Unemployment Benefits Ending

I’m tough on unemployment benefits.

I admit it.

While I believe that folks should get what they “paid” for I am totally TOTALLY against extending benefits.  99 weeks is enough, to think that we need more than that is …. simply …. silly.

Take for example, this story out of NPR:

The expiration of unemployment compensation this week is having an impact on the bottom line and the outlook of many people who have been out of work for months.

I resonate with the fear and anxiety of these people.

December marks the 17th and final month that Patty Moreno will be receiving $392 a week in jobless benefits.

So, to be honest, Patty is bringing home $392 a week.  BEFORE taxes.  That means she is earning less than 10 bucks an hour if she worked for 40 hours a week.

Please understand that.  We are arguing over a TEN FUCKING DOLLAR AN HOUR JOB!

10

Ten Dollars.

An hour.

Okay, roll the tape:

She runs out as she’s expecting her first child.

Blink.

Blink

This from wikipedia:

Pregnancy is the carrying of one or more offspring, known as a fetus or embryo, inside the womb of a female. In a pregnancy, there can be multiple gestations, as in the case of twins or triplets. Human pregnancy is the most studied of all mammalian pregnancies. Childbirth usually occurs about 38 weeks after conception; i.e., approximately 40 weeks from the last normal menstrual period (LNMP) in humans. The World Health Organization defines normal term for delivery as between 37 weeks and 42 weeks.

40 weeks.  40 weeks divided by 4.something weeks per month and we get NINE MONTHS.

Patty has been unemployed for 17 months and is now expecting child.

There was, honest to God, a time in my life when I didn’t keep a dog because I couldn’t afford her.  I swear to you. The fact that Patty GOT PREGNANT while unemployed in MIND BOGGLING STUPID!

In fact, she was unemployed at least 8 full months before she became pregnant.

Okay, so dear Patty, how goes the job hunt?

“I do get interviews, but once I get into the interview, they kind of just realize that I’m expecting and it’s not going to really work for them, I guess,” she says.

Yeah, no shit!  Because who is going to hire a person that is going to turn around, in a matter of weeks, and demand FMLA benefits ALL the while generating taxes for the new Health Care law?

ALL KINDS OF PEOPLE!

However, there IS hope:

Copeland has had to trade down to stay employed.

He lost a job in custom painting work and was on benefits until this spring. He moved from Colorado to his native Tennessee. And the week his benefits ran out, he took the night shift cooking at a chain restaurant — working for $11 an hour in the type of job he’d done years earlier.

“When I first started collecting unemployment benefits, I thought: ‘This is good. It helps people get back on their feet.’ “

Mr. Copeland found a job!   But why did he take it?

Copeland admits that — although he never turned down a job while receiving benefits — he also didn’t look as hard as he could have. Also, most of the jobs he was applying for paid roughly the same as what he was collecting in weekly benefits.

Ahhhhh…I see.  If you can make $392 a week NOT working or $392 working 40 hours a week, what are YOU going to do?

And is Mr. Copeland bitter?

Copeland says if he’d been able to collect payments for the maximum 99 weeks, it would have been a disincentive. “When people run out of unemployment, they go to work,” he says. “And I don’t think extending unemployment benefits helps people go back to work.”

Copeland says although his after-tax income is the same as what he was collecting on unemployment, the main benefit is that he feels he is finally taking care of himself.

Nope.

Econ 101 people.  Econ 101.

UPDATE:

I’ve been corrected on FMLA.  There are certain requirements that Patty would have to meet.  As a new employee, she most certainly would not have met them.