Ayn Rand answers this question in an article (it's been quoted below and can be found free on ARI Campus website). Her answer: yes, but with reservations. You have to vehemently oppose government scholarships and grants (and unemployment benefits) in order to deserve them. She says that government money in these forms is merely a reparation for unjust taxes and nonmaterial losses. So yes. Why add martyrdom to your troubles? The money is yours, at least partially. Take the unemployment, but stay true to your values and don't become indefinitely attached to it.

I understand your feelings. When I got out of the USAF, as part of out-processing we were all told to be sure to file for unemployment. As an avid reader of Rand and Heinlein since my teens, it felt 'unclean' to take unemployment. So I scurried my butt around and got a job.

Now, as an employer, I agree with Mamaemma: We bloody well pay for you to be unemployed, and I would rather you had the bucks than the gov had them.

But there is another side to the story: How many people will milk this for all it is worth and not even try to get another job? How will the statistics of unemployment be used to manage social expectations of 'the right of people to have a money from public funds forever even if they do not work'?

I know a hard-working young horse trainer down in San Diego who is bitter about the fact that one of her students is on eternal welfare due to migraines and now she wants her adult son to get on welfare so that he can afford a horse and riding lessons too!

Good luck in finding a job.

Jan

Remember: you paid into it through your taxes. And that goes double if you paid a special assessment for some "workforce development fund," or whatever the State governments call it. So you're just getting some of your own back.

Collecting your unemployment "insurance" can pay for the traveling expenses needed to find another job. It can help you find a job faster.
Having any cash flow becomes all the more critical if you have kids to feed and care for.

Why not? You pay into it

Yes.
Even though unemployment insurance is forced upon employers, this is paid for usually by lowering wages initially.
Use the down time to start a business or build a skill set (like welding classes) or better computer skills, CAD classes, etc.

of course! if you lost your job due to the economy which makes the government responsible for you being out of work then they pay you what ever.

Michael why would you start your answer by telling someone they asked a stupid question? Yes use what the Gov gives, because, it is our money. Money is worthless without goods or service.

Yes, take the benefit.
Seek work with all the effort you would if there was no benefit - no doubt this is what you are doing.
In your mind, regard the benefit as a loan, when you are earning again your taxes will be paying it back, like it or not.

I'm with Mamaemma, as usual. Your unemployment insurance is part of the "salary package" she pays you, so I agree, you already got it, you just didn't get it yet. ok?

Most likely, it was your money to begin with.

I have heard, several times, critics of Ayn Rand mention that she took some sort of government assistance late in life (Medicare or something). These people just don't get it.

I think you should take every handout and every tax break you're legally entitled to. If you take a no-gov't-largess rule to an extreme, you wouldn't be able to take employment at a place that's significantly funded by gov't grants. It would be questionable to work for a company that gets significant revenue from gov't contracts.

I agree with Sarah. Take what you're entitled too , UNLESS you feel you're getting sucked into the world of benefits.

I took unemployment benefits 13 years ago, and I saw some people in the office getting sucked into jumping through gov't hoops to get benefits and feeling like that was "work".

At the time I was teaching a class for $100/week plus free grad school tuition. I was able to keep most of the benefits despite the small earned income from teaching. They said I was eligible for cards to buy gas to get to class and my PT teaching job if I went to a different office and filled out forms. I realized this crap could distract me from my classes, job, and lining up a FT job after the classes. So I said no thanks.

By your question I can tell it won't happen to you, but if you did start feeling sucked into making a career out of seeking benefits, I would say stop, not for some moral reason, but because that is stealing your precious life. Somewhere there's someone with a project/job that would exciting to you and make money for you and that person. People who milk the gov't are missing out on that.

No...if your employer wasn't required to put money into the fund then you might have been paid a higher wage...not to mention the price of the goods or services you produced may have been offered at a lower price.
Plus...if it was not used for what it was intended for then they would just piss it away anyway.

Just my thoughts on the subject. Probably not the objectivist point of view.

I would have preferred to put money aside out of my salary for that purpose and having those funds subtracted from my tax liability.

Having been there, I can say that I felt no shame in doing what I had to do to feed my family while I sought a new job. I wasn't on for very long and certainly didn't make a career of it. It sure helped for a couple of weeks and I was thankful, not feeling entitled.

Your employer has paid into the fund on your behalf, so you should take the UI benefits, at least up to the amount they put in. Typically its like 1-5% of your wages. One could argue that your employer was forced to by insurance on your behalf up to the limits of the policy, so you should take all you can from it under the policy provisions.


Personally, I dont like to go through the hassle of it all. I save my own unemployment insurance fund that I use if I need it.

Would you not submit a medical bill to your insurance company? You paid part of that premium and so did your employer. Just because your employer covered the cost of that unemployment insurance, doesn't mean that wasn't technically your money. You own an insurance policy, and you're making a claim on it. Now, the question is different if that policy pays 6 months, but the guberment says they must pay 99 weeks and you take it.

I haven't really been active here despite signing up months ago, because I didn't think it was right to do so until I actually ended up becoming a Producer. This brings me to the question I am currently grappling with. After being laid off in late September, is it right for me to collect unemployment, or should I tough it out, despite the frustration and difficulties as I try to find a new job?

It is moral to impose as great a burden on the government as possible in order to hasten its demise. If one were striking as AS suggests, collecting welfare benefits fro the corrupt govt would therefore be ethical. Remember Ragnar!

I don't know... I've never collected it, as somehow it seems like I wasn't earning it. Nor Food stamps, nor any of the other "social fairness" programs... Some of the jobs I had weren't particularly fun, or interesting, or paid well, some were pretty menial... but I earned my keep, someone else didn't have to pay to support me.

Hell, I was even like that during my leftist years.

From the perspective of the novel, do you see yourself fulfilling a non-violent reparations scheme of which Ragnar Danneskjold might approve?

Don't want to argue about your receiving benefits. Don't know if I agree with Ayn Rand's answer. How can you oppose something from which you benefit?

I didn't want to take it, but my former employer in-
sisted. So I did. I even meant to pay the amount
back to my employer when I got a job. However, I
didn't get a job (except for a few snow-shoveling jobs in winter and one day of jury duty), and then
the unemployment ran out. And I still don't have
a job. (I'm really not used to this. Since I left
my father's house in 1970 I had never been un-
employed longer than about a week and a half,
and that was the extreme case).

https://ari.aynrand.org/issues/govern...