{"id":32245,"date":"2012-10-04T11:08:14","date_gmt":"2012-10-04T15:08:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/valorguardians.com\/blog\/?p=32245"},"modified":"2012-10-04T11:38:22","modified_gmt":"2012-10-04T15:38:22","slug":"federal-fiscal-follies-part-va-unemployment-compensation-part-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32245","title":{"rendered":"Federal Fiscal Follies, Part Va:  Unemployment Compensation (Part I)"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019ve all got our opinions about Federal entitlements.\u00a0 But I think it\u2019s safe to say that, without question, some of them desperately need overhauling.<\/p>\n<p>Take unemployment compensation, for example.\u00a0 After all, what could be better justified than providing temporary help to folks who just lost their job?<\/p>\n<p>Well, you might want to take another, more in-depth look.\u00a0 The devil is sometimes in the details.<\/p>\n<p>Like this detail:\u00a0 Federally-funded unemployment compensation is not means tested.\u00a0 And that means that<a href=\"http:\/\/www.fas.org\/sgp\/crs\/misc\/R42643.pdf\"> 2,362 Americans living in households with taxable household incomes in excess of $1,000,000 received unemployment compensation.<\/a>\u00a0 Dig a little more, and you find out that over 956,000 people living in households with taxable income in excess of $100,000 in 2009 did the same.<\/p>\n<p>Where does that money come from?\u00a0 It comes from payroll taxes levied on employers \u2013 who cover the cost by raising their prices, and pass the cost along to us.\u00a0 These payroll taxes go into specified unemployment funds; compensation is paid from these funds.\u00a0 And when these various funds set up to pay unemployment compensation runs short, Uncle Sam generally ponies up more to make up the shortfall &#8211; from Federal revenues.<\/p>\n<p>In short:\u00a0 the money for unemployment compensation comes out of <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">our<\/span> pockets, one way or another.\u00a0 <span style=\"text-decoration: underline;\">We<\/span> pay for it.<\/p>\n<p>Hey, I\u2019m OK with helping out folks when they need a little temporary help for events outside their control.\u00a0 But let\u2019s not check common sense at the door when we do that, either.<\/p>\n<p>Someone getting unemployment compensation &#8211; or any other form of public &#8220;assistance&#8221; &#8211; while living in a household having a taxable income of $100,000 or more just doesn\u2019t pass the common sense test.\u00a0 At least in my book, it doesn\u2019t.\u00a0 IMO this program absolutely screams for a <em>bona fide<\/em>, no joke means test.<\/p>\n<p>More to follow on this subject in the future, as time allows.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>We\u2019ve all got our opinions about Federal entitlements.\u00a0 But I think it\u2019s safe to say that, &hellip; <a title=\"Federal Fiscal Follies, Part Va:  Unemployment Compensation (Part I)\" class=\"hm-read-more\" href=\"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/?p=32245\"><span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Federal Fiscal Follies, Part Va:  Unemployment Compensation (Part I)<\/span>Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":623,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[177,11],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-32245","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-dumbass-bullshit","category-economy"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32245","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/623"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=32245"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/32245\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=32245"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=32245"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.azuse.cloud\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=32245"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}