MYP - Did you read that post. You are looking at things like India and Mexico as bastions of labor and pride. Think about that for a second.
You are basically arguing that half of the working population should be at the poverty level living from paycheck to paycheck. That's the only way it works.
Please stop putting words in my mouth. When did I ever say anything about having half of the working population in poverty? All I said was that without the government backing, people would be more willing to do jobs that they are not willing to right now.
Before you say that it was the lack of such programs that caused the poverty in Mexico and India- let me just tell you that their problems stem from corruption and in the case of India, a lot of it is actually the result of socialism and policies such as welfare (which were abandoned in 1991, which has now allowed India to grow tremendously and has allowed it to start to move away from what it used to be.)
Unemployment isn't keeping them from getting a job. Some live off of their savings, credit, friends, family, etc. Unemployment is just a safety net to tide them over while they look. Moving is a huge cost. That's just a fact. It's one of the reasons we have unemployment. People have trouble moving to the places where the jobs are. Invent a teleporter and you'll have a point. People are not going to uproot their lives, move their stuff, find an apartment, pay all the deposits involved, lose their contacts, find new places to shop, etc. just so that they can shell crabs for a few months. This is just an example of their not being an active temp market within 100 miles. Otherwise, the gaps would have naturally been filled. If not, then the people aren't willing to work for that amount of money (which is also part of the market...like it or not...in that case you design a capital intensive machine).
It is all about economic costs. If a person thinks that moving to a new location for a job will help them, then they will do it. They are more likely to do this without the government welfare because the opportunity cost of moving is lower.
Now, please understand that I am not only talking about the crabs here. There are still many other kinds of jobs available across the nation in other industries.
The problem with you and much of the left is that either you don't understand or your fail to acknowledge that the government is inefficient in distributing the wealth. I know you think that unemployment benefits "help tide over the time between jobs," but you fail to realize that without those taxes, there would be more jobs and less layoffs in the market to begin with. Furthermore, without those taxes, the private sector would be more willing to help those in need- you seem to lack this faith in people.
You also fail to realize that the government takes away the incentive to expand business for some (laffer curve) with higher taxes and it also takes away the incentive to work for some due to the benefits it gives.
Life is about ups and downs and trying to keep one's life or "position in society" always constant or going up, only creates instability. When someone goes up, someone will almost always fall down. It is sad, but it is the way things work. Propping everyone up does not work as history has proved many, many times.
Regardless, we've decided that the externality of this safety net is worth the cost. Otherwise, we'd get rid of it. Nature of the government and the people.
Who is "we" here? You and the left? Last time I checked, everyone does not believe this "safety net" is worth the cost including almost every libertarian and most conservatives. Also, historically it was the founding fathers and the supporters of free societies that opposed this nonsense, whereas it has been the likes of Marx, FDR, and Obama that have supported it.
Don't pull some moral junk with me on the McDonalds thing. No one wants that system in place. McDonalds doesn't want to recruit people who are only going to work for a month while leaving for interviews. People don't want to be tied down with a lame job while they should be focusing on finding the job that they are most efficient at. Your position is at odds with just about everything that we've learned about people working toward jobs.
Again, no one is forcing people to do anything. You really seem to have this notion that people can't make decisions for themselves without the government. If people really need the money they could work at McDs and also apply to jobs in their field. If they don't need the money, they wouldn't.
Sales tax as a whole wouldn't cause much deadweight. It's basically just a flat-rate tax we pay. Don't know of a single person who actually noticed the change though. The nature of it is pretty low. It mainly hits inelastic stuff (at least in the places where they tax food).
What do you mean mostly inelastic stuff? Sales taxs applies to virtually everything you buy, including products with many substitues and luxury resources (both of which are elastic markets.)
Income tax. If we didn't have that, we'd have tariffs and higher prices. History has shown us that. We had to have it even with minimal government.
No. Believe it or not, cutting income tax and social security and a few Federal welfare (not even all) programs would even out. Definitely not true and a common misconception.
That said, it's generally wrong to force that instability and make someone rely on charity. Unemployment is what it is, a safety net to prevent the need for ridiculous savings and planning. The funny thing is that MYP is basically saying that we'd be better off if a significant portion of the population went back to being migrant workers. I hope he realizes that those people in Mexico (and the migrants in the clip) and the people in India are constantly striving forward with the goal of not having to be migrant workers.
I am not calling for migrant workers. Again, stop putting words in my mouth. I am simply saying some people would be more willing to move for jobs that they want without the welfare benefits. Note that I said "more willing" and "they want," words of free will- I know it might be hard to grasp free-will from a statist's point of view, but people do have it.
I'll also add that this safety net helps keep consumer spending up in a general downturn. Without it, we'd see general crashes each time there was a hiccup. Group of people is fired and has no means to support themselves. This temporarily hurts another company, which then has layoffs, which hurts another company, and so on and so on. Unemployment is a nice little cushion for us too. Not terrible for the price really.
How much exactly do you think these unemployment benefits people are spending? It certainly isn't anything grand and the companies where they buy from would be fine.
Also, the companies who let these people go would now have lower costs and more money in their pockets to spend. Look at the big picture- this is a weak argument.
Quite a number of years ago I was unemployed for a number of months while living in Canada and living off unemployment insurance. I was quite disciplined in my efforts to find employment, but can imagine that for some people who are less organized that it has to be hell on earth in terms of not knowing what to do, and then perhaps after that to just stop caring and spending more time in efforts to keep the unemployment going, than to find employment. Canada has a good system though as those receiving unemployment insurance have to report back and show efforts for getting employment. There are also many resources for looking for employment.
There is also a system in the United States to make sure people are trying, but those kinds of systems don't work because people who don't want to work will purposely apply for jobs and then not get them. The private sector is a lot more efficient in helping people because there wouldn't be any false backings or deadweight losses caused by the government.
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