Slashdot Mirror
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)."
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?
"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...
now that her story is getting some wide coverage.
If I'm getting a New York lawyer, I'm getting a New York Country Lawyer
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.
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
The answer here should be obvious.
She should start a blog about her legal troubles and put google adsense on it.
By the time enough people read the blog and contact the legislature to fix this ridiculous problem, she won't need the unemployment benefits.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
So all we have to do is give everyone in the country $1/day and voila: 100% employment rate!
I'm quite happy to have a world with less lawyers. The profession itself is evidence that the Law is too complex.
If a law is written in such a fashion that the average citizen cannot understand it, let alone defend themselves in a court with it, liberty is damaged.
You can't legislate goodness. Let each to his own destiny, by will of his freely made choices.
Earn a dollar a day off blog ads, and the government objects, confused and stupid while it "investigates"?
They only see "employer" giving cash, and "employee" receiving it. What's that old saying, if all you have is a hammer, every problem looks like a nail? Same reason the same people choke over volunteerism from time to time as violating labor wage laws.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
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.
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?
Maybe?
If I get fired from a minimum-wage 40 hour/week job, I'm out roughly $300/week.
If I can make $100/week selling Avon, or veggies at the farmer's market, or as a musician - I'm still not even making minimum wage.
I guess I'm not sure what the laws are regarding unemployment... It is entirely possible that any income at all is considered employment... But that hardly makes it right or sensible.
Seems to me that if the government considers roughly $300/week to be the minimum wage... Then anything less than $300/week should be considered some kind of unemployment. Or underemployment, if you'd prefer.
Regardless, it isn't enough money to live off of.
If you want to cut off the unemployment check because they're technically employed, that's fine... But if that crappy Avon income is all they've got, they're going to wind up on some other government benefit before too long - food stamps, or HUD, or something. Because that's just not enough money to live off of.
Of course, if you're making $1,000/week from Avon then there's absolutely no reason you should be getting unemployment of any kind... But that doesn't seem to be the case in this particular instance.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
Right. And they are punishing her because she did what she felt was the right thing to do, which was to declare the extra income!
;)
Note to the unemployed - W2 or it didn't happen
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
The way I see it, they've done a very good job at creating their own job security, in the same way that civil engineers seem to love placing manholes right in the tire path in roads. (i.e. causing the suspension of the car passing over it to bounce, ultimately tearing up the road down wind of the manhole, creating a job for a civil engineer to oversee rebuilding of said road)
Constitutional rights may be respected, repealed, or modified; but they must never be ignored.
I'm quite happy to have a world with less lawyers. The profession itself is evidence that the Law is too complex.
If a law is written in such a fashion that the average citizen cannot understand it, let alone defend themselves in a court with it, liberty is damaged.
I would imagine that the reason that laws are so complex is due to the fact that too many people have used loopholes to cover up their wrongdoing, and lawmakers have had to react by making laws longer and more drawn out in order to ensure that any possible loopholes are filled. Don't blame the lawmakers. Blame the criminals who forced the lawmakers to make more and more complex laws.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
I am quite happy to have a world with fewer programmers. The profession itself is evidence that computers are too complex.
If a program is written in such a fashion that the average citizen cannot understand it, let alone fix its bugs, their freedom to tinker is damaged.
The law is complex, because the world is complex. The alternative to complex law is arbitrary judgements, or the state retreating from adjudicating relationships among citizens and corporations. (OK, some wooly-eyed anarchist is going to salivate at the latter prospect, but personally, I prefer police and judges to arbitration by baseball bats.)
Ahem. "People" don't find the loopholes. Lawyers find them. If Joe and Margaret Sixpack want to cheat the government out of money, they aren't going to get away with it. They'll be taken to court, where some LAWYER will build some ridiculous defense using some set of loopholes that the Sixpacks would NEVER have thought of.
