Nobody says that because its a myth and couldn't happen. I'm sick of these conservative talking heads flat out lying to get ignorant people to become conservative.

This is from a local tv ad talking about the elections and how if we don't elect gop, we will have to pay people who say the quote.

Also another good one is the typical "washington liberals want to raise taxes" then they sow a poor looking elderly black lady talking about how she's struggling to make ends meet and doesn't want to see her taxes go up

There should have to be truth in political ads.

9/4/2010 5:47:39 PM

^ Shut your whore troll mouth.

9/4/2010 5:55:43 PM

Quote :

"Nobody says that because its a myth and couldn't happen. I'm sick of these conservative talking heads flat out lying to get ignorant people to become conservative. "

Not that anecdotes equal data, but I housed a person for a while who pretty much did just that. She turned down jobs or avoided jobs because she was getting more money from the state as an unemployed single mother than she would if she took those jobs. So she may not have quit, but she was certainly avoiding jobs and drawing unemployment instead.

9/4/2010 5:58:00 PM

I know 3 truckers doing just this... I even tried to get them a job but they're happy drawing.

9/4/2010 6:01:09 PM

If you quit, you don't get unemployment. I'd like to know which local TV political ad this is from, specifically.

You're kidding yourself if you don't think people take advantage of unemployment, though. Let's think of two scenarios: guy loses his job and there is unemployment, or guy loses his job and there isn't unemployment. In the second scenario, the guy knows that he will have to find a job - any job - to survive. He's not going to just hang out, relax, watch TV, or spend time with friends. That's not an option. If he doesn't find some kind of income quickly, he's fucked, and that knowledge is going to be an incentive to find work.

In the first scenario, the guy has a lot more breathing room, which from an economic perspective, is not a good thing. If you know that you're going to get a check each month (and believe me, I know people that have been unemployed for over a year, and they're still getting more in their unemployment check than I get in my actual check), you're not going to be fighting tooth and nail to find employment. If you know that you've got 99 weeks to find a job, you'd be stupid not to take some "vacation time."

The liberal fantasy is that everyone on unemployment is constantly looking for a job, or even looking for a job at all. Sorry guys, that's not the case. People will behave differently when there's a safety net in place. The bigger the safety net is, the less they're going to give a damn about acting responsibly.

9/4/2010 6:04:14 PM

They didnt ask to lose their job or do anything to lose their job. They didn't put theirself into this situation. Of course they should be able to relax a little during a time of high stress and they shouldn't feel pressured into job or die or else they won't do well on applications and interviews.

And yes, they do HAVE to constantly look for work or they won't get paid.

9/4/2010 6:10:40 PM

Bullshit they have to look for work. You can get audited, but all you have to do is keep a log of places you've applied to. It's not hard, and you never have to make an honest attempt to find a job if you don't want to.

9/4/2010 6:34:14 PM

If quitting and then living off of the goodwill of others works for Sarah Palin then there's no reason that conservatives in America should complain about it working for anyone else.

9/4/2010 6:49:02 PM

also ftr the idea of the "welfare queen" is a myth; people who even come close to living like that are known as frauds and get sent to prison when found out

9/4/2010 6:52:32 PM

I personally heard a woman say "Good! Imma go get my Obama money." when she lost her job last month.

9/4/2010 6:57:42 PM

Did you slap a bitch?

9/4/2010 7:08:02 PM

Quote :

"the guy has a lot more breathing room, which from an economic perspective, is not a good thing"

Not necessarily, we don't want engineer's washing dishes, it's just wasteful.

Quote :

"I know people that have been unemployed for over a year, and they're still getting more in their unemployment check than I get in my actual check"

You need to step your game up, I wouldn't even be able to pay my mortgage with an unemployment check.

Quote :

"If you know that you've got 99 weeks to find a job, you'd be stupid not to take some "vacation time.""

Or you have a real life and don't want to kill your savings.

9/4/2010 8:13:01 PM

Quote :

"I personally heard a woman say "Good! Imma go get my Obama money." when she lost her job last month. "

yah she was a teabagger.

9/4/2010 8:46:27 PM

So, did you not cover kinked budget constraints in the first semester of microeconomics or

9/4/2010 8:47:27 PM

Quote :

"You need to step your game up, I wouldn't even be able to pay my mortgage with an unemployment check."

No wonder you want the government to plan your life for you. You must be terrible at planning your own life if an unemployment check would cause you to lose your house.

