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
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...
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.
If I'm getting a New York lawyer, I'm getting a New York Country Lawyer
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.
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.
"...I used to be disappointed that so many of the best minds in the country were being devoted to this enterprise...I mean lawyers, after all, don't produce anything...and I worry that we are devoting too many of out best minds to this enterprise...I don't have any complaint about the quality of the council, except maybe we're wasting some of our best minds"
-- Antonin Scalia, in a June interview with C-SPAN
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.
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.
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!
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.
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.
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.
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
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.
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.
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.
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.)
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.
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.
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.
I worked at a Wall St. law firm for nearly 20 years (administration, not legal), and most of our lawyers lacked any identifiable skill, and definitely even a trace of analytical or verbal skills. They were drudges in the worst sense of the word -- hacks who had to go through six drafts of a client memo because they were to stupid to write legibly or have someone check their grammar. Of course, they were never allowed to go to court -- we had show-pony partners for that.
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