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)."
...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
Unemployment benefits are meant to help people with no income.
...in the traditional sense of income: you either work or run a business. Microtransactions aren't really included in that model.
Business owners are exempt from unemployment pay. This lawyer's $1 a month income could be considered a poorly-run business but still a business. What I'm curious to know is who reported her. Sounds like a real dick.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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...
Pity the blogger removed the advertising, I reckon traffic is about to skyrocket for a few days...
Back in 2000 I was denied unemployment benefits because I made the mistake of telling the interviewer I had tried to get some contract positions. Never mind that I DIDN'T GET THEM, simply the fact I was now "an independent contractor" meant I was employed.
Never tell them anything. No, woe si me; I'm unemployed and unemployable, I simply don't know what I am going to do...
now that her story is getting some wide coverage.
She reported herself. She was being a good person and reporting ALL income. The rare breed who'd probably pay local state tax on items purchased out of state.
From the Forbes article (it's linked from the linked article): When the check came in, Karin realized she had a legal obligation to disclose the income to New York State, even though doing so might reduce the weekly unemployment benefits she received.
Right - She's self-employed. Just like that guy you walk-past every day who holds up a cardboard sign asking for help and eats dog food.
In fairness though, it sounds like his business model is better than hers.
Memo to self - If I'm ever unfortunate enough to need unemployment, do NOT let ANYONE pay me for ANYTHING.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
Old New York was once New Amsterdam. Why they changed it, I can't say.
People just liked it better that way.
He's getting rather old, but he's a good mouse.
The whole tax system is a mess that few understand even professionals. Last year H&R Block prepared my taxes as they've done since circa 1990, and the woman kept insisting I don't owe Oklahoma any taxes because I live in Virgina. I said "Yes but I *worked* in Oklahoma and you pay where you worked, just like I did last year when I worked in California, or the prior year when I worked in Florida." She said I was wrong and those previous years need to be fixed. I said I was right. She said I was wrong and then got her manager to back her up, which made me think maybe I was wrong after all.
Long story made short - They fucked up. Oklahoma fined me, Virgina happily swallowed the ~$6,000 in extra taxmoney, then I filed amended forms (or actually H&R did) saying I owed OK not VA. I paid Oklahoma the taxes I owed, and Virgina refused to recognize the amended forms, and they did eventually return the money, minus a fine.
H&R Block cost me $600 in their mistakes.
I will eventually get my revenge.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
And so, after removing the ads from her blog (they weren't really earning much money anyway) slashdot decided to mention it on the front page..
I bet she's thrilled.
Never trust an atom. They make up everything.
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.
We just found ourselves an honest lawyer.
Good thing to see the system is taking care of it.
MMO Quests are like orgasms:
You may solo them, I prefer them in a group.
So an honest lawyer...I guess it is true then. 99% of lawyers make the rest of them look bad.
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
I've been unemployed for about 2 years now. I live in backwater Reno, NV and had worked in the gaming industry. Two strikes against me, I know. I had been in Silicon Valley for many years, but wanted a cheaper/nicer place to live. Its nice here, but if you make more than $100,000/year, they think you're some overpaid wallstreet crook.
Anyways, during the course of my job hunt I formed an LLC so I could accept 1099 work rather than just FT W2. I add a line to my contact letter that says, "I am available for full-time W2 employment, as well as contract-based 1099 projects." That's it. That's the whole deal.
Once Nevada found out about this they claim I own and operate a company, and are SUING me for 1 year's back unemployment. Uh, I don't have $12,000 sitting around guys. That's because I'm UNEMPLOYED.
I'm guessing that the state is just broke, and looking for every excuse they can to deny any benefit they can.
I one instant I just went from "moderate democrat" to "conservative republican", too. Interesting.
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?
Hmmmm.
