The Glade 4.0

True, but who collects on the insurance when it's time to collect? The employee, not the employer. It's money paid on an insurance policy for the employee; it's the employee's money.

LOL.

NM then.

It is my money, its factored into the cost of my compensation. My employer couldn't give two shits if I cost 60,000 40,000 of which was pay and 20,000 was tax and fees or if 2,000 was pay and 58,000 tax and fees. It came out of my wage - it is my money.

Get out of the gutter of thought and raise yourself up to a human level, maybe if your head wasn't so full of the crap that floats down there you would see the only thing I am doing is standing on my own two feet.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

There's a subtlety here that I think is getting lost. The beneficiary of a policy need not be the person paying the premiums. For example, your auto insurance policy has a personal injury protection limit on it. If you injure someone in a car accident, the insurance company pays out to them, even though they never contributed to your premiums. Would you say that the premiums you pay are "their" money? I would think not.

Your auto insurance covers injuries to other drivers/passengers because otherwise, you are potentially liable for covering the cost of their injuries. In principle, if the injured parties are paid out by your insurance company, they won't be able to turn around and file a civil suit against you, because restitution has already been made.

The idea with unemployment tax is similar. If there were no unemployment insurance system (mandatory or otherwise), the employer would be subject to more civil suits along the lines of wrongful termination, etc., etc., which would require them to pay out to the injured parties according to the lost income. Even in "at will" states, this still happens. Again, just in theory, by paying out unemployment claims via their insurance, the company avoids these lawsuits. The insurance protects the company's assets, not their employee's. Therefore the company pays the premiums and indirectly receives the benefits.

It's like any other liability insurance. Our office (like most others) has a general liability insurance policy -- not because we have to, but because we want to protect our assets from lawsuits. If some jerwad trips on a loose tile in our office while delivering copier paper and files a personal injury suit against us, our insurance company steps in, shields us from the liability (however frivolous) and pays out the claim to the delivery guy. At the end of the day, he receives the cash, but the money we put into our general liability policy isn't his money.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

It's factored into the cost of your compensation, but that still doesn't make it "your money", per se. It doesn't officially come out of your wages, and whether it practically does is only a matter of speculation. Perhaps if your employer were suddenly not required to put $2k/yr into unemployment taxes would give you a raise to $60k. Then again, perhaps already knowing that you're willing to work for just $58k/yr, they'd prefer to just save $2k/yr on payroll costs. Or maybe they'll hold your wages where they are and use the savings company-wide to hire more employees.


Can we not do this?

And for the record, while I don't have any problem at all with what you're doing, soliciting charity from others isn't really "standing on your own two feet", either.

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Its far more likely that an employer that isn't obligated to pay unemployment insurance will just keep that money. Your salary is your salary. The payroll taxes and other obligations are just that. Taxes and obligations.

Lets say you get paid a salary of $50k. On top of that, your employer pays $4k in payroll taxes, $10k in health insurance, $5k in unemployment insurance benefits. So of that $69k, if your employer was suddenly not required to pay that $5k in unemployment, do you honestly think that your salary would rise by that same $5k?

I think not. Your employer's contribution would decrease by $5k, and you would retain your insurance and salary, and be SOL when you're unemployed through no fault of your own in 2 months.

And, since this is the harsher, meaner hellfire... Delusional little muppet.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Stathol, about the last line in your last post.

In years past, Elmarnieh has stated he, and this next word is important, voluntarily gives to charity on a regular basis. He did this without thinking that someday he would need to be on the other end of that process.

Elmarnieh has also stated on several occasions that social services were once handled privately through charity and that he believes they should still be handled that way.

I actually find his move into being an internet beggar to be totally within character for Elmarnieh. He is not requiring anyone to help him, and he does not feel entitled to that help. He is letting the people he knows in on the fact he is in a tight spot and could use some help.

You can also note that he didn't set up a PayPal account asking for money, he asked for discards, stuff you don't want or need. In this way he is doing you a favor by taking stuff off your hands that just clutter up your life, seeing if he can turn a profit off your sight unseen junk.

