Confessions of an Unemployment Cheat
Marx, Lenny
Confessions of an Unemployment Cheat by Lenny Marx The envelope looked like all the others. It contained the latest unemployment check from the bountiful Kansas Division of Employment, and...
...I felt distinctly uncomfortable, as if the clerks there suspected that I was up to no good...
...Try again some other time...
...Still, even without any other subsidies, government unemployment benefits usually replace two thirds of a worker’s net income...
...and besides, I was living a fairly modest and virtuous life to which I saw no satisfying alternative...
...No, man...
...In addition, last year Congress passed legislation raising payroll taxes, while extending coverage to state and local government employees, and some domestics and farm workers...
...I might be forced t o . . . get a job...
...One is Stephen Marston’s influential Brookings Institution research, which concluded unemployment benefits only add .3 per cent to the unemployment rate...
...Admittedly, I’m an extreme case, but the social cost of forced labor is truly too high for all of us...
...To cut out the free-loaders, there would have to be a cop at every mailbox, spies in all the personnel offices, and weekly liedetector tests...
...You know how it is,” 1 say...
...It was a risk I had to take...
...Lenny Marx is a writer...
...With hands trembling, I quickly phoned the other paper...
...On the other hand, conservative economists like the Public Research Institute’s Kathleen Classen charge that the maximum turnover tax rule is too low, allowing stable companies to in effect subsidize the frequent layoffs of seasonal or cyclical industries like agriculture, construction, and mining, many of which exceed the maximum...
...They concluded that doubling the denial rate might lead to as much as a 25-percent dip in the jobless rate-without changing eligibility rules...
...I won’t tell anybody...
...I’d flip through the want ads until I found what I needed: the comics at the back...
...It could not be said, however, that I had no interest in holding down a regular job...
...With luck, the aluminum hook could scoop up the letter...
...Finally, the mailman arrived...
...There was a new bounce in my step, a ruddy glow of good health on my cheeks...
...Many others simply didn’t bother to report the income they were earning...
...The nation’s capital is in fact, something of a Freeloader’s Paradise, boasting both the federal bureaucracy and a welfare and unemployment system that supports a relatively large portion of the city’s population...
...For auto workers, this amounts to nearly 95 per cent of their take-home pay for up to a year, when combined with government unemployment checks...
...Each week, I began my search with fresh hope, only to be rebuffed...
...Then I headed back to my house, a defeated man...
...The Carter administration hopes to cut unemployment to six per cent by the end of 1978...
...At first, I actually placed the calls myself...
...Thus imbued with the fear of God, I decided to make sure my efforts could be well documented in case the government investigatorj came calling...
...There just aren’t any openings in the newspaper business...
...I took some comfort, however, in the knowledge that I had discharged my obligation under the law...
...Understandably, the job search becomes more successful once unemployment benefits run out...
...A surprisingly large number of them were just like memen and women, who, for one reason or another, had no intention of finding work...
...But for young people, singles, artists, it’s a great chance to fulfill yourself-at govemment expense...
...Most of the miserable jobs our society parcels out to the under-classes are made available with the boss’s confident knowledge that otherwise the people who take them would starve to death...
...My day would start bright and early at noon, when I’d rush downstairs to get the classified section of the newspaper...
...The two researchers found that increasing the rate at which people are denied benefitseither because they quit or didn’t look for work-decreases the unemployment rate...
...13 additional weeks had been brought to me courtesy of a 1970 law...
...the rest were people who had left their jobs voluntarily (11.9 per cent), people who were just returning to the job market after a voluntary absence (27.5 per cent), and new entrants into the market (13.1 per cent...
...I froze in panic: I was about to be caught red-handed...
...A Close Call Sundays between 11 :30 p.m...
...The study, by the Mathematica Policy Research Project, found that the most common additional sources of unearned income were social security and railroad retirement payments, followed closely by all manner of pensions...
...NO...
...In my case, the unemployment checks were my personal instrument of liberation...
...Sure, that money might otherwise have gone to worthier causes, but more likely it would have paid for aircraft carriers or bureaucrats’ salaries...
...There are no cumbersome proposals to submit, and no petty bureaucrats to oversee works-in-progress...
...And now it was all about to end...
...Although I know very little about stock cars, I am willing to learn...
...Anyone caught doing so will face up to a $1,000 fine or three years in prison, or both...
...Still, I had a sense of luxury, of freedom, that I had never had before...
...Something like 90 per cent of the actors in this country get unemployment, as well as a sizable chunk of the artists and writers...
...It’s open to waste and fraud, too...
...The unemployment program is especially generous, with benefit levels up to $148 a week, and only a one-week wait after quitting your job to collect benefits...
...It helped me lure women...
...Obscure weekly papers fold constantly, and I’d been foolish enough to use an outdated Yellow Pages in my job search...
...My valuable time was being wasted, and my energy sapped, by all the fruitless phone-calling...
...How can we make the unemployment system work again...
