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Blogger Loses Unemployment Check Because of Ads
Techdirt is reporting that one unfortunate, unemployed New York lawyer recently had her unemployment benefits greatly reduced because of the incredible $1/day she was earning via ads on her blog. "The whole thing sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare, with NY State asking her to get a form from her new 'employer' who didn't exist. Then NY Department of Labor started giving her all sorts of contradicting information, and eventually an 'investigation' into her 'business' — during which time her unemployment benefits were stopped entirely. She's now pulled the Google AdSense from her blog (total earned over the life of the blog $238.75)."
...too incredulous to believe. Especially in New York.
Somebody explain to me how this is different from someone selling Avon, or selling at the local farmers' market, or moonlighting as a musician at the local dive bar, or any other similar wellspring of unemployment stupidity?
i mean what is unemployment if you are recieving money.
It's underemployment, der.
"It's really stunning how various labor departments are simply ill-equipped to handle a modern labor force."
Hmmm let's see, underfunded government entities are unable to keep up with new technology trends. I would not call that revelation, "Stunning."
Did you ever wake up in the morning, with a Zombie Woof behind your eyes? -- FZ
You're unemployed. A friend gives you $20 to help move some furniture. You've now received money and are no longer unemployed.
Yeah...that makes sense...
Bottom line is, unemployment is to fill in while you don't have a job. If you get money selling Avon, the farmer's market, or work as a musician, then you sorta have a job, don't you?
This is my sig.
now that her story is getting some wide coverage.
Hard for me to understand how a *lawyer* can be unemployed. Harder still for me to understand how an unemployed lawyer is unable to cut through the government red tape and related BS... but then again, perhaps that's why she is currently unemployed.
I do wish her well, though...
The problem with socialism is that they always run out of other people's money. - Margaret Thatcher
Cool! Let me move my supermarket headquarter over there.
First rule of business. Pennies add up.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
Can't wait until they run Healthcare can you?They already do -- ever heard of Medicare? In fact, some of the loudest objections to the "Public Option" are from people who believe it will reduce the quality of the Government sponsored healthcare they already receive! Fucking greedy hypocrites!
I've abandoned my search for truth; now I'm just looking for some useful delusions.
This is the sort of nonsense that drives the American distrust of beaurocrats.
The plans of well meaning liberal Senators will eventually have to be implemented
by civil servants with varying degrees of competence and empathy that have no
interest in being effective or efficient and infact will be rewarded by being as
inefficient as they can and growing their own personal fiefdom.
This is best captured by the "spend your budget this year or lose it next year" approach to money.
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
The part where it could be Buffalo or Uttica. ...I guess all of that noise about the rest of the state being pissed off
that Hillary's Senate opponent wasn't aware of the rest of the state
actually has some merit to it. [snicker]
A Pirate and a Puritan look the same on a balance sheet.
Unemployment benefits are meant to help people with no income.
Unemployment benefits are for people who are... unemployed.
That she has some income shouldn't prevent benefits, especially when that income is next to nothing. She was averaging $30 a month, that's not exactly making ends-meet. Stripping her benefits for such a low sum would be akin to stripping unemployment benefits because someone bought you lunch.
I would feel differently if she were running a blog as a business, or if that blog brought in more money than unemployment would bring in. If you have already determined that there is a minimum amount of money a person should recieve while looking for another job, any supplimental income should simply reduce the benefits by whatever the supplimental income is, untill the difference is negative - i.e. making more money with the suppliment than full unemployment would give. Then it is simply re-classified as the primary income and you are considered self-employed.
To look at it another way, do they strip your unemployment because you're earning 2% in a savings account? I should hope not. That's what this is closer to. Either way, she was still unemployed, not even self-employed. She paid for the unemployment insurance, she should be able to collect it when she is unemployed.
I hope she puts ad-sense back up before she is slashdotted, that could make up for a lot of the shit NYC is pulling here.
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
Others are getting much more than $238 through web ads. Should they be running for unemployment benefits too?
Don't be such a dumbass. All they had to do was deduct $238 from one of her checks, but there's no option to do that with unemployment. The second you report any income, regardless of the source, you're employed. So if you take a contract job and get let go a month later, not only does unemployment stop paying you but then they'll turn around and claim you haven't been on the new job long enough to collect benefits. Too bad, buddy. You can't even collect the balance of benefits you were due.
So there's is absolutely zero incentive for people on unemployment to take what work they can find. If they would encourage people to take part-time and temporary jobs, deducting what they make from their benefit check so they don't lose money working, but restoring their benefits if those jobs fall through, then more people would be out working.
