THE BOOK--Playing The Percentages In Baseball

Monday, March 01, 2010

Unemployment insurance

Non-sports post.  Enter at your peril, as usual.  Note:  This is not one of my usual rants. It is a series of questions and comments.

I am not sure how unemployment insurance works.  I think that some or all of it comes out of a person’s paycheck.  Does the government match it (with tax money of course)?  Is the employer forced to match it?  What if you are self-employed?  Obviously I can look all of that up, but I don’t want to take the time right now.

Anyway, if I take a portion of my paycheck and set aside some money for if and when I am not working, I certainly have the right to do that.  Giving that money to the government and letting them set the rules of unemployment benefits is essentially the same thing (as socking it way for a non-working rainy day or buying private unemployment insurance).  If the government matches that money that I and/or my employer am forced to set aside or adds to the pool in any way, then it becomes partly an entitlement program, which is not necessarily bad of course.

The problem I have is this:

If we force people to set aside part of their paychecks so that they have money when they lose their jobs, while, as I said, a person can do that on their own if they want - and that’s fine if that’s what they want to do - doesn’t that hurt the country as a whole when people are not working/producing?

For example, let’s say that there was no government unemployment benefits program but everyone decided that they were going to set aside 10% of their pay for their own “unemployment” and then every 10 years, they took a year off from work.  Would that be good for our country to have 10% of our work force voluntarily not working at all times?  I don’t think so, but I am not sure.  I would think that the overall standard of living of everyone in the country would go down.

The other problem, and the one that bugs me, is that shouldn’t people who are collecting unemployment benefits from the government be forced to do something?  Clean the parks.  Volunteer at the local hospital or animal shelter.  Again, people sitting around at home doing nothing can’t possibly be good for the country, can it?  Now, one of the arguments against that is, “It is my money that I put into the unemployment benefits fund.  You can’t and should not force me to work.”

If that is the case, and I don’t know that it is (again, I don’t know how unemployment works), then the money that people put into unemployment should be less, and if someone chooses NOT to work, they should get only those benefits that they contributed (or everyone contributed as a pool) and if they want to get more - from the government - they have to do some kind of work FOR the community/country/government, or whatever you want to call it.

Now, here is the part that bugs me that REALLY bugs me. I know several people on unemployment that collect around 400 a week, I think.  THEY ALL CAN GET JOBS.  Every single one of them.  Some can even get a half-way decent job, like one that pays them 500 a week.  But ALL of them can get a job that pays minimum wage, at least.  But ALL of them say, “Why should I take a job that pays $300 a week when I can get $400 a week for doing nothing?” And some of them say, “Why should I get a job that pays $500 a week when I can do nothing and earn $400 a week?” I am appalled when I hear either of those things!

I don’t understand that.  I really don’t.  Years ago, didn’t you have to show the unemployment people that you were actively looking for a job and they made you go on interviews and things like that?  I am not aware of anyone I know collecting unemployment that has to do that.  If they have to, it must be the easiest thing in the world to get around, because, as I said, ALL of them can get jobs and don’t, until their benefits run out or they they get a really lucrative job offer.

Isn’t unemployment insurance supposed to be for people who truly lost their jobs through absolutely no fault of their own, and only until they can get a job - any job at all? And if that is the case, don’t they diligently have to pursue employment?  If all of those things are true, I would venture a guess that no more than 10% of the people on unemployment fit into that mold (lost their job through no fault of their own and cannot find another job).

Shouldn’t the system be doing something about this?

Please tell me where I am going wrong…