...Thus the proles have to accept virtually anything the state employment service might offer, but professionals like myself are shielded from such discomforts...
...It was all terribly unfair...
...and 11 :35 p.m...
...Layoffs are little more than tax-free holidays...
...Its purpose is a d mira bl e enough - he1 ping the unemployed through a temporary financial crisis-but it has now joined the crazy-quilt of government direct and in-kind subsidies to individuals that are shot through with waste, duplication, fraud, and incompetence...
...This plan added up to 26 more weeks, courtesy of the federal treasury...
...This was called hedging your bets...
...The economic resources now directed upwards to pay the high costs of movie stars, athletes, corporate lawyers, and others with enjoyable jobs might be shifted back down to typists, janitors, and short-order cooks...
...No jobs in journalism...
...Aleta Kaufman provided research assistance...
...The State employment services, of course, could easily boost denial numbers as a way to get more staff and look tough, but given the way the agencies are run, they’d never make a dent in the problem, while hurting a lot of people unjustly in the process...
...For them, I’d concoct letters aimed at, shall we say, attracting attention...
...If it’s not, people like me will always find ways to cut the corners and get what we want...
...Tough regulations for proving job search can be easily manipulated...
...They called the bill “slave labor...
...To achieve either sound financing or an end to fraud would never be worth the cost we’d have to pay...
...1 would still stay home and write my stories...
...Total costs for unemployment jumped from $7 billion in 1974 to $20 billion in 1976, while revenues increased only $1 billion to $7.5 billion...
...Passers-by stared at me, as I did my best to look noncriminal...
...Still no work, Mr...
...And late in the afternoon, I came by to claim my long-lost letter...
...Seedy clothing, long hair, shaky hands-it’s amazing how a few minor quirks can keep you on the unemployment line...
...Please, sir, I need a letter in there.’’ My eyes glazed over with a look of soft yearning...
...I went out to make my rendezvous with destiny...
...Using 1974 figures, he also discovered that 38 per cent of all job losers-the biggest category of unemployed-were waiting to be recalled to their jobs...
...Generally, about a fifth of all those eligible for unemployment benefits collect the maximum allowable amount...
...Things will only get worse, because benefits increase automatically with pay raises, while the wage base has a ilat ceiling...
...Last year, for example, the National Association of Manufacturers asked for an end to duplicate benefits for former federal employees, who may, at the same time, receive unemployment, pension and social security benefits...
...There are still needy people in this country, but only the hustlers know how to use the programs, while the rest of us pay for it...
...I couldn’t live without it,” one freelance director told me...
...While their leaders spoke from a church pulpit, they cried out, “No Cuts...
...For me, it would be like a year-round unemployment check...
...Editor-inchief, please...
...I wasn’t eager to bring down the wrath of the state by not at least seeming to be looking for work...
...In large industries, they can make a dent in profits, and many corporations look to consulting firms or their own legal departments for ways to reduce unemployment taxes...
...Soon the whole neighborhood would be surrounded with squad cars, SWAT teams, megaphones, sirens, flashing red lights...
...The current system is unfair and uneven, penalizing the working poor, families with able-bodied adult males, individuals, and childless couples...
...According to one study, fully half of those receiving unemployment benefits are getting other payments...
...I did, however, try to balance my search by applying to heftier specialty magazines, like Stock Car Review of Tupelo, Mississippi...
...We see the Labor Department’s monthly figures, hovering recently in the seven per cent range, and think of black teenagers scouring for work and husbands scanning the want ads and little children going hungry...
...But this method posed more dangers than the direct-dial approach...
...Perhaps I shouldn’t have complained : I had already gotten 26 weeks of unemployment under the earliest unemployment law, passed in 1935...
...Thus, I favored the poetry section of Writer’s Market, where I’d look for entries like this: “The PaisZey Rainbow, Free Thinker Press...
...If our society is willing to allow people the explicit tradeoff that unemployment benefits imply-if you really don’t want a boring, degrading, even dangerous job, the government will maintain you at a subsistence level-that’s fine...
...Incredible...
...I was so upset that I often found it impossible to make any more calls for the next few days...
...And a guaranteed annual income would allow for only the barest necessities...
...The Welfare Queen, Linda Taylor of Chicago, is only the ultimate symbol of how rotten the system is...
...If worse comes to worse, he can always blow the interview...
...I took no chances: at 11 :30 a.m...
...I started by calling the newspapers near my home and then moved on to other publications...
...A Bit Crazy Like other well-meaning programs, unemployment insurance has gone a bit crazy, draining government treasuries, harassing businesses, and adding to unemployment...
...The confining atmosphere of the car was slowly driving me mad...
...Write a few editorials, do a column now and then, lunch with the Mayor-all these tasks could be admirably handled by a person with my skills...
...But how...
...and “Did you actively look for work during the week shown on reverse side [If yes, list two contacts in space provided] .” Naturally, under such insistent prodding, I desperately scoured the land for work...
...Criminal prosecutions are even rarer...
