Many Jobless Cannot Recieve Pay

That's my take of the headline from the newspaper. It comes from an article by Jane M. Von Bergen, copyrighted by The Philadelphia Inquirer, and found in the Friday, 26 December 2008 edition of the Post-Dispatch Business section. The title at the upper right column read "Unemployment insurance isn't all it's said to be" --- which is why I posted my retitle "Many Jobless Cannot Receive Pay". You see, like many Americans, I have fallen in the 63 percent who cannot get paid unemployment insurance benefits. I never seem to qualify for those benefits, no matter how much I apply or how much time has passed, and it seems like there is no regard to why I lost my job, either.

LET ME QUALIFY --- I am currently UNDERemployed and NOT unemployed. But each time I have fallen into the unemployed category, I have been denied. Anyway...

The article states clearly that the reasons for not receiving the beneficial (arguing that it is beneficial --- okay, that's a different debate altogether) insurance include that - due to work history - some who apply have not qualified because they did not EARN ENOUGH MONEY.

So for argument's sake --- how in the world does someone know IF they earn enough money?
I'm not an insurance professional, nor am I a statistician with the Labor Department, so I cannot answer this question properly. But comment...you probably stopped to read a commentary, right? Okay, then. It seems that perhaps the bill mentioned in the article, the UNEMPLOYMENT INSURANCE MODERNIZATION ACT - passed in the House by not in the U.S. Senate - may have helped out some who feel the states should be getting more federal money...I guess that is IF the states in which residents went to the STATE-RUN unemployment insurance agencies actually qualified to become recipients.
Ahhh --- now then, that could be the catch in your state - but it may be the same as even the next state over, and therefore you'd still not receive the benefits because of not making...ENOUGH MONEY!!!

Again, you didn't pay enough money into the system. Why is it that so many of us don't make enough money to qualify for having "paid into the system" --- no matter which state in the union we may reside --- yet we may qualify for paying into the system in the first place? That seems rather unfair. Someone who made, say, $214,000 is able to qualify for a stipend if they lose their jobs as the result of a company-wide layoff of several hundred, but those who made, say $24,700 lost their jobs as a result of mismanagement by their superiors and cannot qualify? It sure would sound like the superior mismanagers would qualify because "they paid enough" into the system, and yet those who worked daily and did the work which allowed managers to make larger salaries were denied by the state. Is this the case or am I nitpicky?

The crux of the position (if there is one in the Philadelphia Inquirer article) seems to be this: only 37 percent of unemployed Americans qualify for receiving unemployment insurance. That leads to questions aplenty...especially difficult questions for those of us who are not part of a government bureaucracy. Example of one of these questions: Would not 100 percent of employed Americans qualify for putting money into that funding source? If NOT 100 percent qualify to pay into the system --- WHY NOT? Because, see, even those who make minimum wage would surely be OUT OF A JOB at least a few times in their lives as the result of an untold number of situations. Therefore, should we not all be paying into the pool AND eligible for receiving the benefits of unemployment insurance - should the need arise?

I see no reason to sidestep the questions here. We have a new president-elect who has made motions in regard to situations such as this. In fact, a sponsor of the U.S. Senate bill was BARACK OBAMA, the now-president-elect, who was a U.S. Senator from Illinois at the time of its passage in the U.S. House of Representatives. One would think that since he sponsored the bill which did not pass, he'd try to push such a bill through the Congress once he has been sworn-in as President of the United States of America. So, with that in mind, I suppose that the states will end up with more of our U.S. tax dollars to go toward the state-run programs.

But thinking ahead: Unless we speak up to our own governments (state and local), we'll be looking at similar statistics at the outset of 2010 and perhaps 2011. I, for one, think that in Missouri we stand a better chance with Governor-elect Jay Nixon at the helm, than the lame-duck Gov. Matt Blunt. Perhaps we should be calling his father, U.S. Rep. Roy Blunt, and telling his office (like he'd actually answer a phone call from a constituent without being told that it was necessary by a staff member) staffer that you support a change in the way unemployment insurance is doled out to states and individuals, and would he please (be polite, y'all) support any measures which would help our state's unemployed weather the economic crisis, including any bills similar to the aforementioned legislation.

Frankly, I believe it would be worthwhile to call the Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations (http://dolir.mo.gov) and tell them how you feel that it is unfair that so many cannot receive the unemployment insurance when it is so vital in keeping enough Missouri residents solvent through this crisis --- the DEPRESSION of 2009 ( you know that they'll not make it "official" until we're almost at the end of February...the incoming Federal officials will want to keep it quiet for the first 2 weeks of the Obama administration...and wouldn't YOU do the same, since you could qualify the DEPRESSION as having begun in the G.W. Bush administration?) is upon us, and in full force. We've all been feeling the pressure to outperform within our own offices or industry so that we don't end up jobless or without a company to pay us due to its bankruptcy!

I was thinking about going for a profound ending to this blog, but all of a sudden thought better of that, instead favoring leaving it with an open-ended question such as this:
have you felt the impact both of job loss and not being allowed to receive the supplemental income of unemployment insurance?