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Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

moneyland.time.com

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Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#111

Post by dualogy »

krschultz wrote: post #72
nirvana wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think "like it or leave it" isn't really a useful response, and it takes the discussion into the realm of politics. I'm not going to debate the politics, but since I did "leave it", I thought it might be enlightening to share a bit of my experience. (Leaving the USA had nothing to do with unemployment insurance.) It is not difficult to find first world situations that don't involve burdensome taxes or regulations.…

I don't throw out the 'love it or leave it' for 99% of posts on almost all issues, but when a person equates taxation with theft, it's just a lost cause. We can and should debate what to do with our tax money, but fundamentally the system always ends up in a state where some people are unhappy with some of the spending. There is no way to reconcile what those on the far right and far left want. We end up somewhere in…

"and that means at the end of the day some people are unsatisfied" -- exactly! And somehow you think this is awesome? It is, for the bureaucrats. They see the pendulum swing from left to right and back every other decade, collecting their ever-growing cuts along the way, primarily for wearing a special hat.

Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#112

Post by dualogy »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #51
known wrote: post #15

US need a win-win proposition with Chindia

I know this is getting downmodded, but hes somewhat right. "Chindia" is draining our economy, by "draining our economy", I mean its destroying the people who actually do the work. For every job that is sent overseas, not only does it result in someone, an actual real person, losing their job, but a form of slave labor in a foreign country "hires" the replacement. If I was President, honestly, I would push for a 0.5%…

So apparently the real "exorbitant privilegue" is not being able to print the world's (soon to be ex) reserve currency, but being a poor country (Chindia) with billions of people willing to work their way out. Interesting thought.

Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#113

Post by lawnchair_larry »

hexis wrote: post #61

Starting a tech company is so cheap that funding should never be the bottleneck. If your idea is too expensive to start with a laptop and cheap hosting, think of another idea.

It would be unfortunate if everyone thought this way. It will be a sad day when the only innovation in the world is new web apps.

Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#114

Post by dualogy »

GBond wrote: post #37

To me the true significance, more so than this money, is the milestone of the federal gov't finally recognizing "entrepreneur" as a third category of employment status and not just the unemployed/employed binary. Hopefully this leads to further help for folks starting a company (that will in-turn create more jobs when successful) like healthcare coverage. EDIT: This will also help with mainstream cultural and social…

It will also help massively to "massage" unemployment figures in a positive spin by reclassifying a million or two of them as "entrepreneurs". (And hey, the debt ceiling can be raised indefinitely so no problem re costs. We finally arrived in The Future: the perpetuum mobile exists.)

Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#115

Post by baltcode »

DiabloD3 wrote: post #75
klbarry wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It seems to me that for most jobs it isn't true that it's being done by slave labor. I know in China, factory jobs pay much more than the average job (2x-3x more). In India, call center workers are considered one of the upper rungs of society - they are thrilled to do it. This can hardly be called slave labor...

2-3x more than 5-10 cents an hour is still slave labor. Call centers may be well paying jobs in India, but I still view it as kicking an entire society while its down. In a way, its no different than back before the civil war, white plantation owners would have slaves work inside of the house, ie, a "house negro". The parallels between the two are rather scary. Its almost like the Civil War was lost in the sense that…

The comparison would be more apt if abolishing slavery just meant that you couldn't employ black people on plantations. But those people were given rights to work for a wage, buy property with their earnings, or run businesses. What you have right now is that people in the developing world voluntarily entering employment contracts because they are the best available so far. Simply ending those contracts does not do any service. If those contracts are not "fair", we have to ask why that is. Perhaps it is because of protectionist policies in the developed and developing world?

Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#116

Post by ajross »

rada wrote: post #90

Whoa, the article is ageist, and proud of it. Though this program is geared toward people of all ages, young people are the best suited to maximize its advantages. Older generations tend to have families and other financial obligations, making it more difficult for them to transition into the roles of entrepreneurs. I am married with a young child, and my salary covers all of my family's expenses, so my husband doesn…

I read those statements as demographic, not judgemental. A median 40-something does indeed tend to have a family, more financial obligations, a more expensive lifestyle, etc... Those are just presented as facts, and while I don't have the statistics handy they jive pretty well with my 39-year-old intuition.

