Being good stewards of the taxpayers’ dollar
The Governor of Wisconsin is really terrible. The worst. He likes to inflict harm on people who lack money.
Governor Scott Walker on Wednesday, May 4th approved a rule requiring certain Wisconsinites receiving unemployment insurance benefits to pass a drug test.
“This new rule brings us one step closer to moving Wisconsinites from government dependence to true independence,” Governor Walker said in a statement issued to FOX6 News.
Insurance is not dependence. Unemployment insurance is funded by workers and employers, and it’s insurance, so there shouldn’t be pointless bullying hurdles to getting it. Scott Walker is a bad man.
According to Governor Walker’s office, by being good stewards of the taxpayers’ dollar and fighting fraud and abuse, Wisconsin transformed its unemployment insurance trust fund from a $1.3 billion deficit in 2010 to a $743 million positive balance, and employers now pay less unemployment insurance tax as a result of these efforts.
Unemployed people were made poorer, but I suppose they deserve it, because they’re unemployed.
Via Miriam Ben-Shalom
One may wonder what he is smoking. I might guess what he is drinking.
It was a bad day when they made welfare a bad word; it was even worse when they made all money handed out by the government to workers (unemployment, Social Security, etc) into welfare, even though we may have paid into it and therefore it is our money.
Apparently the most disgusting and vile thing you can do in this country is be poor. Even if it isn’t your fault. I know, I know, in their world it is ALWAYS your fault you are poor. The way the presidential candidates loved to stand up there and talk about their working class mothers and fathers, without seeming to realize that all that work their parents did was to make sure they got to be well off and important, without having to work unbearably hard for it. Their parents figured out how to send them to the high-powered schools; they were more fortunate than many children of bartenders or other working class individuals who worked just as hard but circumstances prevented them from reaping that sort of reward. No, it was just that they are lazy. The waitress serving extra tables because someone didn’t show up that night? Lazy. The union worker who just put in a 12 hour shift of backbreaking labor? Lazy. The teacher who struggles to overcome the apathy and outright hostility of the parents, students, and administration to somehow teach her students and juggle all the other responsibilities? Lazy. The nurse who answers the button when you push it, insisting on being given just a bit more TLC than your neighbor? Lazy, lazy, lazy. I could go on, but you all know this.
Thank FSM he didn’t become president. Now we must make sure the clown in that circus isn’t made the ring master.
You mean the Unemployment Trust Fund has more money in it during a period of (relatively high employment) than during a period of relatively high unemployment? Miraculous! I mean things like that don’t just happen. Or, then again, maybe that’s exactly what happens over the course of a business cycle. Next up, Walker takes credit for all that convenient outdoor lighting on sunny days.
As for drug testing benefits, this has always failed to find many drug users among the people claiming benefits, but it’s great corporate welfare for drug testing labs.
Unfortunately that ideology is not confined to the US. The myth that unemployment is entirely the fault of unemployed workers serves corporate interests very well indeed. People usually lose their jobs because of structural or cyclical change, or perhaps because of a recession caused by the greed, incompetence and absolute criminality of financiers. One of the great mysteries in Western politics is, given that most conservative parties represent perhaps the interests of 15 to 20% of the electorate that they’re elected to government.
By OECD standards the US has a very high degree of social inequality and an inadequate social security system, there seems to be a correlation.
iknlast,
In a social democracy, the principle is not necessarily whether it’s ‘our money or theirs’, but who is deserving of state support. Of course workers can contribute to various pension funds at their own discretion, however that’s a different situation.
I don’t know about other Western democracies, but in the US, if the worker is terminated for their own fault, they may not be entitled to unemployment. There is all sorts of paperwork, and bosses can often block the payment of benefits if the worker was terminated for cause (or if they can convince the people in power that they were terminated for cause). So, by definition, a person getting unemployment is assumed not to have been terminated based on their own fault, though I suppose there probably are employers who don’t bother to file the paperwork.
That sort of depends on the issue. When we are talking about the rich, everything is about it being their money – they worked, they earned it. When they want to cut taxes, they claim they are giving us “our money” back. It’s only when we actually need some of “our money” that it becomes whether we are deserving. And that is an indecent standard, anyway, since society often deems people as undeserving based on things that are “different” and have a very expansive view of who is “bad”.
