"unemployment benefits can pay up to an equivalent of $50-60K/year right now."
Wow. It's bizarre one can neither create nor add value yet proceed to receive thousands of dollars for an extended period of time (often multiples more than they will ever "pay in" to the system).
I know too many people already milking it before the pandemic (including family & friends). I accept that it is their personal choice and I don't get emotionally wound up in it or treat them different, though I do feel sorry for them. Learned helplessness combined with ego/entitlement must be a painful state of cognitive dissonance in which to live.
Hard to imagine what this looks like afterwards; it seems like each unemployment instance or broader "depression" further demotivates many Americans while dis-incentivizing the immutable values of knowledge acquisition/application, hard work, sacrifice, risk taking, etc.
There is no such thing as free money. Those who think and act as as if are merely being stripped of their human spirit in exchange. Change my view.
Edit to add: ya'll can downvote but can't share your own views or debate otherwise?
Perhaps the full name of the benefit, "Unemployment Insurance", will clear things up for you. It's insurance that everyone pays into, so that those who do happen to lose their jobs have an insurance to fall back on until they find another job.
You're extrapolating what's essentially an insurance policy into this image of some luxurious welfare state where no one has any incentive to work. That's not what unemployment benefits are.
Your commentary is the equivalent of arguing that receiving thousands of dollars to replace your car after it gets totaled is a "hand out", when in reality that's quite literally what insurance is for.
Thanks for commenting even if you don't agree with me! Allow me to respond:
"It's insurance that everyone pays into, so that those who do happen to lose their jobs have an insurance to fall back on until they find another job."
It's a TAX that everyone pays and not everyone uses - even if and when they could because they elect not to sell out their dignity by accepting money they never earned rather was taken off the backs of others.
"You're extrapolating what's essentially an insurance policy into this image of some luxurious welfare state where no one has any incentive to work. That's not what unemployment benefits are."
I never said it was luxurious, from what I can tell it's a state of living hell...just look at/talk to anyone on welfare they are by-in-large a broken peoples stripped of self-reliance, self-esteem, and self-agency.
"Your commentary is the equivalent of arguing that receiving thousands of dollars to replace your car after it gets totaled is a "hand out", when in reality that's quite literally what insurance is for. "
I don't think it is equivalent...car insurance is optional if you don't want to pay it, don't own a car (many people who opt-out). UI tax is not optional, is it?
hacker news is a hivemind. I don't agree with everything you say (one can argue there is economic value in staying home during an outbreak of a highly transmissible virus) but I do think you are right in a lot of ways (it's a perverse incentive, and unproductivity should not be subsidized in general).
"hacker news is a hivemind." Hm. I've heard this said before but I don't know what it means?
"I don't agree with everything you say (one can argue there is economic value in staying home during an outbreak of a highly transmissible virus) but I do think you are right in a lot of ways (it's a perverse incentive, and unproductivity should not be subsidized in general)."
Cool. I would advise against agreeing with everything I say ha. Look if people want to pay their own way in terms of UI over their working years and save up some sort of 'emergency/flex account' managed by the gov for when the inevitable storms roll through I think that's a fine idea.
The fact that it is forced upon all earners individual and businesses, and ultimately only used by some and then abused by a chunk of those who use is a different story. It's the equivalent of stealing money from your neighbor and their family! Just because the gov sits in between the two parties and forces the transaction somehow socially acceptable, even laudable? WTF.
As I've mentioned above, beyond normalizing this behavior is the sneaky side effects it has on the unemployed recipient...backward incentives, dependencies via erosion of self reliance.
Staying home is productive though. It slows the spread of the virus and adds value (in terms of capacity) to our hospitals and healthcare system. You can think of unemployment benefits as the government purchasing that time from employees and instructing them to use it in the most valuable way to us as a society: do nothing.
The person's time is valuable (and so they should be compensated) but the most valuable use of their time in the short-term is to not use it at all. Tech does this all the time. We just call it "rest and vest".
Wow. It's bizarre one can neither create nor add value yet proceed to receive thousands of dollars for an extended period of time (often multiples more than they will ever "pay in" to the system).
I know too many people already milking it before the pandemic (including family & friends). I accept that it is their personal choice and I don't get emotionally wound up in it or treat them different, though I do feel sorry for them. Learned helplessness combined with ego/entitlement must be a painful state of cognitive dissonance in which to live.
Hard to imagine what this looks like afterwards; it seems like each unemployment instance or broader "depression" further demotivates many Americans while dis-incentivizing the immutable values of knowledge acquisition/application, hard work, sacrifice, risk taking, etc.
There is no such thing as free money. Those who think and act as as if are merely being stripped of their human spirit in exchange. Change my view.
Edit to add: ya'll can downvote but can't share your own views or debate otherwise?