...You’ll have to fill out a letter retrieval form at the post office...
...The sad part was that I received the exact same response when I really was interested in a job, sending off newspaper clips and a fancy resume to papers around the country...
...I had been fired from a Topeka newspaper and was living in a commune in Wichita...
...This time I’d gone too far: this fraud could be easily spotted...
...Biannual...
...Unfortunately, only a fraction of those receiving unemployment insurance are so blessed, and few states pay benefits to strikers...
...With that scenario in mind, I thought about my unemployment form lying placidly at the bottom of the metal mailbox, waiting to spirit me away to my doom...
...After a while, a busy, gruff man came on the line...
...Not that I didn’t try...
...It’s an ass-backwards approach that will eventually bankrupt us all...
...There is, like it or not, a group of people in this country for whom the material comforts a job brings are simply less important than doing something interesting, creative, or useful-even just restful...
...Inevitably, they had no openings for reporters...
...Obviously, Washington, D.C...
...At parties, on the street, in unemployment offices, wherever my friends and I gathered, there was nothing but kind words for this magical program that was transforming all our lives...
...I think we’re making America a better place...
...The old-fashioned desire to work to the top of a given career is being replaced by other sets of values...
...One thought that never occurred to me was that I should be out looking for work...
...But as I pocketed the check and headed back to the kitchen for a snack, I noticed another card in the envelope: the State of Kansas was cutting off my benefits...
...As a timesaving device, I took to opening up the Yellow Pages at random and writing down the names of any businesses I found...
...it provides you with enough money to scrape by, and that, in most cases, is it...
...All sorts of ugly possibilities crossed my mind: I had missed the pick-up, or the FBI was waiting for me to blow up the mailbox, or the mailman had been replaced by an undercover agent...
...The conservative proposals for making the system pay for itself-higher tax penalties on unstable industries, taxable benefits, tough enforcement-could cause unnecessary human suffering and further unemployment, without closing the revenue gap...
...I suppose, if pressed, I’d have to admit that contrite thoughts crossed my mind occasionally...
...The Real World For others with no artistic bent, the unemployment program is allowing them to live out the fantasies of their undergraduate days...
...Of course I wondered why they had enough energy to protest but not enough to find a job...
...Recent analyses of unemployment statistics have produced some startling findings...
...And one obvious way is to fire workers...
...I was using one agency of the government to help outwit another, and I expected at any moment that the postmaster might swoop down on me: “What’s this...
...It’s one of the few programs left in America where any citizen, no matter how unlucky or downtrodden, can get something for nothing...
...And Martin Feldstein found that among men aged 25 to 64, prime members of the ,work force, nearly half of them, classified as “job losers,” were only on a temporary layoff...
...The results, I’m sad to say, were the same...
...Lying on the couch, I picked up the phone...
...The routine was invariably the same...
...Even with a negative income tax, work would get done...
...The real solution has been obvious for years-a simple income maintenance program -but each succeeding administration remains content only to tinker with the mechanics of its spending programs...
...The long-range aim is to Put America Back to Work...
...and I was well into the 26 more weeks that the federal emergency benefits program provided when the spigot was cut off...
...I had become a man of independent means, almost as if I had inherited wealth...
...Although their language was strong, they had a valid point: if people would rather barely scrape by than do work they find odious, they should have that right...
...Time passed, noon came and went, and still the mailman hadn’t arrived...
...If forced to work, I’d have become surly and depressed, gone on wild drinking sprees, crashed into governmentowned highway dividers and wasted the time of ambulance drivers, policemen, and emergency-room doctors...
...I’ve used the time so fruitfully, whereas before I’d be caught up in all this trivia . . . . “I would never have quit...
...These penalties have a polite liberal logic, but it means that in some cases industries are being dunned extra for each rip-off artist who breezes through a plant and leaves six months later...
...We are all familiar with the traditional James Agee imagery: the unshaven worker, fired after 20 years at the plant, standing in line to pick up his meager check, while his wife and two kids, Sis and Junior, huddle near the fire in their modest, two-room home...
...But raising taxes seems to be the only funding alternative for a literally bankrupt system...
...So, in Kansas, enough of my fellow jobless were willing to give up the good life and find work, thus selling me out...
...With aristocratic disdain, I could do o n l y that work which was interesting-no dreary reporting or research jobs for me...
...I figure I might as well retire now...
...I made a mistake and I need to get it back...
...I was dismayed to learn that my local employment office, after requesting that I register for work, had no listings from newspapers seeking reporters...
...Is that okay...
...The protestors’ attitude is not the kind that sits easily with most Americansafter all, what have they done to I deserve a free ride...
...Denial of benefits is one tool that’s relatively unused-last year, only .8 per cent of America’s 155,000,000 unemployment claims were denied because the claimants were not looking for work...
...Bending it into shape, I forged a tool that I hoped could do the job...
...Naturally, this provision was attacked by a group of 800 chanting unemployed who streamed to Washington recently to protest the new bill...
