Last night, Scott Brown pivoted from questions about unemployment to observations about welfare. I hope I’m not the only one to notice, and to note that unemployment compensation is not welfare.
Mr. Brown has blocked several efforts to provide additional Federal Unemployment Extensions. He has blocked multiple jobs bills. Last night, when Elizabeth Warren highlighted these votes against working men and women, he pivoted from unemployment to welfare (28:19-28:24):
“There was no one that lost any unemployment benefits. Listen, my mom was on welfare. I remember that it’s there as a safety net for people.
Later, he makes this same assertion and then goes on to associate unemployment compensation with food stamps.
Senator Brown, unemployment compensation IS NOT WELFARE.
After paying into the system, they feel like they’re ENTITLED to getting their money back? Fuck that!
That money they paid in rightfully belongs to the 0.1% for upkeep of their car elevators. They have ZERO right to it once unemployed.
Let them eat… nothing!
And let’s cut their Social Security benefits and raise the eligibility age for Medicare. After all, it’s got bipartisan magic dust all over it!
I know I’m idealistic, but the fact that lies like this go without comment from the mainstream media (despite massive nationwide coverage) really frustrates me. It’s another Scott Brown lie — he relies on and panders to the ignorance of the public about how unemployment works, and the media enable him.
Here’s the deal about unemployment: like the employer portion of the payroll tax, unemployment insurance is a per-employee cost borne by every employer. When an employer calculates the compensation cost of an employee, unemployment compensation is part of that cost.
So if you’re a worker, you’ve paid for that unemployment insurance. A portion of your compensation went to provide that insurance rather than to pay you directly. If you lose your job through no fault of your own, you receive unemployment compensation — that you have bought and paid for.
Unemployment compensation is not welfare!
There is no employee contribution, nor does it figure into employee compensation. It is an expense of doing business for a corporation. The rate is dependent on how many ex-employees of the firm draw on the balance.
Which part of “like the employer portion of the payroll tax” was unclear? It is an expense of doing business that is proportional to the payroll. More employees, more unemployment tax. Because the employer must pay unemployment insurance taxes, the employer has less to pay employees directly.
Unemployment compensation is not welfare.
I’m sure employers calculate the total cost of their labor force (wages, benefits, payroll tax, UI) and adjust what they are willing to pay employees directly. With virtually all employers paying into UI, the price workers can command, in cash compensation, surely is lower on the open market.
How’s LeCorbusier these days? J/K.
That is variable based on how the economy is doing and your experience rating, like car insurance. Public entities don’t pay into the fund – they reimburse the state what is paid out to ex-employees.
Unlike payroll taxes the employee does not make a contribution.
Corporate taxes are also an expense of doing business – so if you raise corporate taxes – – you obliviously have to pay employees less.
I said it was like the employer portion of the payroll tax. I never said that employees make a direct contribution. A closer analog is health insurance — employees do not necessarily make a direct contribution, but the cost of health insurance is still treated by the company as an aspect of employee compensation. Unemployment insurance most certainly is similarly part of employee compensation costs (unlike corporate income taxes).
Your “argument” is unresponsive to the facts of how unemployment insurance works. It doesn’t sound like you’ve run a business that has employees.
What you said was
“So if you’re a worker, you’ve paid for that unemployment insurance.”
But this is incorrect – employers pay for it the employee does not , and as I said typically after an employees has left their unemployment rates go up because the employee draws against the companies fund balance. Or in the case of the public sector this comes out of the cities or towns general fund. This is the way it works.
This is completely unlike health insurance or payroll taxes – where both the employee and the employer pay.
I made the perhaps rash assumption that readers would understand the sentence you quoted in the context of the paragraph that preceded it and the sentences that follow it.
The point of the exercise is that unemployment compensation is not welfare. It is, instead, insurance — insurance that is indirectly paid for by employees, that is only available to those who have worked, and that is proportional to how much compensation those employees have received.
Unemployment compensation is not welfare