I wonder if selling used games and videos on ebay constitutes income? I could probably argue "I paid $20 but only sold it for $10, so that's a loss not an income," but a lot of hassle. Maybe I won't be doing my annual Christmas clean-out/sale after all.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
So all we have to do is give everyone in the country $1/day and voila: 100% employment rate!
The government better keep it's hands OUT OF MY MEDICARE!
Not really. While those are all sources of income, very few people would consider them for a primary occupation, and most people earning income from such ventures are still searching for a new career. Unemployment benefits should not punish those who put the effort in to maintain their livelihood simply because the government is too lazy to make a distinction between supplementary income and an actual job.
A similar thing happened to my Mom a while ago. She was injured on the job and taking L&I pay. With all her spare time I helped her set up a blog. Eventually she put Google ads on it and started raking in the big bucks (to the tune of about $3/month). After a few months of this, L&I got wind of it and claimed that this proved she was no longer injured and therefore entitled to no benefits.
She fought this decision and (eventually) won by pointing out that, even though her ads were 'making' money, she had never been paid since her ads never equaled $100 or more (as required by Google). If she had ever reached the $100 mark (even if it had taken years) she probably would have been out of luck.
But in her case, it all worked out well in the end. Her injury was due to and incident of workplace violence where her employer had been warned of the danger multiple times in the past (but did nothing to protect their people). She settled just a few days ago for $500K.
I judt got a nre Kinesis keybiartf so please excusr ant egregiou typos.
They didn't stop her checks. They merely reduced the payout to reflect her new "part time but not fully employed" status. Unfortunately rather than subtracting $1 each month they subtract a percentage - about 33% - off your check.
That's why she removed the ads, so she can go back to getting full checks instead of ~66% checks.
"I disapprove of what you say, but I will defend to the death your right to say it." - historian Evelyn Beatrice Hall
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.
With unemployment and welfare folded into one smooth curve, there're no perverse incentives and we don't have to pay an army of bureaucrats and lawyers to figure out who doesn't deserve assistance.
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.
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 $1,000/week from Avon then there's absolutely no reason you should be getting unemployment of any kind... But that doesn't seem to be the case in this particular instance.
"Work is the curse of the drinking classes." -Oscar Wilde
If one believed in this kind of "safety net", the obvious decision would be to cut some fraction of a dollar per earned dollar, until the benefit evaporated.
In this way, you'd have much less of the "ah, to hell with it, I'll stay unemployed" crap going on.
Oh, I knew a guy who'd work six months, get "fired" to go on unemployment six months, then back to work, whatever the minimum amount of time was to keep this up in perpetuity. He was rather proud of this. He was the foreman of my factory sweeping crew I worked on in summers during college.
Regardless of anything else, there are plenty of people for whom that level of subsistence is A-Ok. Any actual scientific studies to determine the percentage? Note: sob stories don't count.
(-1: Post disagrees with my already-settled worldview) is not a valid mod option.
I hear there is an honest, unemployed lawyer in New York. See if she can practice in Virginia, and sue Block.
Why, without your clothes, you're naked, Miss Dudley!
You too can support a 1st world unemployed person, all it costs is 1$ 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
No. Actually taxes are based on both where you live and where you work. That is, you are subject to their income tax rules if you live OR work in the state. Most states have built into their tax codes methods to avoid double taxation between states. The majority of these are via a credit on the resident state tax return for taxes paid to the non-resident state. Or, in other words, the state where you WORK gets the tax money. So for example, if you were a resident of Colorado on a temporary assignment in Texas, you would pay Colorado income tax on that money, because there's no income tax from Texas to generate a credit. If you were a resident of Colorado on a temporary assignment in California, you would file a tax return for both California and Colorado. You would pay the California taxes, and then apply taxes paid to California as a credit on your Colorado return and end up not paying Colorado income tax (so long as California has equal or greater tax rates than Colorado, otherwise Colorado would take the difference.)