9/4/2010 10:37:13 PM

not all of us have the luxury of finding places to live that are well within our means relative to the jobs we have

9/5/2010 12:08:39 AM

Since when is slumming a luxury?

9/5/2010 12:16:45 AM

I like how people structure their life around having a certain income, and when they lose their job, think they're still entitled to the same lifestyle. You're not entitled to shit, and I don't see why society should be responsible for maintaining your current standard of living.

9/5/2010 12:17:42 AM

you make an excellent point, which can also be stated as "people should live well within their means and establish a hefty emergency fund"

9/5/2010 12:57:56 AM

Quote :

"not all of us have the luxury of finding places to live that are well within our means relative to the jobs we have"

What? So you are forced to live beyond your means?

9/5/2010 3:18:19 AM

Quote :

"No wonder you want the government to plan your life for you. You must be terrible at planning your own life if an unemployment check would cause you to lose your house."

An unemployment check alone wouldn't be enough, which is why I have enough savings to cover a year's worth. Unemployment would just cover living expenses.

Quote :

"I like how people structure their life around having a certain income, and when they lose their job, think they're still entitled to the same lifestyle."

Well I don't think most people think that because it's just not true. The average unemployment check is less than $300/week, which is lower than the average income, so if they want to keep up their lifestyle, or for many, pay the bills, they'll have to dip into savings.

9/5/2010 4:16:39 AM

Somewhat related...girl I was unfortnate enough to work with got knocked up. Goes out on maternity. Company pays her insurance the entire time. Day she's supposed to come back she calls and actually says she's going to get on welfare. Btw, she's a right wing nut...lol

9/5/2010 9:33:09 AM

Quote :

"The liberal fantasy is that everyone on unemployment is constantly looking for a job, or even looking for a job at all. Sorry guys, that's not the case"

It would be stupid to expect in any sufficiently large group to everyone to do the some maximally optimal thing. Regardless, the statistics show that even in the worst downturn in 70 years people are only staying unemployed on average ~23 weeks. Thats pretty impressive when you consider just how terrible the job market is.

Quote :

"You're kidding yourself if you don't think people take advantage of unemployment, though. Let's think of two scenarios: guy loses his job and there is unemployment, or guy loses his job and there isn't unemployment. In the second scenario, the guy knows that he will have to find a job - any job - to survive. He's not going to just hang out, relax, watch TV, or spend time with friends. That's not an option. If he doesn't find some kind of income quickly, he's fucked, and that knowledge is going to be an incentive to find work."

I don't think you and other conservatives (I've seen DaBird make similar arguments) thought this through completely. We have examples from a thread on this very board where people have attempted to take gap-fill jobs only to get rejected because they are overqualified or business owners/managers are astute enough to know this person isn't going to be around long term. When vast numbers of jobs are lost, other lower paying jobs don't magically appear from thin air for these people to take.

We lived high on the hog for a decade and employers were fine being a little inefficient because they were still making profits. The downturn hit, they cut fat, and found they could do more with less now and absent true final demand, jobs just aren't opening up. I guess we should just drop unemployment altogether so people will exodus the country looking for work globally. Thats what conservatives have been pushing for 2 decades now.

9/5/2010 11:03:30 AM

Quote :

"Well I don't think most people think that because it's just not true. The average unemployment check is less than $300/week, which is lower than the average income, so if they want to keep up their lifestyle, or for many, pay the bills, they'll have to dip into savings."

I'm not talking about the average unemployment check. I'm talking about a person that was laid off from a salaried job make 120k, and now is suddenly looking at working a job for 50k or drawing unemployment. That person is going to be drawing a lot more in an unemployment check than "the average" person.

Quote :

"It would be stupid to expect in any sufficiently large group to everyone to do the some maximally optimal thing. Regardless, the statistics show that even in the worst downturn in 70 years people are only staying unemployed on average ~23 weeks. Thats pretty impressive when you consider just how terrible the job market is."

23 weeks is a pretty long time. I bet that number would be a lot smaller if there was no unemployment or minimum wage. People will do what's necessary to make ends meet. It's what the most of the world has been doing while we borrowed to consume.

