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Comment by alaskamiller | Hacker News Reader

In California you're not allowed to be starting your own business while on unemployment. They ask you multiple times if you understand such clause from your unemployment handbook. It's a social security seen to get you back to employment as soon as possible instead of being a subsidy to your entrepreneur lifestyle.

That said, I hear all kinds of stories about people on unemployment. Ranging from someone that's managed to be on it for over a year and a half, traveled to Thailand for eight months.

It's a lenient system and you're the one that has to sleep at night so you make the call.

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Same restrictions on normal unemployment apply in Oregon. The SEAP is unemployment, and requires that you be on regular unemployment first. The differences are that you're specifically allowed to work full time on your company. The company has to be vetted to make sure it's not completely ridiculous, but all profits you make are yours. It's a fantastic lifeline and without it Urban Airship would definitely not exist. It's also a federal program (as well as federally funded), though the states run it - in other words, California could implement it. They just haven't.

> It's a social security seen to get you back to employment as soon as possible instead of being a subsidy to your entrepreneur lifestyle.

Wow, that's infuriating. As if employees are great contributors and making a business isn't... Where do they suppose these jobs come from to begin with?

J. K. Rowling said she wrote Harry Potter while on unemployment. The UK system doesn't sound like it's meant to be subsidizing entrepreneurship either, rather it's social welfare.

But Rowling classified her unemployment checks as the best investment the country's ever done given how she's earned billions of taxable income.

Though for every Harry Potter there are millions of not so successful attempts. Others may find it infuriating you're spending their, and obviously yours and your employer's, tax money on hair-brained Kickstarter panhandling ideas.

As I said elsewhere, most of the big discoveries we've had throughout history came from people who didn't have to spend most of their time providing for their survival. Some people, indeed may be infuriated about "their" money being used on ideas they don't believe in. But I consider this a vindictive view (i.e. "I have to work at a job I hate, so everyone else should suffer too!") and not worth spending a lot of time worrying about.

> Ranging from someone that's managed to be on it for over a year and a half

That was possible only during the recent financial meltdown. Benefits in normal times are 6mo (US will likely return to that in the next year.

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