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Washington's Day of Reckoning!

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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby patience » Tue 03 Feb 2009, 20:51:38

RE,

What part of insurance don't you understand?
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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby ReverseEngineer » Wed 04 Feb 2009, 03:54:15

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('patience', 'R')E,

What part of insurance don't you understand?


Maybe it would be the part where Insurance companies are supposed to make a profit? Well, given the evidence of AIG, I suppose that is a fallacy in itself, but that is another discussion :-)

Anyhow, calling Unemployment "Insurance" rather than a Tax is just a nomenclature difference, its really one in the same thing.

If the Goobermint says to a Bizness, "You are REQUIRED to pay in 5% of your Profits for Insuring your workers against your firing them", this is a Tax on the business. How does that differ from saying "You are REQUIRED to pay 10% of your Profits to provide Welfare to the Perpetually Unemployed"? It only differs in how much it costs to the bizness.

Far as the Goobermint Workers who work in the Unemployment Division, they are very similar and have the same types of job classifications as Welfare Workers. You have workers assigned to investigating the cases and trying to make sure as few people as possible are eligible for receiving Bennies. Same as Insurance Company adjusters who look for every loophole possible to deny your claim if its a big one.

The money to pay for those who are not productive at any time has to come from SOMEWHERE, you can't make something from nothing despite what Helicopter Ben thinks. LOL. Call it an Insurance scheme, call it Taxation, cal it what you will but it still amounts to the same thing as long as somebody or some entity which makes money is required by law to pay part of that money back out to provide a Safety Net for the citizens. Its Taxation.

The main difference in "normal" times would be the length of time you would be eligible for such bennies, in normal times Unemployment tended to last about 26 weeks. Now it has already doubled past that to over a year in some places. Eventually of course as the number of Elgible Unemployed still unemployed after a year exceeds the amount of money being dropped into the system by the "Premium" the companies are required to pay in, this Insurance Scheme goe Belly Up, just like AIG. Its based on an actuarial analysis that looks at normal cases of Unemployment, not "Black Swan" events. Economic theory is notorious for ignoring the Black Swan events. In this case, what you have is not just one Black Swan, but a whole FLOCK of them hitting the Jet Engine of your economy at the same time. Unfortuantely, it does not appear at this time we have a Captain Sully at the stick to ditch this plane safely and get the passengers off alive.

Without the infusion of Helicopter Ben's Funny Money, the Insurance Scheme of Unemployment will go Bankrupt as quickly as every other Insurer and Bank is going Belly Up. The only question still unanswered is how long that Funny Money still buys anything, and how long there will be anything left to buy.

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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby patience » Wed 04 Feb 2009, 09:22:34

RE,

Granted. UE scheme is going belly up along with the rest. But, it has worked pretty well for around what, 70 years? Got any better ideas? For the future, yeah, each will have to provide for his own, no doubt. We have a paradigm shift here.

I take issue with calling insurance recipients bums, that's all. No convincing me otherwise. It would be fair to say that those who have not anticipated the paradigm shift should be responsible for themselves. But within the existing, albeit failing paradigm, it is not fair to put down those who worked within the rules as they stand.
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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby vision-master » Wed 04 Feb 2009, 09:29:18

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cbxer55', '
')As far as being on unemployment,
I do not like it one bit.


Probably most people on welfare, food stamps, or disability don't like it one bit either. They'd probably much rather be respected, productive members of society instead of bums of the nanny state. I know my sister, who is on disability, would much rather have her old career back, but that doesn't mean she's able to work a job anymore.
:cry:


Welfare for one:

Cash assistance = about $203 Month
Food stamps = about the same
Review every 6 Months
Asset limit $2,000
Sounds like fun, eh.
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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby Revi » Wed 04 Feb 2009, 09:40:15

Unemployment is not welfare. It's paid by the businesses for when people get layed off. It is also in real trouble in most states. They barely have the money to pay the people who are on it now, and more layoffs are coming.

Take the unemployment, because it may be the last money available.

Soon the states go broke and there won't be any unemployment.
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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby vision-master » Wed 04 Feb 2009, 09:43:33

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'U')nemployment is not welfare. It's paid by the businesses for when people get layed off. It is also in real trouble in most states. They barely have the money to pay the people who are on it now, and more layoffs are coming.

Take the unemployment, because it may be the last money available.

Soon the states go broke and there won't be any unemployment.


Employers will like that. Talk about control!
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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby MarkJ » Wed 04 Feb 2009, 10:03:12

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('vision-master', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Ludi', '')$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('cbxer55', '
')As far as being on unemployment,
I do not like it one bit.


