Quote Originally Posted by Askthepizzaguy View Post
I don't know, when I look at my some 600 dollars I get to spend a month, which doesn't cover rent, food, car payments and insurance... I haven't put gas in the car except when I am looking for jobs, and I can't insure it.

I have every incentive to find a job. Even with benefits I cannot pay my bills.

Being unemployed is no sweet ticket to freedom unless you've also spit out a dozen kids and are actually making an industry out of your reproductive organs which the government ends up subsidizing. And then there is no incentive to be employed because you'd never be able to afford a babysitter. There are gaping wastes in the system, but a 1-year college man who had worked for 10 years straight since I was 15, utterly ruined due to a job loss, and 12% unemployment in my area, I'm afraid I will never see things your way.

There's no incentive to remain on unemployment for me, and most productive members of our society.
I certainly recognize that you and many people on unemployment want to get a job. However, there are large numbers of people who don't;
In a state with the nation's highest jobless rate, landscaping companies are finding some job applicants are rejecting work offers so they can continue collecting unemployment benefits.

It is unclear whether this trend is affecting other seasonal industries. But the fact that some seasonal landscaping workers choose to stay home and collect a check from the state, rather than work outside for a full week and spend money for gas, taxes and other expenses, raises questions about whether extended unemployment benefits give the jobless an incentive to avoid work.

Members of the Michigan Nursery and Landscape Association "have told me that they have a lot of people applying but that when they actually talk to them, it turns out that they're on unemployment and not looking for work," said Amy Frankmann, the group's executive director. "It is starting to make things difficult."

Chris Pompeo, vice president of operations for Landscape America in Warren, said he has had about a dozen offers declined. One applicant, who had eight weeks to go until his state unemployment benefits ran out, asked for a deferred start date.

"It's like, you've got to be kidding me," Pompeo said. "It's frustrating. It's honestly something I've never seen before. They say, 'Oh, OK,' like I surprised them by offering them a job."

Some job applicants are asking to be paid in cash so they can collect unemployment illegally, said Gayle Younglove, vice president at Outdoor Experts Inc. in Romulus.

"Unfortunately, we feel the economy is promoting more and more people and companies to play the system and get paid or collect cash money so they don't have to pay taxes," Younglove said.
$12-per-hour jobs

A person becomes ineligible for benefits if he or she fails to accept suitable work, said Stephen Geskey, director of Michigan's Unemployment Insurance Agency.

The average landscape worker earns about $12 per hour, according to the Michigan Department of Labor and Economic Growth. A full-time landscaping employee would make $225 more a week working than from an unemployment check of $255.

But after federal and state taxes are deducted, a full-time landscaper would earn $350 a week, or $95 more than a jobless check. The gap could narrow further for those who worked at other higher-paying seasonal jobs, such as construction or roofing, which would result in a larger benefits check.

The maximum weekly benefit an unemployed Michigan worker can receive is $387.

The jobless in Michigan are collecting for a longer time -- an average of 19.4 weeks last year, up from 15 weeks in 2008. State benefits last for up to 26 weeks.

The unemployed can then apply for extended federal benefits that increase the total time on the public dole up to a maximum of 99 weeks.
I haven't seen a dentist since I was 10.

I haven't had a proper doctor's visit since I was a child.

I cannot afford to go.

As for punishing those with insurance, I cannot afford car insurance at the moment, and when I am employed and I can, I can't afford health insurance premiums, which I could pay into for a decade and then be dropped because the company decided I was too high risk for them.

If minimum wage were higher I could afford it. There was a time when premiums were low enough, and a low enough percentage of the minimum wage, where someone could feed his family and have basic insurance. That's not the case anymore due to inflation and rising premiums, while the wage has trailed behind.
I think the underlying problem is with how expensive doctor's visits and other medical costs are. People shouldn't have to be on insurance in order to visit a doctor. Simply subsidizing health care is treating the symptoms, not the cause.


Sounds exactly like the bailouts to me.
I was against them as well.

I think they pay for it by living off of the lowest amount of income, so the rich are allowed to generate more profits for themselves, which they are entitled to.

But when employers and wages cannot cover essential services like healthcare, I am not going to shed one tear for a man who has to pay a whole nother percentage point of his million dollar salary so that I (and about a thousand others) can see a doctor once a year.

Just saying.
Overall, helping people pay for doctor's visits is money spent a lot better than most government funds. The problem is special interest lobbying and the huge entitlement programs. Social security is just a giant ponzi scheme, and people would be better off if they put their savings in a bank instead of having to give it to the government.


You remove any such thing as private campaign contributions, I'd support the first part.

Government shouldn't be determined by how much money one can afford to support a campaign, because then the consumers lose, and industry loses, and workers lose, and only the owners win.
What reason do you have to say that? Large wealthy donors can give a candidate who otherwise wouldn't have much of a chance a shot at getting their message heard. Like it or no, money is often equivalent to free speech and the ability to get yourself heard. The government shouldn't be the one determining who gets heard - especially since incumbents and the two main parties would use it to increase their already sizable advantage over everyone else.


In the meantime, all I am saying is that every dollar spent on the most ridiculous wastes of money, is another dollar which could be paying for operations and transplants, or feeding the poor. And that money goes directly to the producers who made those products, and the doctors who want to treat patients and get paid for it for a change. It's almost exactly a 1 dollar spent is 1 dollar not wasted exchange, as opposed to 1 dollar spent, 99.99 cents wasted affair like the fish ladder. I rather think that people of all political persuasions and classes could get behind the idea. At least I'd like to hope.
Well the thing is, there's a lot of people who believe their stupid POS project, like community theater or salmon commissions are important, and they want other people's money spent on it.

He "has a very low opion" of poor people.

He is probably one of those types who excludes many factors such as the "very successful" don't actually need money, while others are starving to death, unable to get work and live in destitute and poverty. Instead of seeing the inequality and going "Why can't these people get food?", his peers are the type that kicks them down and go "Worthless scum! You deserve it all!". Then laughs at them as he gets in his limited edition BMW 2010, off to a big hotel party, costing well over the hundred thousand for him and his select rich clienté.

He later goes to his bank account and goes "More taxes, huh, they are robbing me stupid. I pay more than those poor people, where at my 'entitlements'" then rants about it on the forum. Far removed from facts like he wouldn't even need them or would take them, even if he had them, with the riches he has got.

There is the more accurate version of events though, if he is indeed doing economics, he is probably looking at the figures and sees the spending as "waste", and he hates this waste, which of course, translates into the poor. He looks at the information from a removed setting, devoid of humanity, he doesn't associate "the waste" with poor people who are in need, they assoicaites the "waste" with scum/vermin who don't work hard enough. He doesn't factor in the socialeconomics of the situations either.


You know nothing about me, and it's hilarious.


Taxes on the rich are the lowest they've been in 50 years and our income inequality has soared over the last 30.
Wrong. They're the lowest they've been since George HW Bush.

And income inequality? A worthless statistic.

Tell me, if the poorest person makes $10k, while the richest makes $1M, and then both incomes increase - the poor person now makes $100k, while the rich person now makes $100M, isn't the poorer person better off while at the same time 'income inequality' has increased?

You know, CR, I've been meaning to ask you for a while now. What exactly is your background in economics?
I got a degree (a minor) in Economic Sciences.

CR