16 Painful Interviews (part 7)

Should I chose to go spread peace, I’d knock out two years of my life and not have to worry about expenses and make a few thousand dollars along the way. There were some negative aspects though. I couldn’t chose which country I would be assigned to so I could have been located somewhere kind of dangerous. I could be mauled by a lion, hit with a spear by a crazy native, or bitten by a venomous critter. Most likely, I would probably have to try to learn a second language to where I would be located. Lastly, I’d have to go 27 months without skateboarding or lifting weights. Spending one month alone not practicing would destroy any man’s capabilities in either and 27 months would be devastating. However, despite all the negatives, I thought it might be a fun idea. If I couldn’t find work by the time my unemployment benefits ran out, I’d go and take the chance overbroad. I’d might as well use the federal government to my advantage as much as possible. It was kind of an awkward situation.

During my time unemployed, I had a lot of free time to look up videos concerning politics. I watched a lot of videos that were sort of related to the alternative right and had very conservative points to view. It was during this period of time in which my disdain for the federal government started to grow. It may sound hypocritical for me to criticise the government. After all, I was collecting unemployment benefits. However, I like to make the same argument that Ayn Rand did. I’m just stealing back what was stolen from me. To reject that opportunity would just be dumb.

Unemployment insurance was set up by the federal government to protect people for a little while in case they lost their job. As a principal, I dislike the idea of deferring your responsibility to a third party. The reason for this is that no third party will ever know your needs as well as you do and no third party will ever be able to take care of your needs as well as you do. Unemployment benefits cause a moral panic because it is a tool that allows people to defer building up adequate savings in the case they ever lost their job. In other words, unemployment benefits encourage people not to save and live paycheck to paycheck. The moral panic the program creates is not why I hate it so much. The true reason I hate unemployment benefits is how the program is funded.

Unemployment benefits is funded mostly by American businesses. Employers have to pay extra taxes and comply with extra regulations just to stay in business and hire employees. Without those extra taxes and regulations, business would have more money and thus more options. More businesses might be created and current businesses could employ more people or pay the employees more money. Alternatively, the business might even focus more money on investments or operations to develop better products and services to the end customers. With less regulations, we would have a stronger and more prosperous economy. However, government programs like unemployment benefits pale in comparison to Social Security and Medicare.