this post was submitted on 05 Oct 2024
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Unemployment benefits in the US are a short term (usually less than 6months) insurance plan that pays out only under qualified situations. Eg fired and without cause, after having paid into the unemployment system for either a set amount of time or hours. Also, since it's a temporary payment, people will exit the unemployment system as others enter it - no one can be on it indefinitely. And last, the insurance is paid for by the individual who gets the money - it's their money.
In my country, Canada, it goes hand in hand with welfare. One will often lead into the other if things go on long enough.
There's a lot of complexity to it that I won't get into, but the unemployment system likely can't handle a rapid influx of new request, even from those that have paid into it.
It appears in Canada, unemployment benefits are indeed an unemployment insurance. In the US, this is paid into automatically from our paychecks, and id assume it's similar in Canada but I could be wrong.
https://www.canada.ca/en/services/benefits/ei.html
Yes it would be bad if a ton of people went on unemployment, it just wouldn't work exactly how you're describing. Unemployment isn't UBI.
There's a lot I can say here, but to be terse, the money paid into (un) employment insurance is more than what is paid out normally, since some people will pay for it all their life without ever collecting, that money isn't just stored indefinitely, it's used for other things.
As a result, if a large portion of the population suddenly find themselves without work, the system will be unable to sustain itself, whether "short term" or not. All systems that rely on EI overflow funds would suddenly have a deficiency in their money flow, and considering they the people pay most of the taxes while billionaires and corporations get tax breaks so that they pay nothing, the entire social support systems would collapse quickly, as the country plunges further into debt, devaluing the countries currency.
The entire economic model is built upon things maintaining and continuing mostly as they are, pull any thread too far and the whole thing unravels.