There are certain exceptions. For example a few states have reciprocal agreements. As you experienced, Pennsylvania and New Jersey have a reciprocal agreement. What that means is the states have an agreement not to tax each other's residents. So Pennsylvania residents that work in New Jersey will pay only Pennsylvania income tax and New Jersey residents that work in Pennsylvania will pay only New Jersey income tax. But this is the EXCEPTION not the RULE. In fact, Pennsylvania only has reciprocal agreements with 6 states (Indiana, Maryland, New Jersey, Ohio, Virginia, West Virginia) - had you worked in any other state with an income tax you would have paid income tax to the state you worked in. And the majority of states have no reciprocal agreements at all.
That depends entirely on the particular state.
In Minnesota, you could turn around after that one-month temporary job and receive benefits from the first job (assuming you did not already exhaust them). Also, part-time work will reduce benefits dollar-for-dollar until you exceed 32 hours a week (or make more money from part-time work than you'd receive on unemployment).
As you point out, the real problem here is a system with idiotic rules, not her honesty in reporting $238.
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.
You can save money no matter how much you make. Saying "I don't make enough to save" is bullshit. People who make under 20k per year. In most areas you can rent for around $500 per month - it may be a shithole but it's a place to live (in some areas $500 gets you a damn fine apartment). That's about $6k per year. You can eat well for about $20-25 per week if you buy the right foods, which ads up to around $1000 per year for food. If you wanted to live on ramen you could cut that down to under $250 per year, but I don't advise it, you'll be malnourished in short order. Give another $3000 per year for things like laundry, clothes (you ARE buying cheap walmart clothes instead of those designer jeans, right?) and other miscelaneous expenses, and you've got $10,000 per year that a person making $20,000 per year can save. Even with minimum wage you can still save $3k per year. Anybody can get a minimum wage job, even in this economy. Most anybody can manage a second, part time job as well.
The problem people have is they think "extras" are necessities. Cell phone? Luxury item. Car? Yeah, it's a luxury too. TV? Cable? Internet? All luxuries. Making more money only makes this problem worse, as people tend to buy more and more luxuries instead of saving the extra, like they should.
Back to the unemployment issue, what is really disturbing, is that the unemployment benefits are all or nothing. The fact that they don't care if your supplimental income doesn't come close to what even unemployment benifits provide is stupid, and isn't exactly a good way of encouraging someone to find a new job. This all or nothing nonsense needs to go. Just adjust the unemployment to take into account the supplimental income - adjusting it up until the supplimental income is greater than the unemployment benefit, at which point the benifit goes away entirely.
The fact is, if she was a high-paid lawyer before she lost her job, chances are she paid more in unemployment insurance while she was working than people making under $20k even made, and she deserves some of that back when she falls on hard times. Cutting her out for $1 per day is utter bullshit and you know it.
This attitude of "You're rich, you should support me" is exactly the attitude that keeps poor people poor (and getting poorer) and rich people rich (and getting richer). How about we take a little responsibility for ourselves, and do away with unemployment insurance altogether, huh?
Security is mostly a superstition... Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. - Helen Keller
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.
Not sure what unemployment is like in the peoples republic but here in Ohio the max payout is $502 per week and that's for a family of 4 that previously made at least $52k/year. From that $502/week you get to pay federal and state taxes so your takehome is probably about $400/week, not exactly something that is going to make you rich. If the production company routinely lays off people then they are definitely paying for (at least some large percentage of) those wages in the form of unemployment insurance so just consider it part of their compensation package.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
It's a general problem with any kind of social service in most parts of the United States. If you start making any money at all, whether or not the unemployment, welfare, SSI/SSDI, etc are a considerable part of you being able to get on your feet, you almost immediately start to lose benefits. American social service/social insurance programs shoot themselves in the foot.
