"People don't want to work anymore"

My gazillionaire in-laws purposely live one day every year longer in Florida than NY so that they do not have to pay NY state taxes—we have more than once had them decide they are visiting us at a horrible time because they “need to be out of NY for tax purposes.”

We do not seem to get nearly as moralistic about wealthy people doing things to minimize tax exposure.

Retail & fast food are notorious for not giving anyone a set schedule and also not giving schedules until the last minute. This won’t work if you need a second job because the 2nd job needs to know when your available.

I agree with you 100% that what your in-laws are doing is morally wrong. I see that side as well and don’t agree with it. There are people that can/should be working but won’t because of government benefits. 

Hopefully I can articulate this enough for y’all to understand me!

My DH has body shops & has had them for 35+ years. Originally only in Texas but now all over the States.
When he first got into this business he always had plenty of workers. A lot were from Mexico. They have the best ethics & hard workers. They bring their brothers, cousins, uncles etc into the business & teach them the trade so they also can make a good living too.

His average worker stays with him 20 years. A few of his really good painters have made well over $100,000 a year! It’s very very hard work but worth the pay. His body men can easily make that much too but again it’s very hard work.

These guys are aging out, the work is hard.
The young guys DONT want to work this hard so they don’t.
He can’t get people to work, much less work hard!!!
When you, general you, wrecks your car now it could take so much longer than usual because he doesn’t have the workers to fix the product!

If people don’t work then nothing gets done…..& right now nothing is getting done at some of his shops.

www.nytimes.com/2021/05/10/opinion/jobs-unemployment-benefits-republicans.html

Paul Krugman: Republicans wage war against the unemployed

Is life too easy for the unemployed? You may not think so, and I certainly don't think so. But that, remarkably, is what many and perhaps most Republicans believe. And they're acting on that belief: There's a nationwide movement under way to punish the unemployed, based on the proposition that we can cure unemployment by making the jobless even more miserable.

Consider, for example, the case of North Carolina. The state was hit hard by the Great Recession, and its unemployment rate, at 8.8 percent, is among the highest in the nation, higher than in long-suffering California or Michigan. As is the case everywhere, many of the jobless have been out of work for six months or more, thanks to a national environment in which there are three times as many people seeking work as there are job openings.

Nonetheless, the state's government has just sharply cut aid to the unemployed. In fact, the Republicans controlling that government were so eager to cut off aid they didn't just reduce the duration of benefits; they also reduced the average weekly benefit, making the state ineligible for about $700 million in federal aid to the long-term unemployed.

It's quite a spectacle, but North Carolina isn't alone: A number of states have cut unemployment benefits, although none at the price of losing federal aid. And at the national level, Congress has been allowing extended benefits introduced during the economic crisis to expire, even though long-term unemployment remains at historic highs.

So what's going on here? Is it just cruelty? Well, the GOP, which believes that 47 percent of Americans are "takers" mooching off the job creators, which in many states is denying health care to the poor simply to spite President Barack Obama, isn't exactly overflowing with compassion. But the war on the unemployed isn't motivated solely by cruelty; rather, it's a case of mean-spiritedness converging with bad economic analysis.


In general, modern conservatives believe our national character is being sapped by social programs that, in the memorable words of Paul Ryan, chairman of the House Budget Committee, "turn the safety net into a hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency." More specifically, they believe unemployment insurance encourages jobless workers to stay unemployed, rather than taking available jobs.

Is there anything to this belief? The average unemployment benefit in North Carolina is $299 per week, pretax; some hammock. So anyone who imagines that unemployed workers are deliberately choosing to live a life of leisure has no idea what the experience of unemployment, and especially long-term unemployment, is really like. Still, there is some evidence that unemployment benefits make workers a bit more choosy in their job search. When the economy is booming, this extra choosiness may raise the "non-accelerating-inflation" unemployment rate — the unemployment rate at which inflation starts to rise, inducing the Federal Reserve to raise interest rates and choke off economic expansion.

All of this is, however, irrelevant to our current situation, in which inflation is not a concern and the Fed's problem is that it can't get interest rates low enough. While cutting unemployment benefits will make the unemployed even more desperate, it will do nothing to create more jobs — which means even if some of those currently unemployed do manage to find work, they will do so only by taking jobs away from those currently employed.