"Windows is like the faint smell of piss in a subway: it's there, and there's nothing you can do about it." - Charlie Br
I loved a quip my boss passed on from a talk by Greenspan lamenting the fact that our best and brightest went into investment banking instead of civil engineering. He said that for every investment banker you create one job, for every civil engineer you create 26. I think the quip applies equally to lawyers.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
If a law is written in such a fashion that the average citizen cannot understand it, let alone defend themselves in a court with it, liberty is damaged.
The thing about the law and complexity is it scales. If you're just a regular guy on the street, there isn't THAT much of the law you need to be aware of/understand. If you're a huge company, then yes, there's a lot more you have to be aware of, but you are in the position where you have the resources to do it.
A lot of the "complexity" people complain about in the law is an attempt to create a system that's objective as possible. It doesn't succeed totally, of course, but without this complexity I think it would be a lot worse.
I would argue that the correct way to close a loophole is to make the law simpler, not more complicated. It's like the joke someone had when the found the missing link, "As you can clearly see, there are now 2 gaps in the fossil record." Making laws more and more detailed and more and more specific opens them up for abuse because it creates more corner cases, which is where the abuse takes place.
Every lawyer creates two jobs; his own and one to represent the other side.
Confucius say, "Find worm in apple - bad. Find half a worm - worse."
Do you honestly think an HMO with a profit motive to deny you coverage is any better? I'll take laziness and incompetence over laziness, incompetence and greed any day.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
Vague laws like the type you describe are the reason that we have a huge debate over the 2nd Amendment.
For those who are not familiar with this amendment:
A well regulated Militia, being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the people to keep and bear Arms, shall not be infringed.
Does this mean that everyone has a right to bear arms, or only those within the State Militia(the military, specifically, the National Guard)? One argument says that since everyone was in the State Militia at the time, everyone should be able to bear arms. Another argument says that if someone wants to bear arms, they should join the military. Because the Amendment was so vague, we have this debate now. Granted, at the time, the lawmakers knew what they were wanting to say. However, as people die and the common language adapts and changes, the 'spirit of the law' becomes lost. This is why lawmakers are specific in what the law is meant to do, so that people in the future, and currently, know what the law is and is not forbidding or granting.
While I agree that getting too specific results in little leeway in court cases where the 'spirit of the law' does not cover this or that, I disagree that laws should be as vague as possible. A law such as 'No distracted driving', to the right court, could mean that a parent with a screaming child in the backseat is breaking the law. Or playing the radio is breaking the law(auditory distraction). Or talking to someone in the passenger is distracted driving.
I would like to see all the types of distracted driving placed into a single law, with amendments to the law as they are needed. I am not a lawyer, but I would imagine it would make the court system much more efficient, if each 'type of law' had its own specific place, and amendments were added instead of new laws being written.
I don't like Linux. This doesn't make me a troll.
Most people have no particular obligation, need, or desire to fix programs or write their own. It's a total matter of choice.
However, everyone is expected to comply with the law, whether they like it or not. It is an obligation, enforced with guns. The law is so complex that it is understood that the average citizen cannot possibly understand most of it -- hence, specialists such as lawyers. At the same time, the average citizen is expected to fully comply with these laws he cannot possibly understand, under threat of severe penalties.
Perhaps one alternative to complex laws -- at least, ones the average everyday yob is likely to face -- is to clean them up and get judges that actually, you know, make judgements instead of metting out punishment according to what the rule books say. Traffic court is a great example, and one that most people have to tangle with at some point, often over some inane, niggling point of law that most people didn't even know was on the books.
But judges usually adhere to strict letter instead of the actual spirit, the intent, of the law, and pronounce you guilty and send you off with a fine. The only way out is to hire a lawyer for serious money, go through weeks or months of legal hassle, and maybe get some kind of reduction if you're lucky. It's too easy for judges to mindlessly throw the book at everyone instead of making actual judgement calls like "this person clearly meant no infraction, nothing happened because of it, off you go." Instead we get statutes that fill multiple volumes of books, and bewildered citizens being charged with crimes they didn't even know existed and never meant to violate.
mirrorshades radio -- darkwave, industrial, futurepop, ebm.
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.