Actually yes lawyers can be unemployed. I worked as a programmer in a law firm, and a lawyer was hired as a programmer because he claimed he couldn't find work as a lawyer. I trained him on Visual BASIC, Crystal Reports, and ASP 2.0 VBScript programming. After six months working as a programmer, he claimed he couldn't handle it, and that the job was too stressful and he quit and got hired as a lawyer by a rival law firm. I don't know why a lawyer would want to work as a programmer without any programming experience, but as I taught/tutored him in programming he taught me a bit about lawyers and the law. Unless a lawyer is well known, or working for a major law firm, they can suffer from periods of unemployment. Since he got a job working as a programmer for the big law firm we both worked in, it helped a rival big law firm hire him on. He couldn't get a job at my employer as a lawyer so he applied for a programmer position, as he had entry level knowledge and I was always given the task to train new programmers to get them up to speed because I have a lot of experience and worked in a college computer lab training students and debugging programs, and other jobs where I trained programmers like when I was a federal contractor for the US Army before that.
Remember, Slashdot does not have a -1 disagree moderation, and no, troll, flamebait, and overrated are not substitutes.
Some of you are treating unemployment benefits like some form of communal welfare, like the regular welfare program. While it is considered a form of social welfare by the strict definition, it is specifically funded by employers as part of payroll taxes. Both Federal and State unemployment taxes are paid by every employer for each full-time employee they have, and act as insurance premiums. Not only that, but to qualify for benefits in the first place, you have to lose your job through no fault of your own. People who get fired for cause have no claim to benefits, even though while employed there were taxes paid on their behalf.
I have no problem with this lawyer drawing benefits, regardless of what her income might have been. And despite the common misconception, not all doctors and lawyers make a killing -- there was an article on CNN just the other day about an MD who makes more selling clothes on eBay ($120K) than their doctor's salary (<$120K), so she quit her doctor job to stay home with her kids and continue the eBay business. That may sound like a lot of money to some of you, but damned if I'd go through medical school, internship, years of residency, continuing education, ever increasing malpractice premiums, etc. for $120K a year.
So, everyone should be entitled to draw the benefits that were paid in on their behalf as long as they're attempting to find work. And in most states I'm aware of (or had unemployment experience in), you're allowed to look for work commensurate with your experience, position, and income levels while drawing your benefits. For example, computer programmers are not expected to choose between unemployment benefits and flipping burgers -- they're allowed to hold out for a similar job in the computer field, as long as they demonstrate that they're actively seeking such work. Along the same lines, in many states, you also draw benefits that are proportional to your former salary (and thus proportional to the taxes paid to fund your benefits), so everyone doesn't draw the same amount.
The trick is, if you do decide to take that McD's job (or mow lawns, or consult, or whatever) to try and get closer to your customary income level, then that constitutes employment and now you've given up your unemployment benefits, and my not be able to re-qualify if you voluntarily cease that employment. So if you intend to draw benefits, don't do ANYTHING that would constitute income, no matter how minor.
You're probably thinking of the requirement to issue a 1099-misc (which is $600/year) or the requirement to pay self employment tax on self employment income ($400/year). There is no "don't have to report if less than $500/year" law. Due to the rounding done on a tax return, you effectively don't have to report anything less than $0.50 (because it rounds to 0) but otherwise you are legally required to report income regardless of amount. Now, despite the fact you're supposed to report all income in practice a lot does not get reported. Anything received in cash where an information document is not filed to the IRS often is not filed simply to avoid paying tax on it. Interest and dividend income under $10 is often not reported because no 1099-int or 1099-div is filed for amounts under $10 (in a tax system where most people just dump all the 1099's and w-2's at their tax person's office people simply don't think about it, it's not intentional tax evasion and most of the time makes no difference anyway.)
They decided, for her, that the money she was collecting was sufficient to live on...
No, they didn't. Unemployment insurance is NOT welfare. The labor dept in this case did exactly what they were supposed to -- enforce the law as written.
The law is crazy and dumb, but that's not the Labor Dept's fault. It's the legislature's.