...All together, the unemployedespecially the half of them that are getting benefits-are not simply the hapless victims of fate portrayed by the liberal press...
...I’ve done it so many times when I really wanted to work, that I could easily duplicate some of my previous performances...
...Both the extended and FSB programs are triggered by high unemployment rates...
...The mechanism is already there, and the necessary fear and respect is there as well...
...And the federal government in turn had exhausted its trust fund and had to borrow $1 1 billion from general revenues for federal and state payments...
...That way, he recalled fondly, he only missed two checks...
...The Bureau of Labor Statistics generally classifies people as unemployed if they are not now working, but have looked for work in the past four weeks...
...In preparing for a play, he collected unemployment for several weeks prior to opening night, then only reported the income paid to him for the two-week run of the play...
...Its suggestion had no impact, and nothing at all has been done to cut back on the range of duplicate payments available to both government and private workers...
...If anyone caught me, I would surely go to prison or at least Allenwood, for this was a crime...
...Hekh tened Self-Wor t h All this futile job-hunting had a marked impact on my personality...
...And then they are penalized with higher taxes up to a state maximum if there is a big worker turnover...
...I had to retrieve that envelope...
...It was now 12:30 a.m...
...So, on one Sunday night in the fall, I came perilously close to a fine, or imprisonment, or both...
...It has become part of an unofficial wage package offered to workers in high-turnover industries...
...Unfortunately, in this area there are wildly contradictory findings, often based on inexact data...
...This was followed in 1974 by Federal Supplementary Benefits (FSB), which expired in March...
...I was on my own...
...I am interested in a salary range of $250 to $500 a week...
...She took from nearly a dozen different programs...
...Even so, they speak cautiously, as if pointing out some of the more obvious flaws could only get them tagged as Neanderthals out to starve the masses...
...Edward Kostin, auto worker: “I think being unemployed was the happiest six months of my life...
...To get all this bounty, all I’d had to do was work six months, and get fired...
...Add to that private pensions and union employment benefits and in-kind services like Medicaid and food stamps, and you have a rather unpleasant picture of a nation of hustlers, grabbing for what they can, the cost to others be damned...
...The news came as a shock, and I felt a queasy sensation in the pit of my stomach...
...She allegedly used 26 aliases to collect $150,000 a year from welfare programs...
...By the end of 1976, 21 states had depleted their unemployment funds and had to turn to the federal government for $3 billion in loans...
...were traditionally set aside for my arduous weekly job hunt...
...All these categories, incidentally, are based on the assumption that the respondents aren’t lying...
...Fewer than 6,500 people were convicted for unemploymentrelated fraud last year...
...A slight, misty rain was falling outside...
...It’s reasonable to ask recipients, as the proposal would, to supply “tangible evidence” that they’re conducting a sustained job search...
...The Wulden II economic system could take hold here: we’d pay high prices for the work no one wanted to do...
...But on the surface, I did my best to act calm...
...The tape-recorded voice of the operator came as a shock...
...Unemployment insurance,” I smiled back...
...Acquires all rights...
...Sincerely, “Lenny Marx” In response, I’d get back amazingly cordial letters informing me that while there were no vacancies at the moment, they were keeping my application on file...
...Circulation: 400...
...Ugly Possibilities It would be unseemly, of course, but I had no choice but to beg him to return the letter...
...I grabbed my coat hanger and jumped into some nearby bushes and watched the car move slowly by...
...Backpacking across the country, setting up communes, sleeping on beaches, America’s young are learning that all the parental horror stories about the “real world” are just so many fairy tales designed to scare them into regular work...
...Unemployment is far more democratic than the usual grant program: anyone can apply, without the benefit of big-shot connections or a university affiliation...
...Over half the benefits go to families with incomes over $10,000...
...Of course, government largesse isn’t the only laziness incentive...
...By this spring Congress was considering a new, tightened FSB plan to run until March 1978...
...After all, it was a criminal offense to make false statements on my weekly card...
...They are paying about $6 billion a year in unemployment taxes...
...I became a gentleman of leisure, a member of the idle rich...
...My own project, “The Elevation of Lenny Marx into a Rich and Famous Writer by 1978,” would hardly qualify for government or foundation support, but was tailor-made for the unemployment program...
...Editor: L.B...
...These provisions give workers with more seniority the privilege of being laid off earlier than other workers and being rehired later...
...After years of newspaper journalism, I had a chance to try fiction, magazine work, and poetry...
...How could that be...
...For this I was paid a comfortable majority of my previous salary, tax free...
...And there’s no such thing as not being able to work, either...
...What’s not so pleasant is the requirement that people accept newly defined “suitable labor,” even if it pays less or requires fewer skills than their customary jobs...
...Editor, I’d sure like to work as a reporter on your newspaper,” I said, my voice cracking in an adolescent whine...
...There is supposed to be some kind of stigma attached to unemployment, but for increasingly large segments of the population that just isn’t so...
...It was a weekly ritual I had grown to love in the year since I had lost my job...
