Should unemployment benefits last longer than 99 weeks? | Hacker News Reader

Should unemployment benefits last longer than 99 weeks?

money.cnn.com

5 pointsstartuprules4 comments

For those that can not find employment the only other option to stay alive if they don't get benefits (which they paid for with their previous labour as taxes anyway) is to become criminals.

Criminals cost society a lot more than someone 'on the dole'.

They can't just magically survive on air until a job comes by. Sure there will be some that might abuse the system, but that's possible with a 1 week period as well.

Some people do all they can to find a job and still find none (there was a story in the news today about a young British girl that took her own life after 200 job applications, I can't help but be reminded of that when reading about this).

This crisis is very real and far from over in spite of some bits of positive news here and there, it will take more than a few exceptional measures to get to the other side of it and extending benefits to those that are really in need of them seems like a very logical step.

99 weeks is enough for two years of college. You'd have more than enough time to train some skill that's in demand and find a job that'll keep you alive.

I think you miss the point that for every job there are probably more applicants than '1', so there is no guarantee that you will find a job even with a skill that is in 'demand'. In fact, for every person training for a skill that is in demand today the ratio of people that will end up unemployed with that skill goes up.

Nobody is looking for a job for 99 weeks straight. In the first few weeks they look and get discouraged. Toward the end of the 99 weeks they will look again (this time with more urgency) b/c benefits are running out. I think unemployment benefits are a good thing, but nearly two years of benefits is way too long.

I know a lot of people on unemployment who make almost no effort to find a job, and the ones offered to them usually get turned down b/c they come with a pay cut. The only positive I can see in this is that a small portion of the massive amount of government money being spent right now is going directly to people I know.

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