Quote :

"I don't think you and other conservatives (I've seen DaBird make similar arguments) thought this through completely. We have examples from a thread on this very board where people have attempted to take gap-fill jobs only to get rejected because they are overqualified or business owners/managers are astute enough to know this person isn't going to be around long term. When vast numbers of jobs are lost, other lower paying jobs don't magically appear from thin air for these people to take. "

Yeah, I've heard the anecdotes too, I'm just not sure that I buy it. "I'm overqualified" seems like another excuse to kick back and drink a beer instead of find work.

Quote :

"We lived high on the hog for a decade and employers were fine being a little inefficient because they were still making profits. The downturn hit, they cut fat, and found they could do more with less now and absent true final demand, jobs just aren't opening up. I guess we should just drop unemployment altogether so people will exodus the country looking for work globally. Thats what conservatives have been pushing for 2 decades now."

That's what will happen. If things get bad enough here, I'll move too. The government has made this country such an uncompetitive place to run a business that eventually, we won't be talking about immigration, we'll be talking about emigration. When the government institutes price controls, like the minimum wage, or burdensome regulations, people get fired. If a corporation has to hire a few hundred compliance people, that's a few hundred productive workers that they can't hire.

I'm not suggesting that we eliminate unemployment right now and do nothing else. We need a free market overhaul of the entire system, which I realize is not possible at this time. It's not just a coincidence that jobs are leaving the country, though, it's a direct result of policy.

9/5/2010 1:16:56 PM

Looks like the policy of reducing or eliminating capital gains just encourages people to not work and be lazy, just on the other end...

9/5/2010 1:48:12 PM

^thats a poor, naive way to read that graph

9/5/2010 2:06:39 PM

SOme of the arguments in this thread are a poor, naive way to interpret unemployment.

[Edited on September 5, 2010 at 2:15 PM. Reason : ]

9/5/2010 2:14:45 PM

tbh I don't really care about the rest of the thread, just the innane bullshit you spouted after the graph

[Edited on September 5, 2010 at 2:26 PM. Reason : your to the]

9/5/2010 2:24:08 PM

moron has a habit (of late) of trying to change the subject instead of debating within the topic at hand.

[Edited on September 5, 2010 at 4:26 PM. Reason : .]

9/5/2010 4:25:39 PM

I think that's more of a product of people debating stupid policies that aren't the real problem instead of addressing the issue of the massive income-gap that is destroying the economy of this country.

9/5/2010 6:59:37 PM

Quote :

"I'm talking about a person that was laid off from a salaried job make 120k, and now is suddenly looking at working a job for 50k or drawing unemployment. That person is going to be drawing a lot more in an unemployment check than "the average" person."

No, they're both about the same in NC, $39k.

But my question would be what has reduced the value of this person's work by more than half so quickly, doesn't seem very likely.

9/5/2010 7:20:36 PM

Can i pose a related topic?

I'm really curious about the idea of under-employment instead of unemployment. With unemployment there is a disincentive to get certain jobs because if you are making more than your weekly allowance you lose your benefits but the crappy job you got in the meantime might not be enough to pay your bills. It would seem that under-employment benefits would remove this disincentive. However if there were under-employment benefits would this be an incentive for employers to cut hours and only keep people part time accepting that the government would pick up the rest? Does anyone know about how well it works in other countries?

9/5/2010 7:30:40 PM

Quote :

""I'm talking about a person that was laid off from a salaried job make 120k, and now is suddenly looking at working a job for 50k or drawing unemployment. That person is going to be drawing a lot more in an unemployment check than "the average" person.""

the max you can draw from unemployment is $500/week - i think the threshold for $500/week is $50k/year. everyone who makes over $50k/year receives the same unemployment.

9/5/2010 9:54:30 PM

You dont get unemployment if you quit






:roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll: :roll:

9/5/2010 10:35:01 PM

Do you have to pay income tax, FICA, etc. on unemployment? If you don't then $500/week to do nothing sounds pretty decent for sitting on your ass all day. If I can get a year of vacation and still make $26k tax free that makes me think maybe I should really start slacking off in the 4th quarter.

9/5/2010 11:25:28 PM

Quote :

"Do you have to pay income tax, FICA, etc. on unemployment?"

yes

also you have to actively look for work to keep your unemployment benefits

finally in case you're looking to get fired so you can collect that sweet sweet gubmint chedda, keep in mind that if you were terminated for cause you are ineligible for unemployment benefits; they're only for people who lose their jobs through no fault of their own

9/5/2010 11:47:32 PM

Well, there goes that plan. Still, $12.50 an hour for doing nothing is a pretty sweet deal.