...I knew it, but who leaves a $20,000-a-year job...
...Would everyone quit his dull, menial, low-paying job the next day...
...Congress goes on raising taxes and expanding coverage, without giving much thought to who will pay the final bill...
...Meanwhile, to cover the costs of the program, their employers are paying taxes into state and federal treasuries, and throwing up their hands in despair at the rapid turnover of workers...
...Repeated scandals, hearings and investigations have changed nothing...
...Another friend, a sculptor, collected thousands of dollars in unreported income as a bartender while devoting himself to his art...
...This is a rather common slur against the unemployed...
...Unlike most other government subsidy programs, it is broadly available to the middle class, so it is less vulnerable to attack...
...Unemployment insurance has as its potential constituency every wage earner in the United States...
...Nearly half of the federal budget is being spent on direct payments like welfare, veterans’ benefits, social security , workmen’s compensation, and unemployment insurance...
...I could feel it rustling and scraping down there, but I sensed that my envelope was having a good laugh at my expense...
...I had been saved...
...The subsidies will cost an estimated $192 billion this year, or 46 per cent of the federal budget...
...I took advantage of all of them...
...Without unemployment compensation, Feldstein contends, there would be fewer unstable jobs in the economy...
...I was out there in my car, ominously parked across from the site, waiting for him to show up...
...Interestingly enough, Classen also undercut one of the social justifications for the long delays in finding work: the search for a better job...
...Fortunately, because of my training and experience, I was required to look for work only in the field of newspaper reporting...
...in fact, I was able to cut down my job-hunting to a mere three minutes a week...
...After reading “Peanuts” and “Doonesbury,” I’d fold the section carefully into neat squares and drop it in the wastebasket...
...I had no choice...
...Let me add my own voice to this chorus of misery...
...Employers have a right to feel resentful...
...I have some writing experience and have attended an accredited college...
...The leading study in the subject shows that Americans won’t stay home in droves even if given free cash...
...To claim benefits, all workers are required to accept only offers of “suitable work,” based on their prior experience, earnings, or training...
...With my $72-a-week tax-free income, I felt that most work was beneath me...
...Most articles in the press focus on the deterioration that follows prolonged j o ble ssn e ss : 1 ow ered self-worth, marital problems, increased alcoholism and suicide rates...
...I am in good health, except for occasional attacks of grand mal epilepsy...
...On that night, I wrote down the names of two local newspapers, while consulting my pocket calendar to search for appropriate application dates to use...
...Can you believe it...
...Although workers are generally satisfied, businessmen are starting to protest the unemployment system...
...Another sign that the government is now on top of the situation is its estimate that less than one per cent of claims are illegitimate...
...She concluded that a $10 rise in benefits leads to an extra week of joblessness, and that the overall impact at that time was a .9-percent jump in the unemployment rate...
...The initial jump in the federal budget would likely lead to long-term savings following the cutting of all the other programs...
...I unfurled the coat hanger from underneath my raincoat and got to work...
...By losing my job and then studiously avoiding work for over a year, I had managed to become eligible for 65 weeks of regular, extended, and emergency benefits...
...Pat O’Connor, 40: “It gives you and your mind a time to be much more creative than you ever were . . . . To think that I’ve done Russian novels, that I’ve tackled Dostoevski on my own, without even taking a course...
...The workers feel otherwise, and small wonder...
...My only hope lay with the mailman...
...Raising unemployment taxes can add to unemployment, thus further draining government treasuries and causing still higher taxes, again costing more jobs...
...The pick-up was scheduled for noon...
...To comply with the law, I actually wrote letters to employersbut they were guaranteed to alienate even the most sympathetic boss...
...Most people aren’t willing to live poor, but we are-and I feel strongly that we’re not just leeches on society...
...One person’s income is inflated by a wide range of government checks, while another has to survive on social security...
...Along with Harvard economist Martin Feldstein, she also argues that the availability of tax-free unemployment benefits only encourages businesses to lay off workers...
...A range of cash guarantees and tax breaks were offered to about 1,300 families in New Jersey and Pennsylvania, who were assigned to either experimental or control groups...
...Looking over my shoulder, I soon saw the beams of approaching headlights against the overhanging trees...
...Running to my closet, I put on my raincoat and took out a wire hanger...
...We are ambling in a kind of instinctive tropism towards a makeshift guaranteed annual income, taking our checks here and there from whichever agency is handiest...
...At one time, I sincerely believed that there was some kind of Archangel of Unemployment who was watching over me at all times, ready to pounce if I made a false move...
...What can I do for “Well, Mr...
...Of course, the first step in this nationwide job hunt was to pick publications that looked like they were run out of somebody’s base- ’ ment...
...Afterwards, rested and refreshed, I managed to summon the courage to place still another call...
...Later estimates have gone as high as 1.2 million more people unemployed because of benefits, or 1.25 per cent...
...Those groups are now covered by a temporary program, Special Unemployment Assistance, and will be gradually phased into the permanent system...