Probably most people on welfare, food stamps, or disability don't like it one bit either. They'd probably much rather be respected, productive members of society instead of bums of the nanny state. I know my sister, who is on disability, would much rather have her old career back, but that doesn't mean she's able to work a job anymore.
:cry:


Welfare for one:

Cash assistance = about $203 Month
Food stamps = about the same
Review every 6 Months
Asset limit $2,000
Sounds like fun, eh.



$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('', '[')b]New York: Treatment of Resources

The resource limit for FA eligibility is $2,000 ($3,000 if the family has a member over age 60). The fair market value of a car up to $4,650 is excluded when counting a family’s resources, and the automobile exemption must be increased to $9,300 or a higher amount as determined by the county on a case by case basis if the vehicle is needed to seek or retain employment. Personal property necessary for business purposes, including vehicles in the name of the business, is exempt from the resource test. There is no resource test for families enrolled in CAP.

New York has an Individual Development Account (IDA) program that allows TANF families to open savings accounts that are not counted toward the TANF resource limit. IDA funds can be used for business capitalization as well as education and home purchase.



We have a $2,000 to $3,000 liquid assets limit in New York, but many assets aren't included in qualifications, or assets are sold, exhausted, transfered or hidden in order to qualify for benefits.

Single people don't qualify for as many benefits, but some families make out well, especially if they qualify for modern subsidized housing in addition to food stamps, WIC, medical care, child care, wheels-for-work, food bank supplements and other local or private forms of assistance.

Other forms of assistance like reduced priced homes, HEAP, Emergency Heap, winterization/weatherization, furnace/boiler service/repair/replacement, subsidized home improvements etc have income limits that are relatively high.

We hear the most complaints from single people in need since they don't qualify for the housing and benefits larger households receive.

We have some pretty decent subsidized housing, but you have to have kids or special needs to qualify.
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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby Ludi » Wed 04 Feb 2009, 11:18:54

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('Revi', 'U')nemployment is not welfare.


Sure it is - it's insurance, same as food stamps, disability, social security, etc. Welfare is insurance for people who aren't working. Unemployment is insurance for people who aren't working.
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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby ReverseEngineer » Wed 04 Feb 2009, 18:08:17

$this->bbcode_second_pass_quote('patience', '
')Your characterizing unemployment recipients as welfare bums is FAR from being accurate, or deserved.


I didn't label anyone a "bum". I just pointed out that Unemployment and Welfare are fundamentally equivalent, differing only really in how long you generally are eligible to collect. Somebody else (you perhaps?) used the word "Bum" associated with Welfare recipients, and so by extension you now assume I think Unemployment recipients are bums? I suggest a reread of what I wrote.

Folks stuck down there in the long term cycle of poverty have been so thoroughly reviled for so long, "Bums" and "Welfare" are nearly synonymous. I have never met however a "lazy bum" on welfare who would not have traded it for a good well paying job. Certainly a few who would trade it for slave wage jobs where you work 2 jobs and don't live any better than on the dole, but not for good paying jobs.

So now you have it that the good paying jobs, in fact about all jobs are disappearing, and so now ALL people are "Bums". Because unless the Goobermint puts all the unemployed on Welfare until the economy can be in some way rebooted, you will have something worse than Bums, you'll have Zombies. People stealing and killing just to get food. Thus you see the reason Communism emerged in Russia at the end of the Romanoff Dynasty. Starving people collectivized the farms to distribute out the food evenly when nobody had any money. This will happen in a similar way here, Agribusinesses will be Nationalized and the produce distributed out to the Bums with Food Stamps. That is a short term fix that will keep people fed maybe a couple of years. How well any collectivization scheme works scaled up to such a large society is open to question, we all of course are familiar with the failings of the Ruskie system under Communism, though one could blame that on corrupt management just as one could pin the blame for the failure of Capitalism on bad management.

In any event, it is a form of Justice here that the very people who for so long reviled the Bums on Welfare have now themselves been turned into Bums on Welfare. Unfortunately for them, they got on the Welfare gravy train just as its running out, and chances are they won't be able to collect it as long as those left perpetually in poverty have been. However, regardless of your personal ideology and whether it makes you a hypocrite or not, it would of course be foolish NOT to take the money while its available, whether you want to call it Unemployment Insurance or Welfare. Just a nomenclature difference and duration difference, in principle though one in the same things.

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Re: Washington's Day of Reckoning!

Unread postby dohboi » Wed 04 Feb 2009, 23:11:37

We're batting at shadows here. Connotatively today the two have become very different. But that is only because right-wingers used "welfare" as a curse word so long that for many negative implications became part of its essential meaning. Very much like what they did to the term "liberal."

And this even though the word is right there in the preamble of the freakin' constitution:

"We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union, establish Justice, insure domestic Tranquility, provide for the common defense, promote the general Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution for the United States of America."

Clearly the word did not have a negative connotation to the framers.

There is very little denotative difference between "welfare" and "unemployment insurance."
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