31–40 of 147 posts
Sounds like a great incentive to start a job, work for the minimum length necessary, quit, and repeat.
The current setup has bad incentives, too; you can make someone miserable with the goal of forcing a quit instead of firing them.
This is a good counterbalance to companies that get “creative” with RTO mandates as backdoor layoffs to avoid paying out unemployment.
As with everything in America, I assume it is a non-starter to make more universal benefits. Sure it would be fine if I got unemployment for quitting, but not those people . They would just squander the opportunity! Best we all suffer rather than someone I do not like getting the same benefit.
You don't those people to become a political force enough to demand more assistance, we know how that ends.
Which is the greater moral hazard? Enabling couch-potatoes or enabling corps to have a 40 hour worker at below the poverty line cost?
A simpler solution to #2 would be to raise minimum wages.
A better solution is to tax capital gains and corporate income at a rate that is closer to personal income taxes so that everyone pays their fair share.
Yes, but with limits. How to prevent job hopping just to stay on benefits? Taking a paid vacation before the next job? I see opportunities for abuse. In the United States at least, AFAIK, employers pay for unemployment. Who pays when the employee voluntarily separates from an employer? It seems unfair to make the employer pay for an employee who left and no longer works there. I presume that cost will be paid by the…
No one is quitting their job to just be on unemployment. Unemployment benefit is funded by unemployment tax on both corporations and individuals. The unemployment benefit for CA is $40 to $450 per week. (You still have to pay income tax on that) Its much lower in conservative states. Its enough to smooth things out but not enough to live off of, you are still going to be digging into savings. Additionally you have to…
I can understand someone who is unemployed and actively searching for a professional job to believe that, but I think that looks at the issue from a privileged position. No one is quitting their professional offices jobs just to be on unemployment, but I don't think the same can be said of lower income sh*t jobs.
Such a declarative statement of "no one" cannot be accurate because there is probably someone doing just that. Working a low wage job - maybe day labor - just long enough to qualify for benefits, then quitting and coasting until they have to work again.
It's possible, so how do you prevent it?
Which is the greater moral hazard? Enabling couch-potatoes or enabling corps to have a 40 hour worker at below the poverty line cost?
A simpler solution to #2 would be to raise minimum wages.
While employed you pay "unemployment insurance" (a small percentage of your paycheck), and when you lose your job (not quit!, so fired, or the company goes under, etc.), and if you worked for 6+ months, and depending on the time worked (months of paid insurance) and your age, you can get 2-25 months of unemployment benefits (80% of your paycheck for up to three months, then 60, then 50%).
If you quit, you quit. You didn't suddenly lose your job and need help because of that, you planned it. No benefits. (except in cases where you quit due to special reasons, ie. you didn't receive your paycheck, employer did something illegal, etc.).
You do get some social benefits if you're an unemployed job seeker, but that number is much lower.
Not much abuse with the unemployment benefits (except a year or two before retirement in some cases), quite a lot of abuse of general social benefits (you get some money, free public transport, free kindergarden, some "extraodinary expenses" extra money yearly too, you have to send a few CVs every month, and you can work under the table and pay nothing.
Which is the greater moral hazard? Enabling couch-potatoes or enabling corps to have a 40 hour worker at below the poverty line cost?
A simpler solution to #2 would be to raise minimum wages.