Quote :

"I have an opinion and you have an opinion...thats fine."

Thats...kind of..why were...here, right? I've attempted to support my opinion with arguments backed either by reasonable data or reasonable "thought experiments" to potentially explain why data produced under a healthy economy might not hold under the present economy and arguments that go against the points you're attempting to make.

It's clear you're only interested in spouting your opinion and leaving it at that, ignorance is indeed bliss. You know how I know

Quote :

"we have no way to pay these benefits"

of course we have a way to pay these benefits. You seem to be forgetting the point I made earlier (or perhaps you block it out of your mind because you'd just love to assume I'm some liberal and leave it at that) that cutting UI is the most pig headed place to start trying to cut fat. The illustration above you scoffed at is about as perfect as you can get.

And wtf

Quote :

"because it never will"

Then we should all just throw in the towel now. American innovation is dead, the liberals won. Just disband it all and let someone invade us, were done.

7/23/2010 3:36:15 PM

I'll step in real quick because I see one of those classic arugmentative slights of hands being used.

What you've strawmaned the argument into: "Unemployment insurance makes people unemployed longer".

What the argument actually is: "Unemployment insurance is a bad thing".

Now what's missing here is an very important implication that you have not even tried to prove, just either naively or maliciously assumed it. People being unemployed longer is not neccesarily a bad thing. Someone earlier claimed that "if the engineer can't find work as an engineer, he should flip burgers". This simply isn't true. It's not only better for him, but it's better for all of us if he devotes his time to finding a job that fully utilizes his talents. It's not about him "feeling better than that" or anything it's that his time is literally better spent looking for an engineering job than spending his time doing something less valueble to everyone.

And as for unemployment being a vacation, this could obviously only be said by someone who hasn't been on unemployment or has no expenses. UI wouldn't even cover my phone/internet/house. Much less car/food/etc. Every month I spent on UI would be a month cutting into my savings. I assure you I wouldn't be sitting on a beach, I'd be doing everything I could to find a reasonable job. UI just makes it so I can have $10k sitting in a low interest savings account rather than $25k to cover me being out of work.

7/23/2010 4:00:31 PM

You should choose your expenses wisely. The glory of not buying things until you can pay for them hits home when you lose your job. It sure did for me. I said thank you every day that I owned my 16 year old car and rented my home. They have books written on this topic. If you have a mortgage, you should have at least a year in no-penalty savings to cover reasonable living expenses.

I had two years saved up (I too was surprised). As such, for me, UI was a vacation. I traveled, visited family in Europe, visited all the day-vacation spots in the Raleigh area (falls lake is really nice). I did all the things I wanted to do while I was working, but didn't have the time.

True, I am an odd duck. I see no benefit from owning a new car or a big fancy house, but I do see benefit in airfare to Germany or a road trip to California. Regretfully, while working I could not take such trips, so my disposable income piled up in the bank.

And yes, like I said on the last page, it is a personal preference as to how long UI should be. I believe it should be 0 weeks, but I recognize others disagree. The argument, however, seemed to be demonstrable, as both parties agreed that "Unemployment insurance makes people unemployed longer" would be a bad thing, just one side refused to believe that "Unemployment insurance makes people unemployed longer" was true.

That said, there are a lot of hours in a week. For an engineer to spend 40 hours a week flipping burgers, they are still free to spend 128 hours that same week doing other activities, such as looking for society maximizing engineering work.

7/23/2010 5:24:18 PM

Quote :

"As such, for me, UI was a vacation. I traveled, visited family in Europe, visited all the day-vacation spots in the Raleigh area (falls lake is really nice). I did all the things I wanted to do while I was working, but didn't have the time."

Cool story bro and all, but this wouldn't ring true for the average american, which is who this extension is meant for. If you want to change the culture of homeownership and savings in america, that's fine, but cutting off unemployment insurance isn't the most effective way to do it. If you wanted to do that you'd be better off increasing sales tax and reducing tax subsidies to mortgage interest payments.

Quote :

"just one side refused to believe that "Unemployment insurance makes people unemployed longer" was true."

As I was pointing out, I believe that was due more to the part of semantic trickery. I believe they disagreed more with the implication that got to the conclusion, they just tended to focus more on the topics of the argument itself moreso than the logic that got it to where it was.

Quote :

"That said, there are a lot of hours in a week. For an engineer to spend 40 hours a week flipping burgers, they are still free to spend 128 hours that same week doing other activities, such as looking for society maximizing engineering work."

You know the concept of marginal utility, it surprises me that you would say something so silly. You're still devaluing their education, which would cause less people to go to school and decrease our comparative advantage in more skilled industries, which you know is a bad thing. Decreasing value of education is something we really have to watch out for, and doing something that goes specifically against that sounds like a bad idea to me.

7/23/2010 5:59:38 PM

Quote :

"decrease our comparative advantage in more skilled industries, which you know is a bad thing"

I know no such thing. While a less educated populace should mean a less productive populace, it would have nothing to do with international trade or comparative advantage. Canadians enjoy access to affordable airplanes just as much as we Americans do, even though they can't muster enough aerospace engineers to make them.

But to the topic of the thread, how would eliminating UI reduce the value of education? You have said yourself, UI doesn't pay much, perhaps what you can earn flipping burgers. As such, for the engineers expected future earnings, it makes no difference whether they earned that income from UI or from burgers.

