When I first started this blog I didn’t know what to put on it. I didn’t want to get into my personal life all that much and there were already countless other blogs that discussed the news (and did so better than I could). The one thing I knew I didn’t want to do was get political.
I have an issue with arguing. It’s not that I’m not good at it or that I don’t like confrontation (I don’t but I do feel that I can handle it), but rather the feeling of a need to research and learn before debating my side.
The reason I’ve decided to take this political for this post is more to find out if this suggestion for the unemployment issue has been discussed before. During the past two elections we’ve heard congressmen talking about parts of it but not in full. Below I list the steps (and reasons for them) that I feel would not only be a huge help in controlling benefits and their payouts, but also could potentially help reduce debt and create jobs. All of this came about while discussing an MSNBC article on the recent extension to 99 weeks:
1. Regulate – Regulation of unemployment benefits has always been, arguably, the biggest problem with the system as it currently stands. You’d be hard pressed to find someone who doesn’t agree that those who have been hurt by a bad economy deserve to be helped out as they try to recover. The issue is that in order to receive the benefits you have to be currently looking for work, something that can’t easily be policed. Living in an age of technology though, this should have been fixed by now.
A. Unemployment Email - This would be the first step in fixing the problem. Once you apply for unemployment benefits you will receive a unique email address that is tied to their database. The emails can be monitored by the agency overlooking the situation as a whole and the user would be instructed to only use it for their job hunt and for no other reason. All resumes should be sent through this account. Set a specific limit of X resumes going out per week.
B. Unemployment Job Board - This could work hand in hand with the email system or could be another way of setting an alternative system up. Make it username based and customizable. This can be easily done as the government has done it with their USA Jobs website. This job board would be for civilian jobs and could be accessed either by only those receiving unemployment or by everyone, with those receiving unemployment getting a designated status for tracking benefit payouts.
2. Incentive - If you turn on any cable news station discussing the economic improvements, you’ll consistently hear that there’s no incentive to hire right now. Even if the economy suddenly sky rockets, demand will always drive incentive…but so could tax credits. There were two legislators running for office (one was from Alabama I believe) that wanted to offer incentives for companies to hire people off of the unemployment list. Hiring a certain number of people would give your company a tax credit.
3. Distribution - Another major issue is the use of unemployment benefits. If you are receiving them then they should go strictly to the essentials. If it’s not something you NEED then it should not be paid for by the government. Companies large and small manage their in house purchases by saving the receipts and sending them in for reimbursement. Why this hasn’t been implemented yet is beyond me. Set a list of items that are permissible and items that are not. Utilities, rent/mortgage (depending on house size), and essential groceries get reimbursed in full. Cell phone, internet, television, car payment, and other variable assets get a dollar amount placed on them. If you’re unemployed and can’t afford it, you don’t need an iPhone….a prepaid phone does just as well for making calls about jobs and texting on them is even free in most cases. On variable items, you get reimbursed to a certain amount; purchasing over your allotted amount is placed in your hands and is your decision to keep or get rid of. This section sounds harsh but as the system currently sits, in some cases people are being paid more than they would actually be earning working at a livable salary doing retail work that is “below them.”
Keep in mind under distribution that it was much shorter to simply not list the items that would be included. Obviously items like children’s clothes should be included. It’s hard to expect a 10 year old to purchase his own pair of back to school jeans.
The most important section of the above is obviously incentive. It doesn’t matter what you implement if you don’t offer a reason to have the controlling factor to give way. Demand must increase to a point where extra workers are necessary if there are no tax cuts. What the current administration is doing is actually harming the process as it raises the cost to run a business. If a company can get 5 workers to produce 50 shirts per day and aren’t REALLY needing to push out 60 (as in their average orders are 54 for example) then there is absolutely no drive to hire anyone else….the process to send a shirt to a supplier will simply take a day longer…a reasonable exception.
These implementations would drive companies to hire and take people off of unemployment lists, helping to decrease the amount of benefits paid out overall. In addition to getting workers back on their feet, it would employ at least a small number in the system developers to create an email network (? not sure the proper term…system seemed redundant), a job board, software to scan receipts and distribute reimbursement checks among other positions.
And with the prevalence of public access to computers and internet (libraries and colleges are everywhere and I’m sure you could probably get access in a high school after hours if you really tried), there’s no sense in arguing that this puts the impoverished at a complete disadvantage.
Bottom line? We can’t blame the worker for being unable to find water in a desert…but we can’t expect them to necessarily try if they’re not thirsty. (cliche? corny? Misplace? I don’t care…it made me feel creative so I used it. That’s why it’s my blog, so i can make those kinds of decisions! haha)
