Now you’re picking nits. The point, if you rewind back a bit, is that people are looking at “unemployment” as a line item on the budget which our tax dollars go toward paying. That’s not what it is.
I fully comprehend that this program wouldn’t exist if it weren’t mandated. I fully comprehend that it is a government-imposed program.
What it is NOT is an expense on your income taxes. Getting rid of unemployment will not ease the cost of running the government by one cent. THAT is the point which I am trying to convey.
Further, extending unemployment doesn’t add to the budget, either. While it does increase the total amount lent out by the government to cover, the money being given as unemployment is ultimately owed by the businesses that once hired those unemployed individuals, 100%.
People point at unemployment and say “HA SEE LOOK you dumb conservative! You’re on welfare!” But that’s not exactly true. Welfare is public support from public funds, hence the term “public assistance.” But if I work for McDonald’s and McDonald’s lays me off, I’m collecting unemployment directly from McDonald’s account via the state-controlled unemployment account. Every dollar I take in unemployment comes directly from my former employer, even if it passes through the state’s hands first.
If you’re going to overlook that point and say “I don’t care IT IS welfare” then fine, call it welfare.
It’s not the same as food stamps.
While unemployment might not be a tax on your personal income, for employers, it is a tax on their business, which means it impacts their bottom line, if not directly yours. (Indirectly is another story.) I’ve never had to pay the federal cigarette tax, because I don’t smoke, but that doesn’t mean that it’s not a tax.
While the government does not draw upon other resources to pay for unemployment services, the moment the government requires someone to pay a tax, regardless of who specifically is taxed or what the tax is for, and employers pay it to the government, that money becomes public funds for public use. If they were not public funds for public use, employers would not be required to pay that money to the government, and they would be able to determine on their own how to use that money instead. Unemployment is not some sort of trust the government is holding for private businesses. It is a revenue stream for the government in order to pay for services to the public.
This is not nitpicking. This is saying that your argument doesn’t make any sense. You describe a tax, then you argue it is not a tax. You describe public funds, then you argue they are not public funds. You describe welfare, then you argue it is not welfare. You are not making these arguments because these things aren’t, by definition, taxes, public funds, or welfare. You are making these arguments because you don’t want to call something you generally see as positive “welfare,” because welfare has negative connotations…connotations, btw, which have largely been manufactured by the right and are based on racist and classist allegories about the evils of people on welfare.
Welfare in and of itself is not necessarily good or bad. Welfare is simply economic assistance paid for through tax dollars. I don’t have any problems with welfare or with unemployment benefits, so I’m not saying this to disparage unemployment benefits or people who collect them. I think unemployment, and welfare in general, are excellent social services, and often help to solve a lot of social and economic problems that are only made worse by unchecked and unnecessary poverty.
What I do have problems with is people who attempt to hierarchize “welfare,” so that some welfare is better than others or that some welfare recipients are more deserving than others based on wholly arbitrary and irrational arguments, like the one you have consistently repeated.
“The only good welfare is my welfare…which isn’t really welfare because *insert completely nonsensical argument here*.” The whole point of the originally-linked article is to point out how absurd most of the outcry against welfare is: virtually everyone in this country will receive welfare at some point in their lifetime. It’s just that everyone is so convinced that welfare is bad, that since they don’t view themselves as bad people, they couldn’t possibly be receiving it. It is a 100% incorrect belief based on faulty logic.