North Carolina Becomes First State To Eliminate Unemployment Benefits (dollar, party, Nevada)
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According to web sites that compare COL, everything except utilities is cheaper in Austin than my current location.
Then there's the state tax, flat 5% in Illinois vs. 0 % in Texas.
Property taxes in Austin are higher based on assessed value but then again the value for the $ is greater in Austin, so property taxes are less, too.
The way I factored it was like this.
Gas + insurance + car maint. + car pmt/depreciation = $500/month; $6000/year
Vs.
State tax of 5%, which is going down to 3.75-3.5% in a few years. Plus the CTA pass which is about $90/month.
If I was making more than $100K then TX would be a better deal, but when I graduate I need to be near financial centers so it may not be a better deal.
My rent is more than TX would be, but most of my utilities are included in the rent. Property tax rates in TX are higher compared to Chicago, but the values are lower.
In most places unemployment benefits are an insurance program, you pay into it while you are working and draw on it temporarily if you need to if you lose your job, i wouldnt call those availing themselves of the program derogatory names they are just using an insurance program they paid into just like car insurance or medical insurance.
Now denying the unemployment insurance program to exist expect more of a drain on welfare systems as people try to survive between jobs and expect an increase in crime rate as people get desperate.
$2.5 BILLION dollars is still real money last I checked. And do not insinuate based on some liberal formula that my fellow citizens will become criminals because the federal government is cutting off benefits.
I do not know what effect this will have. Mostly it's rolling back things to the way they were pre-recession. Even the DOL says 26 weeks is the usual maximum. The toughest part for me (if I needed the benefits) is the weekly reduction in the cash but I don't see the morally smug on this thread giving information about how their state is better including factoring in the cost of living.
To say North Carolinians will become thieves because the state is equalizing benefits with other states is outrageous.
And if Obama cares he can flick a switch to restore extended benefits like he did for other states that just happen to not have full GOP control.
NC has the 5th highest unemployment rate in the country I just see something really bad thing happening because of this. Be prepared for increasingly more desperate people to do increasingly more desperate things.
According to web sites that compare COL, everything except utilities is cheaper in Austin than my current location.
Then there's the state tax, flat 5% in Illinois vs. 0 % in Texas.
Property taxes in Austin are higher based on assessed value but then again the value for the $ is greater in Austin, so property taxes are less, too.
When you move from a higher COL to a lower COL place of course it will seem cheap to you.
But if you have lived there for 20 years and it shoots up over 4 years to 116% due to growth and gentrification the impact is vastly different.
There are no cheap rentals anymore. When I first moved there in 1996 I got a duplex for $650 a month rental while looking for a place to buy. You couldn't find that type of rent anymore even in the bad sections of town today.
In my experience while the employer may deal with the necessary paperwork its most always a payroll deduction from your paycheck , usually to the tune of $20-$30 per week.
Not in N.C. but if what you are saying is true then that should be factored in as part of the true benefit. If you aren't paying $80 per month forever then that should be remembered but not in this thread because few are interested in the facts and are just using it for partisan reasons.
Unfortunately, if one is laid off that monthly savings doesn't help them. They already spent it.
RALEIGH, N.C. (AP) — With changes to its unemployment law taking effect this weekend, North Carolina not only is cutting benefits for those who file new claims, it will become the first state disqualified from a federal compensation program for the long-term jobless.
State officials adopted the package of benefit cuts and increased taxes for businesses in February, a plan designed to accelerate repayment of a $2.5 billion federal debt. Like many states, North Carolina had racked up the debt by borrowing from Washington after its unemployment fund was drained by jobless benefits during the Great Recession.
The changes go into effect Sunday for North Carolina, which has the country’s fifth-worst jobless rate. The cuts on those who make unemployment claims on or after that day will disqualify the state from receiving federally funded Emergency Unemployment Compensation. That money kicks in after the state’s period of unemployment compensation — now shortened from up to six months to no more than five — runs out. The EUC program is available to long-term jobless in all states. But keeping the money flowing includes a requirement that states can’t cut average weekly benefits.
Because North Carolina leaders cut average weekly benefits for new claims, about 170,000 workers whose state benefits expire this year will lose more than $700 million in EUC payments, the U.S. Labor Department said.
Lee Creighton, 45, of Cary, said he’s been unemployed since October, and this is the last week for which he’ll get nearly $500 in unemployment aid. He said he was laid off from a position managing statisticians and writers amid the recession’s worst days in 2009 and has landed and lost a series of government and teaching jobs since then — work that paid less half as much. His parents help him buy groceries to get by.
“I’m just not sure what I’m going to do,” said Creighton, who has a doctorate. “What are we to do? Is the state prepared to have this many people with no source of income?”
With the changes to North Carolina law, state benefits will last three to five months — at the longer end when unemployment rates are higher. Qualifying for benefits becomes more difficult. Weekly payments for those collecting the current maximum benefit of $535 drop to $350, falling from the highest in the Southeast to comparable with neighboring states.
Republican leaders who control the General Assembly sought an exception to the federal law two months before voting to change unemployment benefits. Congress last year allowed Pennsylvania, Indiana, Arkansas and Rhode Island to proceed with cuts to weekly benefits that their legislatures had approved for after the expected expiration of federal benefits, which later were extended.
North Carolina’s request was never acted on.
Other states this year cut unemployment benefits and restricted eligibility, but none included drops in weekly benefits, said George Wentworth of the National Employment Law Project, a worker-advocacy group.
All states are aware of the no-reduction provision, said Doug Holmes, who heads the National Foundation for Unemployment Compensation & Workers’ Compensation, which represents businesses on unemployment insurance issues.
“Many of them considered doing something that would reduce the weekly benefit amount, but for whatever reason chose not to take the step of enacting legislation,” he said. “But North Carolina also had one of the biggest problems.”
Twenty states carry such federal debt. The Labor Department declined to comment on North Carolina’s looming situation but said no other state is considering changing benefits in a way that would imperil U.S. help.
Supporters of the new North Carolina law say the reduced benefits and increased business taxes are necessary to repay the federal debt — the third-largest in the country.
Labor groups, Democratic congressmen and the state NAACP want to delay the cuts until the federal program expires in January, but lawmakers and GOP Gov. Pat McCrory have refused.
Source datalounge.com
This is some shady sh*t Republicans have been trying to do for a long and they finally did it in NC all unemployed people in NC need to mass protest ASAP. Here is another reason to vote these azz clowns out in 2014
Republicans, like all psychopaths, most enjoy hurting those who are most helpless, those who are suffering, and those who are the victims. Cleverly though, first Republicans themselves create a problem, then they say, "Oopsy! Looky here! There's a problem! The only solution is to screw the poorest of the poor!"
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