But the system we have today punishes people trying to do the right thing. Don't defend a broken system. They could use unemployment to encourage people go out and start a business, instead they discriminate against people wanting to work but unable to find a permanent job that lasts longer than 3 months.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
H&R Block employs housewives and other part-time workers to fill out tax forms. They go through a brief training period, something like 4 weeks at their own expense. They are then "qualified" to work in an H&R Block office preparing tax returns.
If using H&R Block has only cost you $600, you are lucky indeed unless your income is less than maybe $30,000. Anything more than that, especially with anything that is even remotely complicated - like multiple states, rental property, etc. you are playing with fire trusting H&R Block.
A real tax preparer would be paying the $600 in fines if they screwed up. A real tax preparer wouldn't have made the mistake in the first place. It does not require a CPA to fill out tax forms as CPA is something entirely different. You need someone that is good at tax preparation. Often these people are also a CPA but being a CPA doesn't mean they know anything about taxes.
Every year you are required to pay tribute to the government and doing it improperly can result in jail time. Do you really want to trust that to some part-time worker that managed to pay the fee to take the H&R Block class?
So all we have to do is give everyone in the country $1/day and voila: 100% employment rate!
A friend of mine was laid off several weeks ago and he was supposed to start teaching a small class at a local university in NYC just as a lecturer making a nominal amount per week for 2-3 hours of work (perhaps 100-200 or so / week, spread over two days).
Since NYS unemployment law counts a partial day of work as a full day, regardless of how much money it is, he had to withdraw from teaching the course because his loss in unemployment benefits greatly exceeded his income as a lecturer.
You just have to love incentive misalignment -- it's a government specialty.
Microtransactions aren't really included in that model.
Says who? This is where our dated laws really show. Income is income and until we start looking at changing the law to better match what the population thinks is income, we're at a stalemate on the issue. I think this just highlights the lack of change that is going on in our country (US), I can't speak for anyone else.
Um, I know three lawyers off the top of my head: one charges $250/hour in Denver, another $130/hour near Denver, the other $400/hour in Houston.
When you have a job where the work is sporadic but you make a lot *per hour*, it's just the nature of the beast that you're supposed to be fucking *saving* for the predictable dry spells.
Another example of this phenonemon is stage hands in Hollywood who make a lot per hour on each film, but (predicably!) work only a fraction of the year, and get to claim unemployment insurance based on high per-hour earnings over that time between productions. Complete abuse of the system.
A divorce lawyer should know all the ins and outs of patent law then?
Not *immediately*, no, but they're more familiar with how to navigate statutes to find out what is and isn't legal, easier access to such databases, etc., where the common man has to get accustomed to the task first. You know, that's what law school is fucking for.
Information theory is life. The rest is just the KL divergence.
I call bullshit.
1) Florida has no income tax.
2) From the H&R block website: "With the H&R Block Guarantee included in every tax return, if penalty and interest charges are owed due to H&R Block's error, those penalties and interest on federal, state and local returns are paid. If the IRS audits your client, an H&R Block representative will assist in answering questions regarding your clients return."
Good luck with your revenge.
You too can support a 1st world unemployed person, all it costs is 1$ a day to feed these poor non working people.
APK likes to ask for responses to the same things over and over. Maybe he just likes the responses?
Not exactly what the article says.
They cut her off until she had a hearing. That's the way it is here, too. Any income will trigger the cut off, then you have to fight to get them back. And, just like in her case, they'll do absolutely everything they can to dick people around.
Some of our volunteer firefighters have the same problem. At the end of the year the department gives them a gas money check. If they report that as income, the state cuts off their benefits. If they don't report it, the state accuses them of trying to hide income. For some people those benefits are the only thing keeping them from starving. The entire system is the functional equivalent of the current health care system. So I'm certain if anyone dared stand up to try and get a better safety net for the unemployed, the teabirthers would be out screaming about government take overs.
That's our life, the big wheel of shit. - The Fat Man, Blue Tango Salvage
Right???
So if you take a contract job and get let go a month later, not only does unemployment stop paying you but then they'll turn around and claim you haven't been on the new job long enough to collect benefits. Too bad, buddy. You can't even collect the balance of benefits you were due.
You, and the people who find your post insightful, should realize that unemployment regulations vary from state to state. Colorado, for instance, is far more rational than what you describe, coming close in several aspects to how you say it should work. (BTW, I agree with your post, just pointing out that not all states are so stupid!)
The difference between the homeless guy holding a sign and the woman with a blog, is that the woman with a blog has a legal contract with Google that reports income on a 1099 form that Unemployment and the Government can check for income.