But wait — what about supply and demand? Won't making the unemployed desperate put downward pressure on wages? And won't lower labor costs encourage job growth? No — that's a fallacy of composition. Cutting one worker's wage may help save his or her job by making that worker cheaper than competing workers; but cutting everyone's wages just reduces everyone's income — and it worsens the burden of debt, which is one of the main forces holding the economy back.

Oh, and let's not forget that cutting benefits to the unemployed, many of whom are living hand-to-mouth, will lead to lower overall spending — again, worsening the economic situation, and destroying more jobs.

The move to slash unemployment benefits, then, is counterproductive as well as cruel; it will swell the ranks of the unemployed even as it makes their lives ever more miserable.

Can anything be done to reverse this policy wrong turn? The people out to punish the unemployed won't be dissuaded by rational argument; they know what they know, and no amount of evidence will change their views. My sense, however, is that the war on the unemployed has been making so much progress in part because it has been flying under the radar, with too many people unaware of what's going on.

Well, now you know. And you should be angry.

don't forget that many will qualify for free Medi-caid too and a bunch of other low income benefits.  those benefits could amount to thousands each year.  many who work at jobs that don't provide health care, can get it if they earn low enough.  

seems like times have changed.  incentives have made it more attractive to some people to earn just low enough to qualify for a bunch of subsidies, yet high enough to survive beyond the subsidies. 

I feel this SOOOOO hard!  I'm in my 50's as well.  I was laid off in May of last year.  I applied for OVER 200 jobs (in my field).  Most of them I didn't even get an interview.  I had a few interviews but wasn't selected.  Finally got a job in March of this year.   I'm making less now than when I was getting unemployment.   But I have benefits again, I'm putting into SS and 401K again, and I am able to work from home.

P.S.  Does your sister want to work in the insurance industry?    

I haven't heard her specifically mention applying to legal firms but I will mention this to her....thank you. That is great about your DD

my son was working two part time jobs.. bartender and admin work at a motorcycle shop. both went away in the pandemic. he went back to both.. but quit as a bartender after the hassles of enforcing all the new rules and being physically attacked by a tourist. fortunately, his wife, who was laid off in dec., just got a new job where she is working 50-60 hours a week, so he is working part time again at the shop and being a good house husband. his wife has an executive level position.

I have never had an online application ask for DOB.  Mine always just asked if I am over 18.  Is she applying to smaller companies or big corporations?  I wonder if the bigger companies don't ask DOB because they don't want to be sued for age discrimination.  I was just putting the last 10 years or so of employment on my resume, so they wouldn't see that I had been working for over 30 years.  But that's a little tougher for her to just do 10 years since she worked at the same place for 23.

When you say "very hard work" do you mean the kind that destroys your body over time so that people are often functionally disabled by middle age? Do you mean the kind that requires you to work 7 days a week and have no life at all?

I'm curious what it is about the work that people are finding unappealing.

Another question: the workers from Mexico - were they citizens? If not, how are they collecting unemployment rather than working hard?

Thanks for indulging my curiosity.

smalltowngirlie
Skilled labor can be very rewarding and does earn good money over time. Ask a plumber or electrician... And more. Another reason trade schools are an excellent choice for young people who would rather not go to college.

This is my own experience from years ago.  I would get laid off over the summer and would always look to see if there was something out there I would prefer to do.  I interviewed at one place I was pretty interested in until I heard their wages.  It would have been just a little more than what I was making on unemployment and a pay cut from the job I knew I could return to in a couple months.  I actually called the unemployment office and talked to then about it.  They said with what I described I could still collect unemployment if I declined the offer.  If it was comparable or above in hours and wage to what I was making before then it could possibly affect it.  So what you described above there is a chance they could still collect unemployment.  

Now the tough part is loss of child care.  At least when I applied, every week I marked a box saying I was available for work.  If you have no child care and need to be home with your children you are NOT available for work and then would not be eligible for unemployment.  And I know child care is a huge issue, we have staff struggle to find child care all the time and have lost good employees because it.