God, I wish I were poor.
And unemployed. That's the good life. Poor and unemployed.
I mean, just look at all the cool stuff you get. Medicaid and welfare. Food stamps and unemployment insurance. And don't forget public housing.
This stuff is so awesome that it's like a "hammock that lulls able-bodied people to lives of dependency and complacency, that drains them of their will and their incentive to make the most of their lives." That's what Paul Ryan says, at least, and as the Chairman of the House Budget Committee, he's supposed to know these things, right?
According to Ryan and his fellow Republicans, if I have unemployment insurance, I'll never want to work again. Senator Rand Paul says it will cause me "to become part of this perpetual unemployed group." With an average benefit of $269 per week, I'll be living on Easy Street.
This is a common belief. There's an email making the rounds from a 54-year-old consulting engineer who makes $60,000 a year and has to pay $482 a month for health insurance under Obamacare, but that's not his biggest complaint. He's really upset that his 61-year-old girlfriend who makes $18,000 a year only has to pay $1 a month for health insurance.
He thinks she has it so easy that she can afford to pay more, but he's wrong.
On average, Americans earning $18,000 a year pay more than $3,000 in taxes, so she really only has $15,000 leftover to pay her expenses. She lives in Monterey, CA, where the average rent and utilities add up to $15,000 a year. So, after paying taxes, rent, and utilities, she's completely broke. She doesn't have money for food, let alone health insurance.
The consulting engineer thinks people will choose her lifestyle over his. "Heck, why study engineering when I can be a schlub for $20K per year?" he asks. (Nice way to talk about your girlfriend, by the way.) To which I'd like to reply: If being a "schlub" is so attractive, why don't you do it? Why don't you quit your engineering job and join the "$20K per year" club?
For that matter, why don't we all quit our jobs right now and start collecting unemployment insurance? How far do you honestly think we can stretch $269 a week?
I'll tell you how far: It would cover less than half of the basic necessities for the average American family.
That's why unemployment makes you more likely to have to borrow money from a friend, withdraw money from your retirement savings, and have trouble paying your medical bills, rent, and mortgage. It makes you more likely to have a stroke or heart attack, lose self-respect, have difficulty sleeping, and seek professional help for anxiety and depression. It makes you more likely to kill yourself, kill others, and drink yourself to death.
And if you've been unemployed for more than a few months, most employers won't even look at your résumé. It doesn't matter how qualified you are. It's like you don't exist anymore.
The last time it was this bad, with long-term unemployment close to 3 percent of the workforce, was the peak of the 1980-81 recession. Back then, the federal government kept extended unemployment insurance in place for almost two more years, until the long-term unemployment rate fell close to 1 percent. In fact, that's been standard operating procedure for every recession in the modern era, including 1990-91 and 2001. But now, with long-term unemployment as high as it's been since World War II, Republicans have killed the emergency unemployment insurance program, and they're fighting Democrats' efforts to restore it.
They don't seem to care that there are 2.9 applicants for every job opening. They don't seem to care that people on unemployment insurance actually spend more time searching for work than their fellow unemployed who are ineligible for benefits. They're sticking to their story.
On the 50th anniversary of the War on Poverty, many Americans are still operating under the assumption that people choose to be poor and unemployed, that they'd rather be lazy than rich, that they can afford the basic necessities of life. But the numbers tell a different story.
I don't wish I were poor. Or unemployed. And I sure don't wish it on anyone else. If you did the math, neither would you.
This op-ed was originally published in the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.