How Bad Is It?
Some 3,000 Millionaires Claim Jobless Benefits, IRS Data Show
"After the economy slipped into recession in 2008, millions of Americans received unemployment benefits to make ends meet -- including almost 3,000 millionaires.
According to U.S. Internal Revenue Service data, 2,840 households reporting at least $1 million in income on their tax returns that year also collected a total of $18.6 million in jobless aid. They included 806 taxpayers with incomes over $2 million and 17 with incomes in excess of $10 million. In all, multimillionaires reported receiving $5.2 million in jobless benefits.
Those numbers are a minuscule fraction of the 9.5 million taxpayers who reported receiving $43.7 billion from jobless benefits in 2008, up from 7.6 million recipients reporting $29.4 billion in benefits in 2007. Still, economists said they are surprised so many people with seven-figure incomes claimed benefits.
“It’s a larger number than I would have expected,” said Alan Viard, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research organization. “But, people at any income level can lose their jobs.”
"After the economy slipped into recession in 2008, millions of Americans received unemployment benefits to make ends meet -- including almost 3,000 millionaires.
According to U.S. Internal Revenue Service data, 2,840 households reporting at least $1 million in income on their tax returns that year also collected a total of $18.6 million in jobless aid. They included 806 taxpayers with incomes over $2 million and 17 with incomes in excess of $10 million. In all, multimillionaires reported receiving $5.2 million in jobless benefits.
Those numbers are a minuscule fraction of the 9.5 million taxpayers who reported receiving $43.7 billion from jobless benefits in 2008, up from 7.6 million recipients reporting $29.4 billion in benefits in 2007. Still, economists said they are surprised so many people with seven-figure incomes claimed benefits.
“It’s a larger number than I would have expected,” said Alan Viard, resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, a Washington research organization. “But, people at any income level can lose their jobs.”
posted by nolocontendere at 11:05 PM
2 Comments:
How can they make an income of millions in one year and still claim unemployment benefits?
Something not quite right about that.
In essence, yeah, I agree.
There was something valuable that I learned decades ago when I was working with the most impressive government program I had ever experienced. It was a federal jobs subsidy up in Oregon. Communities set up crews that helped indigent people by hiring people to learn trades. One crew was taught home insulation, another, firewood stove installation. I was on a firewood team; people would donate their trees and we'd go cut, split and deliver firewood to old, sick and needy people in the area. There was a crew that kept the trucks running. It was the most rewarding experience of my life, to be honest.
Most of the people we delivered wood to were obviously in need. Swayback shacks, old and infirm, pretty sick and hobbled. But there were some that in all outward appearances were well off and when I complained to the guy who vetted the recipients he told me this - there was a difference between perceived wealth and income. That some households valued and could maintain appearances a lot more than others, but that they in essence were as poor as dumpster divers, maybe about to lose their house.
That really stuck with me. In today's phony wealth with things on paper, where most assets are just ones and zeros that mean shit in the real world and you can be wiped out in an instant, and where a million could be tied up in cyberspace, it's not hard for me to think some people still need that firewood. Especially since things are far, far worse than we're being told.
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