Blockquote fail – sorry! Brain fried from too much grading.
Yeah, a worker who got fired for coming in stoned or even failing a drug test would be considered fired for cause and not be eligible for unemployment (and the employer wouldn’t forget to say so). A person trying to find work is probably not going to be using, not only because they have to watch their spending, but because testing for drugs is a common requirement before getting hired.
iknlast,
“So, by definition, a person getting unemployment is assumed not to have been terminated based on their own fault,”
That’s a specific situation, i.e. someone has been fired. My point was in regard to those individuals who are, for whatever reasons, unemployed, e.g. school or college graduates who have never been unemployed in full time work. ‘They’re too choosy or undisciplined etc’, or retrenched workers whom employers consider past their ‘use-by dates’, that is, too old. I understand your argument, however I was referring to the self-serving ideological argument, not specific US bureaucratic requirements, even though they might reflect the prevailing ideology of the ‘undeserving poor’.
“That sort of depends on the issue.”
“When we are talking about the rich, everything is about it being their money – they worked, they earned it.”
That might be appropriate in the US which has relatively weak social democratic traditions. In most advanced societies, taxes are used to pay for collective goods, that cannot be provided by other means. The issue is not only concerned about welfare. Taxpayers don’t have any personal or individual claim on the taxes they have paid, whether they’ve paid $1000 or a $1000,000 in taxes. As to the rich ‘earning’ their money, many of the world’s plutocrats are basically rentiers anyway and consumate tax avoiders.
iknklast – what blockquote fail? I can’t correct it because I can’t see the problem.
I swear, it was there! Maybe there is a god? No, it was probably just my computer misbehaving again.
RJW – I don’t know where you live, or what the situation is, but here in the US, unemployment benefits are for those who have lost their jobs. It isn’t for those who are just unemployed for things like being a student. And it is for a limited time, which Congress did have the decency to temporarily expand during the recent downturn.
When I was unemployed, I was not entitled to unemployment because I left for medical reasons and was on disability. When my brother was unemployed, he was not entitled to unemployment because he had not been employed. If there are people getting unemployment for random reasons? I don’t know of any way that works here. We usually just call that welfare (and i think that already might require drug testing; I don’t know).
iknlast
I’m in Australia. There’s still some confusion, I wasn’t referring to the bureaucratic requirements but to the ideological prejudices of the plutocracy and their agents in power against the ‘undeserving poor’. That is, people who have lost their jobs or who have been unable to find employment.
From your comments Australian unemployment benefits are both more generous, less punitive and more complicated than the US equivalents. There are a number of different schemes for the unemployed, which are basically unemployment benefits by another name, with associated ‘activity requirements’. Your brother, for example, would have probably be entitled to some form of benefit if he lived in Australia.
Successive conservative governments here have been overtly or covertly, eroding the unemployment benefits system. I’d still regard it as more humane than yours in the US. If the unemployed pass the ‘activity requirements’ ie proof of job-seeking or participating in training schemes, they could probably stay on the dole indefinitely.
Of course the myth is that there are jobs available for all the unemployed, they’re just not trying hard enough.
On our welfare system, if you are looking for work, you might be able to draw benefits – for 5 years. No more. Lifetime. So if you are on benefits for 5 years, then later in life have another period where you can’t work or can’t find work, you are out of luck. No more welfare.
This was pushed through in the 1990s by Bill Clinton. It was a conservative’s dream, but it required a “liberal” to get it done. There is also a provision that if you are looking for work, and you turn down a job for any reason, you will lose benefits. Also, you cannot tell them there are certain times you can’t work. So if you have small children and can’t afford daycare, and you can only work an opposite shift to your spouse, too bad for you. If you are (like I was) working on a college degree and had to have a schedule that fit with my classes, too bad for you. They essentially offered me $75 a month (and only that high because I had a child) on the contingency that I would drop out of college to take a minimum wage job (or lower – waitresses are expected to survive on tips).
Then all you hear on the news is about people who are buying Cadillacs and huge mansions with welfare. Not happening. I am sure there are a handful of people who have wealth socked away but no income that have figured out how to game the system, but those aren’t the people they are trotting out. Reagan constantly invoked a so-called “welfare queen”. His example was just made up – and of course, always black.