$400 Billion Stolen From Unemployment Benefits

fmdog44 said:
Brady: $400 Billion in Stolen Unemployment Benefits Is Greatest Theft of American Tax Dollars in History - Ways and Means Republicans (house.gov)
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I heard about this last week. This is what happens when states pay out to claimants without first doing the paperwork. They were in a hurry to get the money to the claimants and never bothered to send the documentation to employers to check if the people filing actually worked at the company they were seeking benefits from.

I read where one guy was reporting that he was off work due to COVID and used artificial SS numbers to file multiple claims. They wanted to arrest him, but can't figure out which man to arrest due to so many different names and numbers being used. I think they used to call this type of person a "flimflam man."
 
I don't see how 400 billion in fraudulent unemployment claims can be the "Greatest Theft of American Tax Dollars in History" when people (probably including those politicians complaining about the theft) cheating on their taxes cost the U.S. a trillion dollars a year.
There are so many cheaters in everything, it is very depressing.
 

I've been convinced, for a long time, that at least 1 out of every 3 dollars we send to the governments.....both Federal and State....are wasted, or go into the pockets of the "special interests". Some day, and probably not too far into the future, there is going to be a financial "reckoning", and when it happens, we will probably be thrown into a deep recession...much like the 1930's.

Governments are not all that different from individuals....when an individual runs up too much debt, they wind up bankrupt. Governments can only print so much money, without anything to back it up, before everyone takes a major hit.
 
Don M. said:
Governments can only print so much money, without anything to back it up,
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When threads start talking like this it always makes me curious about what is money and how does money get created.

Today I read that money gets created by the Fed bank buying bonds from Banks, along with allowing banks to make loans based on a multiple of the bonds the bank sold to the Fed bank.
If I understood it correctly, it means if I was a bank and the mayor of my town was the Fed bank, and the mayor was willing to buy a Bond that apparently I can just kind of create like an IOU (I'm hazy about bonds), and say I sold a $100 bond to the mayor and the Fed rule was I could loan out 10 times as much as the Fed holds in $ of my bonds, so I now had the credit to make loans up to $1000. And say I loaned $600 to a neighbor to buy dog kennels for doggy daycare and $400 to a neighbor to build a chicken coop to sell organic eggs. And I get to charge 6% interest to pay myself for my work doing all this, and the neighbors will pay me back the money assuming their businesses succeed and they don't go bankrupt. And as long as I made good choices about who to lend the money to and their productivity resulted in profitable business then the extra money put into the system pays for itself in that extra productivity. Though if my neighbors customers get scared they are going to lose their jobs and stop buying organic or using doggy daycare, then my neighbors might have to default on their loans and that would suck the money out of the little economy, so then the town might give everyone twenty dollars of stimulus or extra unemployment money, to try to keep everyone calm and buying eggs/boarding pups.
Basically what I learned is for a good economy: 'keep calm and keep spending money'.
Except that isn't good for my own little retirement fund economy. Ugh, finance is hard.
 
I agree with Don on the waste.

IMO we should only have one system for government assistance and entitlements.

It shouldn’t really matter if it’s disability, unemployment, welfare, or retirement.

Enroll every American when they are assigned a Social Security number and let them and their employer’s contribute when times are good withdraw when times are tough and retire on whatever is left.
 
Aunt Bea said:
It shouldn’t really matter if it’s disability, unemployment, welfare, or retirement.

Enroll every American when they are assigned a Social Security number and let them and their employer’s contribute when times are good withdraw when times are tough and retire on whatever is left.
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Unfortunately human beings don't start out as wise as they will be when they are older. If young people could just withdraw the money for tough times, there would be a future of a lot of desperately poor old people.
Also, that plan only works for employable people who have paid careers. What happens to 'housewives'? What about mentally disabled people? What about unwed teenage mothers?
I could kind of get behind an idea like requiring people to have a license to have children with the license only being granted if they can support themselves and their children. But that would not be a popular idea. There are ways to ensure a more self supporting population but they would require trampling peoples rights.
I've twice worked with coworkers who were once unwed teenage mothers. I assume they received some sort of public assistance. But they became normal (if somewhat bitter and tough) taxpaying employed adults.
We can't just make a simple plan that leaves people out because those people aren't going to just cooperate by laying down and dying. And it would cost us money to handle the undesirable behavior that would ensue. Cheaper and more pleasant to just pay some welfare/unemployment/disability.
 
Someday we are going to wake up and see, "Everything, everywhere has been stolen. Details coming up after these few words."
 
When I taught at a college, cheating was rampant. I took every test and scrambled the problems. I had a secret code on each that matched the answer sheet. In the end, in my accounting class, 25% of the students failed due to cheating I could prove. The kids raised hell of course, but the dean totally backed me up.

One time Oprah had a show during which she told about the top 10 things people cheated on. Some of my friends and family were talking about it, and all of them had done something on that list, and no one was embarrassed. I was quite shocked. The other time I was that shocked was when I found out some Christians cheat on their spouses. Oh, and the time Charles Stuart (Boston) killed his pregnant wife. I sure was innocent back then.
 

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