You'll have to forgive my ignorance here, I know very little about US politics other than what we see over here in the news .. But it seems to me, that only the super rich have any chance of standing for presidency, and therefore almost by definition cannot possibly represent the vast majority (or the 99% if you will) that they claim too! The whole system seems to be contradictory and the 'greed is good' mantra is alive and kicking! (just my take from across the pond!)
Franco, the options are that either you are born or have become wealthy or you sell your soul to the highest bidder to fund your campaign. Obama, who supposedly represents the poor and downtrodden has already raised close to $100 million. Somehow I think most of that money did not come from the poor. Government for sale to the highest bidder is how it works now.
I wouldn't get too carried away with this example, myself, as it suggests everyone in Colorado gets $17 on unemployment; but, Colorado bases the rate of compensation on prior earnings, and a person who gets $17/hour equivalent on unemployment must have had very high wages, indeed, while employed. Such a person would be loathe to take a job doing wire assembly work, and perhaps permanently lock himself into lower paying work than he is qualified for. Once you accept work that involves less responsibility, and is less well compensated, you may never be able to climb back to where you were before: many who've had good jobs understand this well, and would want to avoid it, if at all possible.
Well V, then let's look at NY. Here the unemployment is a little over $400 a week. So what happens here when my clients look for employees. They all complain about the same thing....they can't find people. We have over 8% unemployment, but every single one of my clients who has been looking for employees says the same thing, "I can't find people!" Guess what? Obama's two years of unemployment are the big cause of that problem. Why work when they can sit at home, do some cash jobs on the side and draw down their nice checks? America, what a country!
2 years??? If I quit or get fired, I cannot draw, if I get laid off, i can draw, but only for 6 months. If I get a buy out of say 3 months, I cannot draw until the 3 month period has gone by. I can only recieve, I believe 70% of my prior income up to a max of 37K per year. For all of these reasons, I would only leave my current job to go to a better one, sitting at home is not an option.
Bob, the way it works here is that you cannot draw if you quit or if you are self employed in some regard. Other than that, unemployment has become just another government handout. We even had a situation where we found one of our clients former employees working for cash while drawing unemployment. We informed unemployment and their response was that they don't have time to investigate the fraud within the system. Is it any wonder that those of us who have our own businesses get so frustrated with the system? There are laws to prevent abuses. If you are an employer those laws are enforced with a vengance. If you are an employee, the laws are meaningless.
