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Comment by marze | Hacker News Reader

A nice improvement to the current system would be to continue unemployment benefits for three months after someone starts a new job. As it is, the termination of benefits [edit: upon taking a new job] is a disincentive to take new job, unless it is an awesome job.

While serving to reduce the likelihood of a sharp crash, the extending of unemployment benefits is also slowing a recovery by reducing the incentive for people to do work or start a business, even if it doesn't pay well.

Edit: for clarity

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The termination of benefits is a disincentive to take a new job? I would think the continuation of benefits would be a bigger disincentive to going out and finding a job.

Why not just eliminate unemployment benefits altogether? As a working American, why is it my responsibility to foot somebody else's bill while they search for a job they "like"?

It is not your responsibility. The unemployed person receiving unemployment paid into the system with deductions from his/her payroll.

Had that person not been employed last year (2009), and began working in 2010, and was subsequently laid off, that person would not be eligible for unemployment.

At the state level, but not the federal. There are federal unemployment benefits being granted. We didn't pay into that through past payroll deductions, so where is the money coming from if not current workers servicing the federal debt?

China?

I'm scratching my head trying to understand this.

My experience with unemployment is that it pays 40% of what your average pay was over the last 6 months up to a certain maximum. That maximum is pretty low: last time I was unemployed, I think I got a total of about $12,000 in unemployment benefits over an 8-month period. Most people can't live on 40% of their income and for the select few who can, it's because 40% of their income would be far above the unemployment cap, so they wouldn't be able to do it either.

What makes you think people aren't taking jobs because they don't want unemployment to end?

People who don't really want to work.

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