...It stuck out like a sore thumb.’ “Marx, who faces up to three years in jail and a $1,000 fine, had no comment...
...Although it turned out not to be a police car, I realized that it had been a very close call...
...Marston’s work, however, has been criticized by some in the Congressional Budget Office and Labor Department for using fancy computations to cover up a weak data base...
...One post that appealed to me, for example, was that of Associate Editor of The New York Times...
...Obviously, weeding out cheaters and loafers would be an almost impossible task...
...Even those fired and those laid off together amounted to less than half of the unemployed...
...Thus, fearful of arrest, I began my long job search...
...In my case, I could furnish written proof from 200 newspapers that I had applied for a job, knowing full well that a pro forma application never landed anyone a newspaper job...
...Bright young people are approaching their work like illiterate slum dwellers, taking odd jobs and menial labor as a way to earn money, then moving on when the mood hits them...
...I was also so exhausted by the effort of lifting the phone and turning pages that I was forced to lie outside in the sun, taking along a transistor radio to calm my shattered nerves...
...Every able-bodied person who wants work should have a job-that is the promise liberal Democrats offer...
...But by then it could be too late!’’ I wailed...
...I often imagined the scene as I returned to file another request for an extension: I am 55 years old, with 8,524 rejection slips behind me...
...Even to an untrained eye, it looked awfully suspicious...
...Welfare and food stamps recipients who go on unemployment, on the other hand, have their benefits cut...
...Rules are rules...
...Work for six months and go on unemployment” is their new motto, and it’s working out just fine, thank you...
...Government...
...All the while, I kept a watch out for any patrol cars...
...That requirement only goes into effect when the state determines that your prospects for obtaining work in your field are poor...
...The card was supposed to be mailed on Sunday for the previous week...
...I would have been an unhappy person...
...She found that longer spells of unemployment didn’t lead workers to either better-paying or more permanent, satisfying jobs...
...Others in the country were also willing to make that bargain...
...Some of these studies are also an affront to common sense...
...If a person doesn’t want to work, he’ll figure out a way to comply with the law and still get his unemployment check...
...Hey, Lenny,” friends asked me, “what’s your secret...
...It, too, was out of business...
...It’s better than the Irish sweepstakes and the chances for winning are much greater...
...I was afraid to quit because I thought it was terribly essential that I get another $207000-a-year job, because I couldn’t live...
...It was terse, economical prose, and it brought me a steady income...
...I started sweating heavily at the thought of what I had done...
...With the small cushion of a guaranteed annual income, workers could begm to demand higher wages, more power, and better conditions...
...As time wore on, I refined my job-hunting techniques...
...Hold him, boys, while I call Washington...
...By noon, the mailman would come, open up the box, and my fate would be sealed...
...The news came as a sharp disappointment...
...And the taxes are not as small as they seem...
...Kathleen Classen’s 1974 work for the Labor Department is thought to have more reliable data, because she examined the effect of a rise in benefits on job searches in a single state...
...So it was that I found myself down at the local post office, filling out the proper forms...
...Although there was considerable glee in my reaction to finding out what a good deal I’d stumbled on to, I did realize that I was taking money from government treasuries that wasn’t intended for people like me...
...They’d probably been part of a small chain...
...So, Nancy Hanks, eat your heart out...
...But unemployment benefits are not the only subsidies available to the jobless...
...This did not, however, put me in any danger of finding work...
...In April 1976 my free ride would be over...
...Some economic studies have also found that increasing the tax rate on the wage base would lead to more firings...
...Administered through the IRS it would take all income into account -including gifts and winnings-and provide a bare minimum on which to live...
...Then, with the satisfaction of one who has completed a job well done, I licked the envelope and headed towards my mailbox with a confident swagger...
...I would also have been willing to work as a staff poet on The New Yorker or writer-inresidence at the University of Honolulu...
...One study found that two thirds of those who exhausted their benefits then found jobs or withdrew from the labor force...
...That’s still roughly 288,000 more unemployed people...
...When I got back, I took a second glance at the newspapers I listed...
...I was surprised at how easy this was...
...What’s not so easy is doing something about the routine ease with which recipients get benefits while avoiding work...
...To reassure myself, I dialed one of the numbers...
...In addition, I am no longer addicted to heroin...
...Naturally, that borrowing cut into monies available for other programs...
...Contrite Thoughts In the meantime, my friends and I took our unemployment checks and stayed at home, sleeping late and smoking dope...
...Or me, for that matter...
...In fact, there were several promising jobs I would have been glad to have...
...In addition, most people find work quickly after losing jobs...
...Moreover, while the typical writer was paid five or ten cents a word, I was pulling in an average of three dollars for each word I wrote down on my unemployment form...
...All in all, unemployment taxes seem to have been designed by Lewis Carroll, with amendments by Joseph Heller...
...I got up, badly shaken and wet, too, and made a few more desperate lunges with the wire...
...For 12 million annual recipients, that’s quite a large administrative budget...
