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Me: *name of business*
Him: Yeah.. yall doing any hiring?
Me: Nah, man. We're not but I would be happy to review your application.
Him: So.. that's a no?
Me: Yeah..*awkward silence*
Him: I'm trying to get contact numbers.. So that's great stu..
Me: *interrupts* For unemployment?
Him: Yeah, what is your name? I need it for my checks, I have to have these contact numbers you see for...
Me: I'm not letting you use my company as a contact number since you didn't even attempt to get a job. Have a great day.
*hang up*
I'm so tired of people trying to abuse the system to continue getting these checks. This is the FIFTH time this has happened this month but this guy sounded outright happy when I didn't have work.
Unfortunately we've been getting a lot of walk-in's that seem happy when we don't have work, and/or are doing everything possible to make sure they don't get hired.
Walking in drunk
Not showering for a week before they come in
Coming in with their pop-tart girlfriend on their arm
Cursing while asking for an application
Etc.
Unfortunately we've been getting a lot of walk-in's that seem happy when we don't have work, and/or are doing everything possible to make sure they don't get hired.
Walking in drunk
Not showering for a week before they come in
Coming in with their pop-tart girlfriend on their arm
Cursing while asking for an application
Etc.
Which is why unemployment needs to go and severance needs to take its place.
5% of the employees pay needs to be placed in a government account for disbursement when the employee retires or gets laid off.
John works at XYZ for 9 years. For the first 3 years he made $12 per hour, $15 an hour for the second 3 years and $18 for the final three years before being laid off.
If John gets laid off or retires he gets $14,040, plus prevailing interest, in a lump sum to tide him over until he gets another job.
If Debbie gets laid off after working 4 years at her $9 job she gets a lump sum distribution check of $3,744.00 plus interest.
Steve works 22 years making an average of $70,000 and he's laid off. Oh man, what a mess.... he has mortgage payments, a wife and two kids in high school.
Well, given a 4% interest rate Steve would receive a slump sum check for $77,000.00 which with interest would end up being somewhere around $122,000.00. Given this Steve would have the wherewithal to look for a job and even relocate to a different part of the country if he had to. Steve would even have enough to make COBRA payments for 18 months if he had to. It beats the alternative of Steve being laid off after 22 years and paid $340 a week for nine months.
If Mike works 45 year making an average of $50,000 per year Mike would receive a lump sum distribution check of $112,500.00 plus interest. With 4% interest Mike's check would probably be around $300,000.00.
The point of all this would be to give someone who is laid off after a period of time some real money to rebuild his life/relocate or do whatever he needed to do to get a job. If he decides he doesn't want a job, say it is Mike at age 58 who is laid off given a check for $250,000.00, he doesn't have to work.
There are lots of better ways of doing it than what we have today.
Me: *name of business*
Him: Yeah.. yall doing any hiring?
Me: Nah, man. We're not but I would be happy to review your application.
Him: So.. that's a no?
Me: Yeah..*awkward silence*
Him: I'm trying to get contact numbers.. So that's great stu..
Me: *interrupts* For unemployment?
Him: Yeah, what is your name? I need it for my checks, I have to have these contact numbers you see for...
Me: I'm not letting you use my company as a contact number since you didn't even attempt to get a job. Have a great day.
*hang up*
I'm so tired of people trying to abuse the system to continue getting these checks. This is the FIFTH time this has happened this month but this guy sounded outright happy when I didn't have work.
Part of the reason maybe because of the debit cards used for unemployment now which I never wanted to put in my wallet and the extensions.
Your always going to have people that will cheat any governamnt program. basically poepl,e are just more dishonest how and government is easy to cheat and rarely does much about those they catch.I mean when you have epople still living off the government from Katrina in 2005 four years later that says something.
Which is why unemployment needs to go and severance needs to take its place.
5% of the employees pay needs to be placed in a government account for disbursement when the employee retires or gets laid off.
Interesting program, but the problem with it is that it does nothing to protect the most vulnerable people in the workforce.
What about those people earning minimum wage, who have only had their jobs for a year? They will get about $700 (gross, before taxes), or about 2 weeks pay. If they cannot get a job in 2 weeks, they starve?
How about tipped workers? Is the 5% calculated on their hourly rate of $2.13 (or whatever it is)
What if the unemployment is as a result of a factory in a rural area closing? This could put most of the town out of work, and the new employees will not have enough in the severance pool to sustain them through a move.
Does this program apply to seasonal workers? Farm workers? Contractors?
Realistically, not every employee over their lifetime will collect, which means that it will not really cost 5% of gross payroll. This means that companies will not want to put in that much, and will try to get by with 3%, or 4%, or whatever is predicted by actuarial methods. Fine, but this is what is currently happening with unfunded pension funds. What happens when a company with an underfunded unemployment pool goes out of business? Or that pool is invested in the stock market, then the stock market takes a dive, then the company goes out of business.