Oh, I know all about the terminated without cause stuff and what not. I've fired people before and had to submit paperwork to corp. because the person was seeking unemployment and we were contesting it. I just didn't know about the tax part.

The "actively seeking employment" part is sort of funny. It's a pretty minimal requirement, in theory you could apply for jobs on theladders.com that you aren't even marginally qualified for and still be considered "actively seeking employment." I'm sure there's some requirement built in to try to prevent that, but I bet they'd be hard pressed to enforce it.

9/5/2010 11:54:25 PM

you remind me of the typical American who thinks we should be spending much less on foreign aid than we do and guesstimates it at 1/3 of the budget...

...only to find it's less than 1%

also rabble-rousers who both scream for a reduced social safety net and assume it's much more generous than it actually is, when ironically it became so atrophied precisely because of those rabble-rousers

9/6/2010 12:17:17 AM

Quote :

"Do you have to pay income tax, FICA, etc. on unemployment? If you don't then $500/week to do nothing sounds pretty decent for sitting on your ass all day. If I can get a year of vacation and still make $26k tax free that makes me think maybe I should really start slacking off in the 4th quarter."

You can't get unemployment when you were fired.

9/6/2010 12:31:32 AM

Quote :

"moron has a habit (of late) of trying to change the subject instead of debating within the topic at hand. "

It's all related of course. The real reason the right likes to rail against unemployment isn't actually because they believe the system is so rampantly abused that it's mostly waste, it's because they've been trained to believe that the tax system is unfair to the millionaires and billionaires and that it's poor, worthless leeches trying to game the system that use programs like unemployment.

The reality of the situation is that the string-pullers for conservative policy like the Kochs don't really care about incentives to work, or any of the other mostly meaningless buzzwords created by soft-science economists. There's no metric you can point to over the past decade or so that shows anti-poverty or safety-net programs actually being damaging.

Unemployment is a no-brainer, relatively minor expenditure. There's no reason for there to be any argument about it, yet there is, because certain gullible people have been fooled into thinking that the fact that we have unemployment has us teetering on the brink of collapse. Should we cut unemployment and pay down the debt? LOL, that will surely solve our problems now...

Just like it wouldn't make sense to raise taxes during a recession, it also doesn't make sense to cripple unemployment.

9/6/2010 1:02:07 AM

Quote :

"Unemployment is a no-brainer, relatively minor expenditure. There's no reason for there to be any argument about it, yet there is, because certain gullible people have been fooled into thinking that the fact that we have unemployment has us teetering on the brink of collapse. Should we cut unemployment and pay down the debt? LOL, that will surely solve our problems now... Just like it wouldn't make sense to raise taxes during a recession, it also doesn't make sense to cripple unemployment."

I dont disagree. I myself was a beneficiary of the system.

what a lot of us have a problem with is how it remains unfunded, is seemingly limitless for those collecting and has turned into a political pawn to be used by both Left and Right.

9/6/2010 1:17:21 AM

Quote :

"The reality of the situation is that the string-pullers for conservative policy like the Kochs don't really care about incentives to work, or any of the other mostly meaningless buzzwords created by soft-science economists. "

Just saw a discussion of Koch over on the N&O:

http://www.newsobserver.com/2010/09/05/663302/money-and-rhetoric-from-the-right.html

Quote :

"There has to be a certain irony in a group bankrolled by some of the country's wealthiest business types - people with a vested financial interest in low taxes and limp-wristed regulation - using the working man and woman's annual holiday as a springboard for its anti-government agenda. Americans for Prosperity has as a national director none other than the ubiquitous Art Pope of Raleigh, head of Variety Wholesalers (owners of Roses, Maxway, Super 10 and other bargain-oriented retail chains)."

Quote :

"And he can't be accused of having his head in the policy wonk clouds - not when he regularly pours money into Republican Party coffers, including $15,000 that helped get four conservatives elected last fall to the Wake County school board. The newcomers have thrown the school system's student assignment process into unnecessary turmoil - but it's all been in service to the greater glory of the local Republicans, who rallied their base and got more closely in touch with their inner tea partyers."

Quote :

"The Kochs have given millions of dollars to nonprofit groups that criticize environmental regulation and support lower taxes for industry"

9/6/2010 1:28:49 AM

Quote :

"what a lot of us have a problem with is how it remains unfunded, is seemingly limitless for those collecting and has turned into a political pawn to be used by both Left and Right. "

Most of our gov. us "unfunded" and has been for a while. Picking on a piddly system like unemployment is irrelevant, you're just playing into the dog-and-pony show of 2 party politics.