...The jig was up...
...At a Maryland legislative hearing, for example, one suburban auto parts dealer complained that he was tired of paying benefits for “drunken, thieving, drug-addicted” people who lose their jobs...
...And nationwide, there were roughly 12 million other grateful people accepting unemployment benefits each year...
...On the front of the box, it clearly stated, “It is a crime to tamper in any fashion with this property of the U.S...
...And who can blame them...
...Looking around casually, hke just another neighbor mailing a letter, I quickly rammed the wire down the opening of the mailbox...
...One reason there are few other protests is that no one is willing to jeopardize his own personal security...
...I envisioned the headlines following my arrest: STATE NABS ‘WRITER IN JOB SCAM...
...Now and then, a businessman’s group issues a report denoucing fraud and waste in the unemployment system...
...Davis...
...Established in 1972...
...Two of Classen’s colleagues at the Public Research Institute, Arlene Holen and Stanley Horowitz, have made additional findings that underscore the role of benefits in adding to unemployment...
...Moreover, the American people seem to treat jobs as revolving doors: over 20 per cent of the work force is at least temporarily unemployed during the course of a year-three times the monthly figures...
...With a nationwide newspaper directory and a Writer’s Market as my guides, I was assured of an endless stream of publications that would never consider hiring me...
...The clumsy hit-and-miss method I was using was clearly getting me nowhere...
...In addition to groups, individual businessmen also make their own, less restrained attacks on the system...
...The higher up the career scale you are, the more rarified is the concept of suitable work...
...Looking over my records, the sympathetic clerk has a striking resemblance to her mother, with whom I filed 30 years before...
...That would be unlikely, but the threat of that could have an enormous impact on the workplace...
...Pays in contributor copies...
...Unemployment offices are beginning to resemble youth hostels, with nomadic college grads checking in for their weekly out-ofstate employment reports...
...Listen now to the agony of America’s unemployed, as reported in The Washington Post: Stuart Waters, 21 : “Everybody is looking forward to retirement at 65...
...We thus have created the seeds of a system that could turn every state government into another New York City, but few people seem to notice...
...By this point, those half-dozen readers still following along might be impatient for the stirring cries for reform that usually conclude such articles...
...In that time I’d become a familiar sight to my mailman, greeting him in my pajamas and bathrobe at two in the afternoon...
...Better yet, the law graciously delayed paying benefits for each week that I earned money...
...Under the law, a state was cut off when its insured unemployment rate dipped below five per cent...
...While living off my unemployment checks, I was contributing to society by writing short stones and remaining cheerful...
...The short AP story would no doubt be seen in newspapers around the country, including those read by my mother: “ S t a t e prosecutors today announced the indictment of Lenny Marx, 28, an unemployed Wichita resident, on 14 counts of defrauding the government and ‘illegal laziness.’ Marx, a self-styled ‘writer,’ was charged with falsely claiming unemployment insurance benefits, although he has made no attempt to find work in the last ten months...
...I could walk out of here tomorrow moming and get a job doing something...
...White heads of families ended up working only 5 per cent less, and among blacks and Spanish-Americans there was virtually no reduction at all...
...No Way...
...A negative income tax might not remedy everything, but it could go a long way towards ending abuses and helping those who really need help...
...is not the most receptive home for a stirring cry on behalf of the work ethic...
...An $8 million, three-year experiment by the Office of Economic Opportunity found that a negative income tax barely affected the work habits of the heads of low-income families...
...But I wouldn’t have to cheat anyone or bankrupt any treasuries to do it...
...This was easy to crack,’ said one investigator, ‘because he wrote down the names of two defunct newspapers located on the same street...
...Another recent study showed that 80 per cent of working people would work even if they were given enough money to live com fort ably...
...When I was getting unemployment checks, any government pollster interviewing me would have been loudly told how hard I was looking for work...
...Another free-lance writer trying to retrieve a fake unemployment form...
...Now, except for a few publicized scandals, fraud enforcement is largely haphazard...
...And by skipping the tiresome process of actually contacting employers, I spared myself the embarrassing prospect that someone might offer me a job...
...The proposed extension of Federal Supplemental Benefits tightens eligibility in several ways, while cutting the maximum benefits to an additional 13 weeks, instead of the present 26...
...The price 1 paid for my freedom was that I barely had enough money to pay my rent, food, and other expenses...
...Feldstein estimates that it contributes to half the temporary layoffs in the country...
...While on unemployment, I blossomed as a writer, my emotional and physical health improved, and my love life picked up dramatically...
...And this is the horror of so many job situations...
...We should replace them all with a guaranteed annual income...
...The regular 26-week program originated with the Social Security Act of 1935...
...At the end of the week, I sent this information to the state, and then merely waited for my next check to arrive...
...A lifetime subsidy, my carefree existenceall of it would vanish...
...While the National Endowment for the Arts and Humanities spent about 10 per cent of its budget last year on individual artists and writers, the state and federal governments were doling out millions more to virtually every struggling artist in the country...