It is a cool idea, but not a simple one. You would need to build in regulations, and insure the funds, and put a floor in for the new workers, etc.
Interesting program, but the problem with it is that it does nothing to protect the most vulnerable people in the workforce.
What about those people earning minimum wage, who have only had their jobs for a year? They will get about $700 (gross, before taxes), or about 2 weeks pay. If they cannot get a job in 2 weeks, they starve?
How about tipped workers? Is the 5% calculated on their hourly rate of $2.13 (or whatever it is)
What if the unemployment is as a result of a factory in a rural area closing? This could put most of the town out of work, and the new employees will not have enough in the severance pool to sustain them through a move.
Does this program apply to seasonal workers? Farm workers? Contractors?
Realistically, not every employee over their lifetime will collect, which means that it will not really cost 5% of gross payroll. This means that companies will not want to put in that much, and will try to get by with 3%, or 4%, or whatever is predicted by actuarial methods. Fine, but this is what is currently happening with unfunded pension funds. What happens when a company with an underfunded unemployment pool goes out of business? Or that pool is invested in the stock market, then the stock market takes a dive, then the company goes out of business.
It is a cool idea, but not a simple one. You would need to build in regulations, and insure the funds, and put a floor in for the new workers, etc.
Traditionally the federal Government's job hasn't been to provide welfare handouts.
A good history of Rome and its downfall (http://www.fff.org/freedom/0690c.asp - broken link), written in 1990:
Quote:
Government in ancient Rome grew to mammoth size for some of the same reasons ours has. The philosopher George Santayana may have had that in mind when he said, "Those who ignore history are condemned to repeat it." Consider the following:
Long before Christ, a Roman politician named Clodius was elected to public office on a platform of "free wheat for the masses." When Julius Caesar came to power, he found 320,000 persons in Rome — a city of 1 million — on government grain relief.
<snip>
It has been said that many civilizations have run their course by this pattern: From bondage to individualism to great courage to liberty to abundance, then from abundance to complacency to apathy to dependency and finally back to bondage again.
Take some time to read thru that link, it's very eye opening.
Traditionally the federal Government's job hasn't been to provide welfare handouts.
A good history of Rome and its downfall (http://www.fff.org/freedom/0690c.asp - broken link), written in 1990:
Take some time to read thru that link, it's very eye opening.
There a few problems with your thoughts.
First, regardless of what is 'traditional', the better question is what is right. Traditionally, until the 1860s, slavery in the US was legal. Until the 1960s, traditionally mixed race marriages were similarly illegal. Few people will dispute that what was traditional was also wrong, and what we do now is better.
Secondly, your brief statements on Roman history ignore much.
During the Roman republic, the legions (pre-Marian reform) were made of men who had certain property qualifications. As a rough equivalent, they were middle class or higher. The poor were not allowed to serve.
However, as Rome projected her power and influence throughout the Mediterranean, it became common for her citizen soldiers to serve for 20 years. As a result, farms around Rome, the foundation of her economy, fell into disrepair. The same citizen soldiers who were serving in the legions were being dispossessed of their economic power at the same time. In order for Rome to feed the masses (the grain dole far predates any Claudian, Marius, or Caesar), they developed a system of Latifundia, or factory farms. The latifundia were owned by the richest romans (basically an oligarchy).
Basically, the unfettered free market served to concentrate power/money in the hands of the rich, eliminating the middle class, forcing them on the grain dole, requiring the state to spend incredible amounts of money to feed the poor.
Bottom line, it was not welfare that caused the problem, but a lack of regulation and a proper social safety net.
Many people who are economically conservative will state things similar to you. Welfare causes social and economic decay. An alternate view can be found in Paul Kennedy's Rise and Fall of the Great Powers. Very condensed, he advances the argument that powers grow first economically. Then they develop a military to protect their economic interests. Then they use that military to project political force. By this time the military is a net drain on the economy, resulting in deficit spending. As a result, the power falls.
One needs to be very careful when stating sweeping generalizations. No civilization falls for one reason. Social programs are certainly not going to pull down a civilization, although lack of same might contribute to societal unrest.
Traditionally the federal Government's job hasn't been to provide welfare handouts.
A good history of Rome and its downfall (http://www.fff.org/freedom/0690c.asp - broken link), written in 1990:
Take some time to read thru that link, it's very eye opening.
A disputed quote that may or may not have sprung from 18th-century lectures by Alexander Fraser Tyler seems nonetheless prescient:
"A democracy cannot exist as a permanent form of government. It can only exist until the voters discover that they can vote themselves money from the Public Treasury. From that moment on, the majority always votes for the candidate promising the most benefits from the Public Treasury with the result that a democracy always collapses over loose fiscal policy always followed by dictatorship."
Maybe civilization as we know it won't end in a bang... but an embattled, overworked whimper.
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