If she held up a sign in the streets that said "Will do legal work for food/change." and she had a solicitor's license she would earn food and cash, and earning cash for payment is one form of income the government and unemployment cannot track. She is legally supposed to report any income she receives even in cash, but many just work for cash off the books and still collect unemployment. Just that you cannot do that with a legal contract with Google that gives you a 1099 tax form that reports income on and the contract says you are self-employed and Google is paying you as a contractor for your web advertising with them.
The Homeless man has no contract and no 1099 form, so he could earn a million dollars in cash and the government would not even know it, unless he reported it. But I doubt many homeless men earn more than $300 a year or month.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
My health care overhaul plan would state that no employee of the Federal Government may enjoy any health care that is any way better than that enjoyed by the lest privileged citizen. That'd sort THAT mess out fast enough.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
People attempt to use loopholes all the time - the difference between the people and lawyers is that layers tend to be good at it.
Regarding the need for lawyers - it will always exist, even without such a complex legal system. A lawyer isn't simply about knowing the law, but also presenting a case with confidence and consistency - a professional presence.
I fight a lot of traffic tickets. Despite knowing quite a bit about the law, I still hand the cases over to a traffic lawyer - I need someone who is capable of going toe to toe with judges, officers, and DA - people who have a lot of experience intimidating the public.
I also use a lawyer because it's more efficient - it costs me more in time and lost wages to fight a traffic citation than it costs to hire someone to do it for me.
The Govt. is sure efficient at cost savings. They should run ALL of health care in addition to unemployment.
Sounds like being dependent on the government for your bread is great. Constantly jerked around by bureaucrats. Let's go ahead and expand the system even further.
Or we could privatize it, the way health care is private, because getting jerked around by for-profit insurance company bureaucrats is so much better than getting jerked around by government bureaucrats.
Support SETI@home
This is an article about a person getting screwed over by unemployment, and you're evaluating her worthiness for a date? Can you turn that shit off for just a minute please? Because we're left with only one conclusion: that you evaluate all women this way, all the time, regardless of the context. Stop and think about how that makes women feel, and then maybe you'll understand why comments like this drive us away.
Of course he is. It's normal, healthy, and expected (assuming he's not married). Evaluating all women a single man encounters for possible romance is one of the most basic biological and psychological functions of a man, just as the opposite is normally true of a woman. That recognition of the fact that genders EXIST and HAVE A PURPOSE isn't an ethical problem, although it's often claimed to be.
Now, inappropriate actions can certainly be an ethical problem; but so long as the slashdot poster isn't her supervisor or therapist, evaluating her potential as a date isn't inappropriate.
Had problem with people like this on forums I've run. Habitual line steppers. They want to know right where the line is so they can dance right up to the edge of it. Then they always try to play the victim when yelled at. Making complex rules doesn't work either, they just keep it up. As such, on the forums I've worked on the rules got simplified: Don't be an asshole. I (or the other admins) am the arbiter of what that means. Over all, it works much better since everyone, including assholes, seems to understand it. While there is occasional bitching about vagueness (from assholes), seems to be that adults over all get the idea of what being an asshole is.
Now I'm not saying such a system would work for the courts, just affirming what the parent is saying that assholes are the problem and that complex rules don't seem to help.
That's a partial excuse. The more full excuse is that we decided that the LETTER of the law was more important than the SPIRIT of the law.
I'm not enough of a legal philosopher to figure out how to fix the problem, but I have hope in some society some day someone does so.
Velociraptor = Distiraptor / Timeraptor
By forming an LLC you did own and operate a company, it's the very definition of it.
Yes the rules are stupid but those are the rules and they're not exactly hidden. Starting a company or accepting contract work nullifies your unemployment in lots of places.
The government providing incentives to stay on their teat and not provide for yourself as much as possible is par for the course.
"These are great straw men you keep demolishing. Are any of them related to reality in any way?"
It's not straw man if it's the truth. Take a look at any country with universal health care. It's convenient to call anything you don't agree with "straw men".
The truth cannot be hidden forever. No matter how much you try.
Yes, but what you are missing is the people who are costing the HMO the most money are YOU, the customer. They will let you go the moment you need their services or the moment they can deny you coverage for your life threatening condition. Any fallacy about the market correcting the problem or unscrupulous companies going out of business flies in the couple hundred year reality of free market economies. You can argue that in a perfect free market with no barriers to entry and no government regulation that that equilibrium would be reached but that's a pipe dream. Economists are worthless (witness the fact that one of this years winner for the Nobel in economics was the founding father of the movement that led to California's energy deregulation), I'll go with the cold hard fact that we have the most expensive healthcare in the world with some of the poorest results and that all the countries that beat us on that simple metric have socialized medicine.
Also witness the fact that Medicare has an overhead of low single digits vs the healthcare industry which is approaching 25% between overhead and profits.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Nah. Just creepy.