Um, how isn’t this a thing already? (Millionaire=people who earn $1M yearly)
Sorry for Fox News, but it’s the best source with this headline and it says it’s bipartisan so we should probably be good.
This is a BS title.
The bill prevents people with more than $1mil income from receiving unemployment. Far more reasonable considering everything I see says that you need a million or two to retire comfortably these days.
Someone in their 50s could easily have $1M in assets if their house appreciated a lot since they bought it and they gave a decent retirement account. Yet they could have been earning $50k a year and have no liquid assets.
Exactly.
I wonder if you could contest this under the claim that you disagree with the valuation of your assets.
Say your child made a finger painting that you hung on the fridge. Some kind of crazed, but highly respected/influential, art appraiser sees it on a visit and claims it’s worth $10,000,000. So you can’t have any communal benefits unless you sell it (but you don’t want to, because it’s your kid’s - not to mention actually selling it can be hard). Would there be no avenue to claim that the appraiser is an idiot, and it’s barely worth the paper it’s on?
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Is this actually anything anyone in this income bracket has ever done? This seems like a pointless bill to me
“IRS data shows thousands of millionaires are gaming this system to receive unemployment insurance,” [Utah Republican Rep. John Curtis] said.
Would just like to pop in here and say that terms like “millionaires” and “billionaires” typically refer to net worth/wealth, not income. This is why Jeff Bezos was able to claim some of the federal COVID aide because, despite being a multi-billionaire, his income in that year was below the threshold (I think it was sub-$100k) as income from investments didn’t qualify under the structure of the plan.
While I don’t necessarily disagree with the sentiment of people whose net worths are upwards of a million being able to claim unemployment, actually calculating net worth is extremely difficult to do, especially among the wealthy. That would put an unreasonable burden on the unemployment benefit system that would probably end up costing more in administrative costs than the money saved by not including to the ultra-wealthy in the benefit. Preventing the latter is the main benefit of universal programs
actually calculating net worth is extremely difficult to do, especially among the wealthy.
Even among the non-wealthy. For example, you might have some guy who has essentially no savings but who worked for an auto manufacturer and has a pension coming, compared to another guy who has a million dollars in his 401K but the annual income from that would be less than the first guy’s pension.
In the 90s, I didn’t qualify for food stamps. I had a minimum wage job, but the house I lived in had a washer and a dryer, which meant I was too rich for food stamps.
Were* those literally criteria that were used?
Yes.
That’s bonkers. I’m sorry you had to endure that.
That’s Indiana for you. And I survived despite it, so it all worked out, but thanks.
Not exactly related, I was a college kid looking to move out of my parents’ house back in 2007. I applied for Section 8 housing as my minimum wage job at the time technically met all the qualifications for it. I wasn’t allowed to receive it because I was in school at the time. You can’t be poor and go to college at the same time if you wanted a place to live, apparently.
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And then how do you enforce that without calculating net worth? Just let people self-report with no verification?
I don’t think it necessarily needs active enforcement. It can be as simple as:
Richy Rich: “So I claimed unemployment during my taxes, and no one stopped me! Bwa ha ha!”
Moralistic Auditor: “Wait…you did?? That’s illegal! Screw it, I always hated you, I’m going to report you to the IRS!”
IRS: “We’ve discovered you incorrectly claimed unemployment, thanks to an anonymous tip and brief investigation. Your punitive taxes have been quintupled.”You wouldn’t always catch everyone; that’s fine, as long as the cost of abusers is not outweighed by the savings of not verifying everyone.
Main problem with this is that unemployment isn’t handled by the IRS, it’s a program under the Department of Labor and administered by the States and federal agencies notoriously don’t talk to each other.
There’s also nothing wrong with just giving them unemployment benefits, but you structure your tax system so that the rich people, when they end up needing to claim unemployment, are paying more or equivalent in taxes paying into unemployment than they’re getting in the payout. You simplify both sets of laws, the IRS is in charge of collecting revenue and the subdepartment of Labor tasked with this only has to worry about dishing out your cash so the administration of the benefit is simplified, and you still get your desired result of exceedingly well off people not “dragging” the system
A bunch of attention seekers making lots of noise about a complete non-issue, while doing nothing about real corporate welfare.
It’s not a lot of noise either
Who cares if they get it? It’s peanuts for most people anyways, especially nowadays.
I wouldn’t have cared if the distribution of wealth hadn’t become so incredibly lopsided. The last thing rich people need is more money.
Plus it adds up:
“IRS data shows thousands of millionaires are gaming this system to receive unemployment insurance,” [Utah Republican Rep. John Curtis] said.
People in charge of making laws are upset when people follow the laws they pass…
?
A couple hundred dollars per week saved is a couple hundred dollars per week saved.
Something is way better than nothing in most cases.
I’m fine with them drawing on (and contributing to) unemployment insurance the same everyone else!
As am I, particularly because inflation happens and these means checks are a long-term bombshell. If the means test isn’t indexed to inflation then in 50 years you are looking at a limit that starts cutting support to people that need it.
Never means test, there’s too few rich people “abusing” the system for any means test to meaningfully reduce social program budgets.
The bill won’t prevent them from contributing to it.
I’m fine with laws applying equally across the board
If they are paying into it they should be able to claim it. It is capped at a pretty low amount anyway. If we say they can’t claim it they will be able to say they shouldn’t pay into it.
Seems like a pretty simple fix really. Just adjust the law to make sure passive income is accounted for instead of just salary. That seems to take care of the problem.
334 people upvoted Fox News? It’s never appropriate to link to that site.
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