Day 19: Killing the Poor to Save the Poor
So I was on Facebook. (I can feel the complete lack of views on this post already.) And I got into words with someone (well.. I wrote the words, they didn't respond back..) about unemployment. The State Governments of a bunch of states have done a lot of things recently to unemployment. Namely, they have mandated that there be restrictions on unemployment based on certain criteria. Some states have reduced the number of weeks that you can receive unemployment. Some have created laws to enforce drug tests on people to receive unemployment.
Where I am getting my Info.
I... I can't even begin to keep calm about this.
Even from a GOP perspective, this is FUBAR. The amount of money that had to be funneled into making these restrictions happen could have been spent trying to make jobs. Or better yet, trying to make peoples lives better on the whole. Instead we get legislation on states trying to diminish the number of people on welfare/unemployment. Hey, I have an idea. If you want less people on unemployment, try to get invested in more initiatives that will CREATE JOBS.
"Captain, this soldier is losing too much blood, what should we do?"
"Put more wounds on his body, that way there is less blood being lost on the initial wound."
Just TRY and argue against that. Cause it's exactly what we're doing. We're spending money on legislation to figure out how to not spend so much money on social programs. What. The. Fuck.
So, Seven. Seven states have drug test requirements (AH ha ha...) You know what that means? They will probably have to update their unemployment booklet, add rules about the drug tests and have extra paperwork and man hours for every person on unemployment. So, lets look at the numbers.
Combined from the seven states: Approximately 3 million unemployed workers.
My unemployment booklet was about 28 pages. So.. assuming that's average: 84,000,000 printed pages for the new booklets including the literature on the drug testing requirement. Next the paper work, since they need a copy of the drug test in order to get your unemployment.. that bumps it up to 87m printed pages. Then there's the man hours entering the new data into the database (the addition of the new fields is negligible.) Lets assume it takes an extra 2 minutes than it normally would for data entry. That's 6m minutes or 100,000 work hours. And granted, they probably won't hire on new staff, so that's another 100,000 work hours for the hard working social service employees who probably won't see a dime of extra pay for those hours. Now, the cost of those work hours is 22.5 (average social worker salary not taking taxes into account) times 100,000. Or 2.25m dollars. Now, how about those pages? Lets say.. half a cent per page.. we can stack another 420,000 dollars on there. For a grand total of 2.67 million dollars.
We could have 2.67 million dollars in the hands of the unemployment agencies. Instead we have to spend it on drug test restrictions.
AND That is just the drug test requirements. I would wager the cost of all the restrictions across the states that currently implement them probably goes above 10 million.
So... why are we doing this? We're hemorrhaging money for restrictions and requirements instead of just giving money back to people in need.
Now, some clarification: I'm not saying the social programs are perfect. Some people have made it their jobs to take advantage of these programs. But that doesn't mean we should be punishing everyone on the whole.
Just a quick excert:
"State lawmakers are considering legislation that would require unemployed residents pass a drug test before collecting jobless benefits. Some states are even considering making the jobless pay for the tests out of their own pockets (a typical drug test costs about $42/person)."
Where I am getting my Info.
I... I can't even begin to keep calm about this.
Even from a GOP perspective, this is FUBAR. The amount of money that had to be funneled into making these restrictions happen could have been spent trying to make jobs. Or better yet, trying to make peoples lives better on the whole. Instead we get legislation on states trying to diminish the number of people on welfare/unemployment. Hey, I have an idea. If you want less people on unemployment, try to get invested in more initiatives that will CREATE JOBS.
"Captain, this soldier is losing too much blood, what should we do?"
"Put more wounds on his body, that way there is less blood being lost on the initial wound."
Just TRY and argue against that. Cause it's exactly what we're doing. We're spending money on legislation to figure out how to not spend so much money on social programs. What. The. Fuck.
So, Seven. Seven states have drug test requirements (AH ha ha...) You know what that means? They will probably have to update their unemployment booklet, add rules about the drug tests and have extra paperwork and man hours for every person on unemployment. So, lets look at the numbers.
Combined from the seven states: Approximately 3 million unemployed workers.
My unemployment booklet was about 28 pages. So.. assuming that's average: 84,000,000 printed pages for the new booklets including the literature on the drug testing requirement. Next the paper work, since they need a copy of the drug test in order to get your unemployment.. that bumps it up to 87m printed pages. Then there's the man hours entering the new data into the database (the addition of the new fields is negligible.) Lets assume it takes an extra 2 minutes than it normally would for data entry. That's 6m minutes or 100,000 work hours. And granted, they probably won't hire on new staff, so that's another 100,000 work hours for the hard working social service employees who probably won't see a dime of extra pay for those hours. Now, the cost of those work hours is 22.5 (average social worker salary not taking taxes into account) times 100,000. Or 2.25m dollars. Now, how about those pages? Lets say.. half a cent per page.. we can stack another 420,000 dollars on there. For a grand total of 2.67 million dollars.
We could have 2.67 million dollars in the hands of the unemployment agencies. Instead we have to spend it on drug test restrictions.
AND That is just the drug test requirements. I would wager the cost of all the restrictions across the states that currently implement them probably goes above 10 million.
So... why are we doing this? We're hemorrhaging money for restrictions and requirements instead of just giving money back to people in need.
Now, some clarification: I'm not saying the social programs are perfect. Some people have made it their jobs to take advantage of these programs. But that doesn't mean we should be punishing everyone on the whole.
Just a quick excert:
"State lawmakers are considering legislation that would require unemployed residents pass a drug test before collecting jobless benefits. Some states are even considering making the jobless pay for the tests out of their own pockets (a typical drug test costs about $42/person)."
So that's.. about 126 million dollars spent on drug tests. (Government funded or jobless funded, which do you think is worse?) I stand corrected. I'd wager these restrictions will end up costing the government and the jobless a bit over.. 2 billion dollars all together. I'm so glad the GOP have decided to persecute those who need government checks and food stamps.
It's what those bastards deserve. How dare they ask for help from their government in times of crisis.
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