It will be worse when the government passes universal healthcare coverage. Under the current proposals, they will tell you whether you're insurance is sufficient, and if not, will fine you for not having the proper coverage. Eventually, as government continues it's reckless spending, more and more people will be told their coverage is insufficient as they try to cover the increasing debt. Then, you will decide to get the best coverage available so you won't be fined, and that will result in being taxed for having a "luxury" plan.
This would be BETTER and LESS WASTEFUL if we actually had a real welfare state -- the gov't guarantees a rock-bottom standard of living for everyone (food + shelter + healthcare), and every dollar you make beyond that is progressively taxed until you're supporting yourself. (progressive: very little % tax on the 1st dollar, slightly increasing % tax on the last dollar. You know, like how the system works now until about 250,000.) Why are we wasting our nation's wealth in shifting this woman from "unemployment" to "welfare", anyway? Send her a check, tell her to go volunteer if we need to, and ever, ever, EVER take a dollar away from her for a dollar she earns.
If you want to go full bore SMART, we could even abolish the minimum wage and require complete portability of employer-provided healthcare benefits, to untether the market from our social engineering The republicans SHOULD be making these last two proposals -- but since they're focused on scare tacticsk they aren't.
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.
Unfortunately, that's not what the unemployment rules say. Your benefits aren't reduced if you're earning income, they end when you take a job or become self-employed. If you become unemployed again within a certain length of time, you can resume your previous claim instead of having to file a new one.
This is one reason I'd personally like to take welfare and unemployment, fold them all into one system and re-write the rules:
If you're disabled, elderly or a minor, you qualify automatically.
If you're healthy and able to work, you qualify if:
In all cases, your benefits are calculated by taking the maximum benefit amount you qualify for that week and subtracting 1/2 of your income for that week. The maximum benefit amount is just the larger of a) the current welfare benefit you'd qualify for and b) the amount of unemployment benefit you'd get by virtue of what you've paid in while working. No disruptions, no bouncing back and forth, the only real distinction is at the point where you exhaust your unemployment account and drop back to the welfare benefit amount.
I call this the law of Assholes.
Assholes ruin everything for everyone else. They go searching for ways to be just annoying enough to be an "asshole" but take great care and diligence to make sure that they don't run afoul of any rules/laws that might be in place.
It doesn't matter where you draw the rules/laws, they are assholes, and will always exploit the current version to perfection.
Then, somebody comes along and says "There ought to be a law" because of some asshole somewhere. There is no cure for assholes, because they will always exist. And passing ridiculous rules/laws to prevent them from being assholes is stupid as it is pointless.
I know one asshole, when confronted about being an asshole ("you're ruining it for everyone else"), said "I don't care, I'm just playing by the rules". And when the rules changed because of the asshole, it diminishes us all. They don't care about "everyone else" which is why they are assholes.
They just need to have their asses kicked.
Agent K: A *person* is smart. People are dumb, stupid, panicky animals, and you know it.
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.
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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.
Wow, I just looked it up and CA maxes at $450/week! That means a state with a 6% higher cost of living gives 12% worse benefits. Worse yet for those guys they are probably living within commute of LA so they really have an ~50% higher cost of living than most urban areas of Ohio. Anyone who thinks that receiving an extra $450/week is going to make those guys rich or make you poor is just fooling themselves. I can pretty much guarantee you that they would MUCH rather have a steady job that pays less, nothing will take years off your life faster than not knowing when your next paycheck will come in.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
"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.
And you don't think that system is broken?
A system where poor people have to sit in "Emergency Rooms" for treatment? Or wait till their condition deteriorates into an emergency?
It's cheaper if the USA just quickly killed their poor people who are sick, rather than do it slower like now. And more honest in some ways.
Yes I know if you actually give the poor preventative healthcare they might live way longer and cost the system more (everyone dies eventually - it's just postponing the inevitable).
But one would have thought that the most powerful country in the world could use some of its power to help its poor, needy and weak.
And worse - it seems that the US system still costs a lot even if it isn't giving decent treatment to that many...