To put it another way, if the expected future rate of return of getting an engineering degree is slim enough that a change of UI benefits makes it not worth it, then it isn't much of a loss to lose it.

That said, I suspect it runs the other way. Highly educated professions suffer unemployment at a far lower rate than other classes of workers. And yet, all employees pay the same tax to cover unemployment benefits (and the employees do pay it, as all employment costs are costs, be they wages or UI premiums). As such, if you cared about such things (I do not, I believe engineers such as myself get paid too much as it is, but the market has spoken) then you must accept that UI on net reduces expectant future returns to education. Something you seem to believe is a bad thing. As such, you too should be against UI in its current incarnation.

7/24/2010 1:48:30 AM

Quote :

" know no such thing. While a less educated populace should mean a less productive populace, it would have nothing to do with international trade or comparative advantage. Canadians enjoy access to affordable airplanes just as much as we Americans do, even though they can't muster enough aerospace engineers to make them."

You're tripping on some easy concepts today. Comparative advantage involves the ability to produce goods, not just to have access to them. We have a comparative advantage over Canada in the airplane market because we have aerospace schools and students who graduate from them.

Quote :

"But to the topic of the thread, how would eliminating UI reduce the value of education?"

As it's already been stated in this thread, it could force skilled labor to take less skilled jobs. When this begins to happen and people see educations underutilized, the will no longer be willing to invest in education.

Quote :

"You have said yourself, UI doesn't pay much, perhaps what you can earn flipping burgers. As such, for the engineers expected future earnings, it makes no difference whether they earned that income from UI or from burgers."

I've already pointed out how this argument goes in the face of marginal utility. That engineer SHOULD be looking for engineering jobs NOT unskilled positions. That is a classic case of wasted resources.

Quote :

"Highly educated professions suffer unemployment at a far lower rate than other classes of workers."

That goes for any form of skilled labor for obvious reasons.

Quote :

"As such, if you cared about such things then you must accept that UI on net reduces expectant future returns to education."

Well you've just described the concept of insurance, well except that you've completely ignored the entire purpose for it and instead just imagined it as an empty cost.

7/24/2010 4:08:33 AM

John Kerry's $7 million yacht that he avoided about $500,000 in taxes on could probably buy a good amount of food for the unemployed. I mean, if you want to do class warfare, don't forget the Democrats who are "millionaires."

BTW, remember good ol' Ed Schultz from the OP? You know, the guy masquerading as some sort of anchor on MSNBC? Well, here's what he had to say about Obama this week:

Quote :

"'They must have a war room at the White House. I think they've got a sissy room too,' Schultz said. 'I didn't vote for that.'"

http://gawker.com/5595047/ed-schultz-is-pissed-at-president-obama-again

Class act.

7/24/2010 4:50:27 AM

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/17/business/global/17denmark.html?_r=1&hp

Quote :

"The cold fact is that the longer you are out of a job, the more difficult it is to get a job,” Claus Hjort Frederiksen, the Danish finance minister, said during an interview. “Four years of unemployment is a luxury we can no longer allow ourselves. "

8/17/2010 10:31:28 AM

Good thing they held the unemployed as hostages in order to give the American Aristocracy of millionaires and billionaires more loot!

12/20/2010 12:22:18 PM

The American Aristocracy doesn't care what the tax rate is, they don't pay it. Just ask Warren Buffet how much he pays.

12/20/2010 2:18:02 PM

^good argument for enforcement of tax law.

12/20/2010 2:27:11 PM

No. No, it's not. It's a good argument to completely overhaul the tax code.

12/20/2010 3:21:16 PM

^If we reverted back to the tax rate of the Clinton years, we'd be doing much,much better...too bad millionaires and billionaires to pay 3 cents on the dollar....

3/23/2011 12:41:33 PM

If we reverted to those tax rates, and then could somehow uncreate all the money that has been handed to the banking and military elite, then yes, we would be better off.

3/23/2011 12:46:01 PM

Quote :

"^If we reverted back to the tax rate of the Clinton years,"

The American Aristocracy doesn't care what the tax rate is, they still would not pay it. Just ask Warren Buffet how much he paid back in the late 90's.

The tax laws are being enforced. Warren Buffet is making use of the convoluted tax laws as they exist.

3/23/2011 2:47:13 PM

^ we have a winner. The tax laws were never meant to hit the super-rich, as they were effectively written by the super-rich.

3/23/2011 4:55:40 PM

Mike Munger was speaking on NCState Campus last night and he called for a repeat of the tax reforms of 1986 when tax deductions and credits were significantly curtailed, making the rich actually pay the taxes, which allowed tax rates to be reduced while remaining revenue neutral.

Today we might settle for simply curtailing tax deductions and credits, leaving tax rates as they are, coupled with dramatic reductions in spending.

[Edited on March 23, 2011 at 6:44 PM. Reason : .,.]

3/23/2011 6:39:45 PM

I think that's a plan everyone could get behind.

Simplify the tax code.

Increase revenue because of easier enforcement.

Reduce spending.

Obama has spoken about it in the past. This seems like something that could potentially have a lot of bi-partisan support. We already have pretty low tax rates compared to the rest of the world. Balancing the budget should take priority over cutting taxes further at the moment.

3/24/2011 5:36:08 AM