I was going to call him on that myself, then I thought about his positions on charity. He is consistent. Furthermore, it is my belief that he will pay forward any help given to him during this time.

Damn you Elm for making my conscience defend you.

Delusional little Muppet, I like that Mus.

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The U. S. Constitution doesn't guarantee happiness, only the pursuit of it. You have to catch up with it yourself. B. Franklin

"A mind needs books like a sword needs a whetstone." -- Tyrion Lannister, A Game of Thrones

Bad analogy. You are forgetting that liability insurance, specifically the BI portion (PIP is coverage for you), is required by law (with the exception of No-Fault states in which PIP is mandated with a PD-only liability portion of the policy). Since everyone must carry this we are all both the beneficiary and the person who pays the premium. If it was not mandated then everyone's insurance rates would go down to compensate for the reduction in exposure.

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As I said, I take no issue with what he's doing. And I never said it was inconsistent or out of character. I'm just trying to point out that there's a difference between not relying on the government and not relying on anyone. I definitely don't see anything wrong with accepting charity when you need it. That's what it's for. I'm not even sure I have a problem with accepting unemployment payments, either. I don't think it's quite as black-and-white as all that.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

I don't want to get too bogged down in debating examples, but:

1) Unemployment taxes are also mandatory, so I'm not sure that this hurts the analogy

2) It's still an asymmetrical system. Insurance pays out for personal injury/property damages even if the person you struck was, and always had been, uninsured (even illegally). This is actually a pretty big problem, and one of the reasons that I don't like the way auto insurance is handled in this country. But that's a debate for another topic.

3) I knew that the mandatory nature of all of these taxes might invite these sort of arguments, which is why I also included the general liability insurance example.

The point is, liability insurance of any kind exists to protect your assets. This is why you pay the premiums, even though the money is paid out to a 3rd party. It's quite different than, say, a term life insurance policy. As such, if you want to know who's really paying the cost of the insurance, it isn't correct to just point to whoever is receiving the cash. That's just not how liability insurance works.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Little known muppet voodoo ploy to place you forever in his debt. Beware!

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"Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, and one by one." Charles Mackay

You can only draw on the funds if you involuntarily terminate your employment without prejudice, if I understand correctly (I've only received unemployment once, years ago). I'm thinking if it were recognized as "your money" you'd be able to draw on it without those conditions.

On the other hand, it's a social service, a benefit in times of need that is part and parcel of our social obligation, so it could easily be considered "your money".

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In time, this too shall pass.

Apropos of nothing, I thought this topic was going to be about stealing wifi from the neighbors...

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Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

Aside from the fact that not everyone has a car, or drives, so not everyone is a person who pays a premium.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

If the company valued it as "insurance" the market would provide for it, since they don't they wouldn't. Once the resources become available in the market competition would move those funds into wages. The fact that coercion and theft are obfuscated does not cause them to become something other than theft and coercion.

I have no respect for those who think that any person should be a slave to others nor will I feign it.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Mostly its being done as a social experiment which is why its listed under arts/entertainment. I mostly want to see if/what I would get.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

Unlikely. Your viewpoint on this is naive. What is more likely is that wages would remain static, and the funds would go to the company's bottom line.

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Holy shitsnacks!

Generating more wealth overall.

His viewpoint isn't naive, it's small-minded.

You have to look at the larger picture.

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“The duty of a patriot is to protect his country from its government.” - Thomas Paine

The question becomes what everyone is doing. By paying a higher wage you can draw better talent and repealing this would be a significant boost to compensation. Once one or two companies started doing it everyone in the region would fall in line with the end result that the market rises.

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Especially since the ending of unemploym,ent tax would be rather public knowledge there would be plenty of market pressure to move towards wages.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

I'm not trying to be snarky, but your pronouns and antecedents are so confusing here that I'm really not quite sure what you're intending to say. Regardless, we don't know what the market does or doesn't value in this case because of the government mandated unemployment tax. If that went away, maybe a private market would emerge because companies still valued it. We can't really say.


Again, this is speculative, based on your assumption that companies wouldn't be interested in private insurance against unemployment claims. It's also predicated on the idea that the employee side of the job market has the leverage to exact higher wages. That depends on the value of labor. Automatically assuming that the market favors higher wages is like assuming that the market favors higher prices on, say, lemons. It might; it might not.