...The heart of the question, of course, is to what extent unemployment benefits actually promote unemployment...
...Sitting in front of the TV, I balanced the Yellow Pages on one knee while writing down on the unemployment form the employers I’d purportedly contacted...
...Or they are landing high-paying jobs, then getting themselves fired so they can collect unemployment...
...Because of high unemployment, Congress in 1970 passed an extended benefits program that added 13 weeks of payments...
...It’s easy to catch a Florida vacationer who confesses on 60 Minutes to using Michigan benefits to subsidize his golf practice...
...Meanwhile the government is wasting millions in spreading around cash to people who don’t really need it, and ignoring others who do...
...For a middleaged aerospace worker, say, with a family to support, losing your job is indeed a major crisis...
...Only about a third of them, 33.5 per cent, were fired outright or had jobs that collapsed...
...Better yet, unemployment, far from being a stigma, was actually something of a status symbol...
...If there are any openings, please don’t hesitate to get in touch with me...
...And if you wanted to earn more money, you’d have to go out and work for it...
...Are there any openings...
...Or they have to endure incompetents in order to keep down their taxes...
...But a closer look at the realities of unemployment show that many of the jobless aren’t quite as hungry for work as the policy planners believe...
...This is hardly the picture of unemployment that Jimmy Carter paints...
...Can’t you just give it to me now...
...The federal government is making a slight move to shake out thc system, but it’s at the cost of some iniportant personal rights...
...Those who do complain are merely traditional conservatives and businessmen, and we all know how heartless they are...
...They are hit with an average of nearly three per cent in state and federal taxes on the “wage base,” or taxable payroll, defined as each employee’s wages up to $4,200...
...I’m out pounding the pavement every day, sir,” I would have said with an earnest look...
...In Februafy of this year, the unemployment rate was 7.5 per cent -that’s 7,183,000 people...
...More than half the unemployed go back to work in four weeks or less, and only oneeighth of the jobless have been looking for over six months...
...Thus, I’d once imagined, by making enough magazine or book sales, I could stretch out the benefits until I was 65 years old, at which time I’d become eligible for social security...
...I’m sorry, man, I can’t do that,” he responded with Superfly ease...
...The group estimated the savings at $3 billion a year...
...Equally difficult is catching those who collect off-the-books cash income while getting their unemployment checks...
...More importantly, I had learned a vital lesson: next time, I would be more careful in pretending to look for work...
...Social Security and railroad retirement payments may rank sohigh because unemployment payments do not affect them, so the recipients lack much incentive for going back to work...
...But its surveys also count those who are on temporary layoff and those who will be starting work in a month...
...It seemed that the state had to end its participation in the federal emergency benefits program, which was passed by Congress in 1974 and expired this March...
...In 1975, the Washington Board of Trade chimed in with its call for a crackdown, and its proposals disappeared without a trace...
...What’s needed is a dismantling of the entire apparatus of government subsidies to individuals...
...They were both on the same street, with similar titles...
...Under the law, I had to fill out a card each week that asked several questions, including, “Were you ready, willing, and able to work during the week shown on reverse side...
...Obviously, something has to give...
...But the free ride of unemployment compensation is hardly a luxurious one...
...Another critic, Robert D. Snelling, chairman of the board of the nation’s largest employment agency, said, “Open-ended unemployment benefits are the primary reason why our greatest problem this year has been not locating jobs but finding people to fill them...
...We can spot your kind a mile away...
...Hand-written on yellow-lined paper, the letters went like this: “Dear Sir: “I would like to be the editor of your magazine...
...We want food, clothing, a place to live, a little cash, and, in some publicized cases, Florida vacations and Cadillacs...
...I was a bit more honest, dutifully reporting my income from an occasional short-story or article sale...
...But these jobs, unfortunately, weren’t available at the time I applied...
...One sign of the lure of unemployment benefits is the “inverse seniority’’ provisions in the contracts of several industries...
...It contained the latest unemployment check from the bountiful Kansas Division of Employment, and I ripped it open with a trembling, eager greed...
...Among the better deals available to the unemployed are union supplemental benefits programs...
...I mean, if I’m going to work, why shouldn’t I work later instead of now...
...I’m sorry, the number you have dialed is not a working number...
...For me, and people like me, unemployment insurance had become that long-cherished liberal dream : government funding of the arts...
...They have available to them a pleasant range of unemployment benefits...
...I thrashed the wire against the sides of the box, as if that could stir up a response...
...Pencil in hand, I then wandered over to the Yellow Pages to find a newspaper to call...
...The area is a magnet to unemployed people around the country, some who come for less than noble reasons...
...And in nearly half the states, they can simply quit and collect their checks after a slight delay...
...Actually, for my purposes, it works fine...
...A system that was originally supposed to have been self-financing has, under the pressure of a recession and expansive legislation, turned into an overgrown idiot child, devouring general revenues needed elsewhere...
Vol. 9 • May 1977 • No. 3