If you completely eliminated all federal gov. now, froze tax policy, assume tax receipts remained constant, and put all the money towards the debt, assuming this wasn't catastrophic for us, it would still take nearly 7 years to pay off the debt. The problem isn't unemployment, any 1st world country is always going to have a strong unemployment system. The problem is broader and bigger than that. We'll never find a real solution, because all the right can talk about is tax cuts for the wealthy, and the left is too caught up with appeasing certain attackers on the right, with both sides being fueled primarily by corporate interests pushing their agendas (which AREN'T in the best interest of the country) above the common American person.

9/6/2010 2:16:57 AM

I just wanted to post its good to see destroyer arguing so ardently against unemployment when he hasn't yet mastered the facts regarding the program.

Quote :

"what a lot of us have a problem with is how it remains unfunded, is seemingly limitless for those collecting and has turned into a political pawn to be used by both Left and Right."

As of August, the mean unemployed duration was 25.1 with the median being 15.5 weeks. 65.9% of the population gets off unemployment before 27 weeks. So the bulk of the folks are getting off the dole while barely using any of that government support past the initial 6 months.


This is the cool thing about the MSM. They don't need to bother with giving you this type of information because they know you're just going to ignore it anyway.

9/6/2010 9:23:46 AM

Quote :

"As of August, the mean unemployed duration was 25.1 with the median being 15.5 weeks. 65.9% of the population gets off unemployment before 27 weeks. So the bulk of the folks are getting off the dole while barely using any of that government support past the initial 6 months."

why would I ignore that? is it certainly relevant and encouraging.

Quote :

"Most of our gov. us "unfunded" and has been for a while. Picking on a piddly system like unemployment is irrelevant, you're just playing into the dog-and-pony show of 2 party politics."

while i agree to some extent, its not irrelevant when there is a pile of stimulus cash sitting in a pot to fund it with.

9/6/2010 12:02:43 PM

Quote :

"also you have to actively look for work to keep your unemployment benefits"

eh, yea, but who enforces this? My cousin legitimately busted his ass looking for a job after getting laid off. After a few months of applying for jobs he was actually qualified for he asked someone at the unemployment office for advice before starting to apply for shit jobs and they literally handed him a phone book and said just write something down. They're so swamped, they don't care.

[Edited on September 6, 2010 at 4:15 PM. Reason : ]

9/6/2010 4:14:17 PM

Quote :

"why would I ignore that? is it certainly relevant and encouraging. "

Because I'm pretty sure I've already articulated these exact arguments in the past month or so on this board, with several of the responses tarted at you. I laid the case that anecdotally, thought experiment wise, and by the real, hard numbers, the unemployment "problem" related to abuse or similar just doesn't exist and any notions you had about it in this way are grossly misinformed. And here you are in the thread again voicing the same type of concerns. Stopped being so cognitively dissonant to new information.

9/6/2010 10:22:25 PM

Quote :

"the unemployment "problem" related to abuse or similar just doesn't exist and any notions you had about it in this way are grossly misinformed."

Impossible. This is a question of opinion, and to some people, just one person abusing the system is too many. In your opinion, the "problem" is not a problem, to them it is, and you are both logically consistent, even if you both completely agree on the facts.

9/6/2010 10:43:51 PM

The "problem" as generally described/defined by DaBird in other threads is not "one person of millions abusing the system". It's that the system is being raped by the majority and that those that get on the dole are seemingly on it forever and ever and the congress keeps enabling this. That statistics don't bear this "problem" out.

If he were to make the argument that there is a minority of folks abusing the system or who aren't interested in actually finding a job then he likely wouldn't get an argument from anyone who has looked at the numbers or heard MANY anecdotes or even strolled over to a thread in The Lounge.

As such.

9/7/2010 7:25:53 AM

Quote :

"eh, yea, but who enforces this? My cousin legitimately busted his ass looking for a job after getting laid off. After a few months of applying for jobs he was actually qualified for he asked someone at the unemployment office for advice before starting to apply for shit jobs and they literally handed him a phone book and said just write something down. They're so swamped, they don't care. "

So… the solution then is obviously to scrap the entire system?

9/7/2010 8:47:26 AM