Employers pay the tax either way and probably would prefer to see the money go to former team members.

My policy for myself is to pay all taxes and accept all benefits, even if I disagree with them.

$8,000 worth of benefits is pocket change compared to how much you've probably earned and paid taxes on since 1970. The important thing IMHO is to do what you want and not get bogged down in the monies the gov't takes from you and/or doles out to you.

I didn't want to take it, but my former employer in-
sisted. So I did. I even meant to pay the amount
back to my employer when I got a job. However, I
didn't get a job (except for a few snow-shoveling jobs in winter and one day of jury duty), and then
the unemployment ran out. And I still don't have
a job. (I'm really not used to this. Since I left
my father's house in 1970 I had never been un-
employed longer than about a week and a half,
and that was the extreme case).

If you're saying it's not as simple as one party covers 100% of the tax, I agree.

In the case of unemployment tax, the labor buyer directly pays the tax and the seller indirectly pays.

" employees make less than they could have and ARE in effect paying for the benefit that was forced upon them"
I agree with this. This is why we try to pay for things like mobile phones and the highest mileage rate allowed for car trips-- those things don't get taxes and go straight into team members' pockets.

That's great to hear you've been a HR person for several years. As such, you surely understand what was posted already - because your employer has to pay additional taxes, there is less money available to pay employees? And, by having less money available to pay employees, employees make less than they could have and ARE in effect paying for the benefit that was forced upon them?

Whatever tax the employer pays, comes out of your wages or salary. Whatever tax a seller pays, the buyer must cover.

I agree we pay into directly, but technically only employers directly pay into it. https://www.galtsgulchonline.com/post... And we all pay other taxes, so maybe it's wrong to say they didn't pay into b/c they didn't pay into this one particular program. I agree with your conclusion.

"Not in California."
Not in WI either. I pay SUTA to the state and FUTA as part of my federal Form 940 for the Unemployment system. I only am required to withhold Fed WH, State WH, Social Security, and Medicare. So employees do not pay anything directly to unemployment, although we all pay indirectly since that money could have been used to pay more or grow the business.

I think you should take every handout and every tax break you're legally entitled to. If you take a no-gov't-largess rule to an extreme, you wouldn't be able to take employment at a place that's significantly funded by gov't grants. It would be questionable to work for a company that gets significant revenue from gov't contracts.

I agree with Sarah. Take what you're entitled too , UNLESS you feel you're getting sucked into the world of benefits.

I took unemployment benefits 13 years ago, and I saw some people in the office getting sucked into jumping through gov't hoops to get benefits and feeling like that was "work".

At the time I was teaching a class for $100/week plus free grad school tuition. I was able to keep most of the benefits despite the small earned income from teaching. They said I was eligible for cards to buy gas to get to class and my PT teaching job if I went to a different office and filled out forms. I realized this crap could distract me from my classes, job, and lining up a FT job after the classes. So I said no thanks.

By your question I can tell it won't happen to you, but if you did start feeling sucked into making a career out of seeking benefits, I would say stop, not for some moral reason, but because that is stealing your precious life. Somewhere there's someone with a project/job that would exciting to you and make money for you and that person. People who milk the gov't are missing out on that.

No...if your employer wasn't required to put money into the fund then you might have been paid a higher wage...not to mention the price of the goods or services you produced may have been offered at a lower price.
Plus...if it was not used for what it was intended for then they would just piss it away anyway.

Just my thoughts on the subject. Probably not the objectivist point of view.

I would have preferred to put money aside out of my salary for that purpose and having those funds subtracted from my tax liability.

Remember: you paid into it through your taxes. And that goes double if you paid a special assessment for some "workforce development fund," or whatever the State governments call it. So you're just getting some of your own back.

Really?? Not in California. The employee pays nothing for unemployment insurance. It is all paid for by the employer the same as Federal Unemployment. I have been an HR person for several years.

Having been there, I can say that I felt no shame in doing what I had to do to feed my family while I sought a new job. I wasn't on for very long and certainly didn't make a career of it. It sure helped for a couple of weeks and I was thankful, not feeling entitled.

I understand your feelings. When I got out of the USAF, as part of out-processing we were all told to be sure to file for unemployment. As an avid reader of Rand and Heinlein since my teens, it felt 'unclean' to take unemployment. So I scurried my butt around and got a job.

Now, as an employer, I agree with Mamaemma: We bloody well pay for you to be unemployed, and I would rather you had the bucks than the gov had them.

But there is another side to the story: How many people will milk this for all it is worth and not even try to get another job? How will the statistics of unemployment be used to manage social expectations of 'the right of people to have a money from public funds forever even if they do not work'?

I know a hard-working young horse trainer down in San Diego who is bitter about the fact that one of her students is on eternal welfare due to migraines and now she wants her adult son to get on welfare so that he can afford a horse and riding lessons too!

Good luck in finding a job.

Jan

Your employer has paid into the fund on your behalf, so you should take the UI benefits, at least up to the amount they put in. Typically its like 1-5% of your wages. One could argue that your employer was forced to by insurance on your behalf up to the limits of the policy, so you should take all you can from it under the policy provisions.


Personally, I dont like to go through the hassle of it all. I save my own unemployment insurance fund that I use if I need it.

Would you not submit a medical bill to your insurance company? You paid part of that premium and so did your employer. Just because your employer covered the cost of that unemployment insurance, doesn't mean that wasn't technically your money. You own an insurance policy, and you're making a claim on it. Now, the question is different if that policy pays 6 months, but the guberment says they must pay 99 weeks and you take it.