$299 a week? Sign me up!
I would note that $299 a week is $7.47 an hour for a 40 hour week. Federal minimum wage is $7.25 an hour.
So the average unemployment check seems to kick ass over a minimum wage job. Especially if you include the fact that the minimum wage job only pays $6.7 an hour after taking out FICA taxes.
I feel mixed about it sometimes, because I am used to making $8 an hour. The trouble with the $299 number is that the person getting that check used to be making $600 a week for working. And probably much of his lifestyle is based on spending most of that $600. So when he/she is cut to $299, it is a hardship.
But the person making $290 a week for working is forced to live on that all the time. From their (and my) perspective that person making $600 a week is already privileged - they have a better job than I do. They make much more money than I do. Sometimes a lot more.
And then they lose their good job and the still make more than I do for not working. Then to hear them scoff at the idea of taking a job like the one I work, like they are too good to do what I have to do. And why should they, when the system is set up to pay them more for doing nothing?
Unlike Krugman, I have actually been on unemployment and known other people on unemployment. When I was on unemployment, I was loving it. Damn, it was my first paid vacation in about 17 years. From March until August 2002. I wanted it to last forever, or otherwise as long as possible. When it finally ended, guess what? The part-time job I got only paid about $30 a week more than unemployment. I would have loved to stay on unemployment, but I only had about five weeks left until the money was gonna run out.
I felt lucky to get the job I did though, because it paid $10.69 an hour when the minimum wage was only $5.15. Plus, it had benefits!! Can you believe it? A part-time job with benefits!! It is great to work for the government.
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