Certainly it's coercive, but all taxes necessarily are. Whether it's theft or not hinges on a much larger debate about federal (and state) taxation powers. That said... if (for the sake of argument) it is theft, it doesn't necessarily follow that you, as opposed to your employer, are the victim.

As far as that goes, matters of law should be concerned with what is, not what could have been. Your employer paid these taxes out of their assets, not yours. Where they might have spent the money had they not been required to pay it is ultimately irrelevant. It is speculation, and therefore unknowable and unprovable. You can't claim that money as yours just because you think they should have or would have given it on you, otherwise.


Considering the liberties you're taking with accounting, I don't think you have any room to be lecturing other people about property rights.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

If the market existed for this type of insurance it would have already existed. Since it did not, and since claims for wrongful termination outside the scope of a private contract are themselves an infringement of property rights - it is a mandatory insurance forced on a situation that is created by those offering insurance - nothing more than a protection racket.

Stathol do you find it more likely than when such laws were passed that wages did not begin to stagnate as companies moved the increase in labor costs to calculated into compensation?

You've already acknowledged it makes no difference to the employer what total labor costs are composed of. With the release of this burden wages would rise as workers demand the freed resources.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville

This is absurd. Just because there was not a market for something at one point does not mean there wouldn't be one now; maybe no one thought of selling the product, or maybe the market conditions changes. That's like saying that there's no market now for spacelift because there wasn't one before NASA existed. Well duh, practical rockets didn't exist yet.



Why would employers necessarily respond to this demand? We have a labor surplus as it is.

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"Hysterical children shrieking about right-wing anything need to go sit in the corner and be quiet while the adults are talking."

As I said, there's obviously no market for it since there is a government mandated
equivalent. The absence of such a market proves nothing about what would arise if the mandatory program were removed.


People can enter into legally binding agreements without a written or necessarily even verbal contract. You do this all the time. It doesn't necessarily follow that all such claims from "non-contract" employees are property infringements.


Probably so, but that doesn't prove that the opposite would happen if you were to repeal the laws. Again, it depends on the value of labor, which has declined in real purchasing power since the time that these laws were enacted. But even if the labor market has the power that you think it does, it wouldn't necessarily prove your point. Rather than raising wages, employers could provide more jobs. This lowers the unemployment rate, which benefits the labor side of the market, but it doesn't put any more money into your pocket. Or the money could wind up going towards private unemployment insurance if the labor market decides that they'd rather have the benefit of that job-loss security system than higher wages.

But all of that is ultimately irrelevant. You're arguing that the money paid by companies into the FUTA system based on your wages belongs to you. You base this not on fact, but on your opinion and predictions of how the company would have spent the money if not for FUTA. Even if your predictions turn out to be correct, that isn't a valid basis for proof of ownership.

_________________
Sail forth! steer for the deep waters only!
Reckless, O soul, exploring, I with thee, and thou with me;
For we are bound where mariner has not yet dared to go,
And we will risk the ship, ourselves and all.

All one needs to do is to see if a market for the service existed before the government creation. It did not. There was no need for the service because the penalty being imposed was artificially introduced.

I don't see how you can agree that wages were stagnated due to the new impositions and thus put as a cost on to the laborer and then not acknowledge that is a cost simply because X time has passed.

The claims against a non-existant contract. For example if I were not to be hired because I was white the government would use force to settle a claim again the employer who had never entered into an agreement to not not hire me because of my race. Then to add the use of force against the company to punish them for violating a non-existant contract is an infringement on the right to contract.

It is a protection racket for the punishment is metted out by the same organization that one pays for that outcome not to occur, when the outcome is not a natural possibility without the direct intervention of that same organization.

"Pay my 500 bucks so my friends don't come in here and break your legs" - only with more paperwork.

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"...but there exists also in the human heart a depraved taste for equality, which impels the weak to attempt to lower the powerful to their own level and reduces men to prefer equality in slavery to inequality with freedom." - De Tocqueville