Nothing is saying entrepreneurship is impossible for the middle-aged, just that it's harder.

Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#117

Post by nknight »

orangecat wrote: post #88
nknight wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are precedents for it being all activities . Particularly anything you're doing that would be in line with your usual profession, whether you're getting paid for it or not. The rules vary by state, though.

So a laid off programmer could be penalized for working on an open source project to keep their skills current? Incredibly idiotic if true, but it wouldn't be the first time we've created screwed up incentives for the lower end of the income scale. I'm becoming more and more convinced that we should replace most of the welfare bureaucracy with a negative income tax.

Potentially, yes. In the case law I remember, exceptions were explicitly carved out for "hobbies", so if you can show that it's something you usually do as a hobby and that it's not interfering with your job search, you can probably avoid penalties, but I could see it being a major pain in the ass.

In reality, enforcement of UI regulations is somewhat spotty, and at least in California, a tech worker who's only on it for 2-3 months is unlikely to have any trouble. The risk isn't nonexistent, though.

Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#118

Post by gyardley »

temphn wrote: post #109
anigbrowl wrote: post #99

Earlier quoted context omitted.

More people are abandoning US citizenship because a rule change in 2008 has made it simpler, cheaper, and less restrictive to do so: http://economix.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/06/16/more-americans-...

It's by no means cheaper. It used to be free to leave. Now they expropriate 50% of your net worth. Massive shift in US policy. Used to be hard to enter the US. When they make it hard to leave , that is a terrible sign. Legal Background: www.mwe.com/index.cfm/fuseaction/publications.nldetail/object_id/3892307d-1b8e-4636-ba2b-f58609256689.cfm Color commentary: www.davidtanzer.com/david_tanzer_articles.asp?article=exit+…

Ah, yes, the 'HEROES' act. (Hard to vote against something with an acronym like that, huh?)

That's the one that might bankrupt me if either I or the federal government ever decides I'm no longer a permanent resident -- because the taxes on the value of all that illiquid (but highly-valued, on paper) startup stock, marked-to-market, would be more than my liquid assets.

And my wife wonders why I get nervous when crossing the border.

Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#119

Post by muzz »

ctdonath wrote: post #47
philiphodgen wrote: post #32

1. I run a business. Therefore I make jobs. Or don't. 2. If I fire an employee, a portion of the cost of that person's unemployment claims is charged back to me. The employer. It isn't government largesse that funds unemployment claims. It's me. 3. Will this program be yet another potential cost to me? Hard to tell from the PR and press-gab. We'll have to see the law and how it is implemented. Devil in the details, e…

"2. If I fire an employee, a portion of the cost of that person's unemployment claims is charged back to me." Can you elaborate on this? It's something I've long heard and failed to grok. How can an employer, as normal business practice, have to still pay a fired employee any amount?

Federal Unemployment Tax (FUTA) page 29:

http://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p15.pdf

If you are in the lower rate, i.e 0.6% of the first $7000 in wages, the FUTA tax is... a whopping $42

Re: Obama's job aid plan - $10,000 to $13,000 in assistance for entrepreneurship

#120

Post by ctdonath »

anamax wrote: post #106
ctdonath wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

"2. If I fire an employee, a portion of the cost of that person's unemployment claims is charged back to me." Can you elaborate on this? It's something I've long heard and failed to grok. How can an employer, as normal business practice, have to still pay a fired employee any amount?

> It's something I've long heard and failed to grok. Where do you think that the money to pay unemployment comes from?

Sorry, it was the cognitive dissonance of being required to pay someone who was terminated for the purpose of not having to pay them.

I'd like to hire people for some long term work, but cumulative BS like this makes me not bother.

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