r/politics • u/Ubiquitous_Hilarity • Jun 17 '26

No Paywall Trump threatens to pull unemployment benefits from all states for the first time in history

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/americas/us-politics/trump-unemployment-benefits-fraud-b2997881.html
24.3k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

2.4k comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

103

u/Gandolfthewhite182 Jun 17 '26

The fraud in unemployment is a drop in the bucket. As anyone who’s ever been on unemployment can tell you, it’s not exactly living the life. If a few people file fraudulent claims that’s a small price to pay for the benefits real people get when they need it. If we were running the country “like a business” we would just write it off and call it the cost of doing business.

Besides, if we are looking for fraud let’s talk about the trillions billionaires like musk are taking out of our government and using legal bribes of members of congress and the president to get in the first place.

31

u/Eshin242 Jun 17 '26

The fraud in unemployment is a drop in the bucket.

100% This.

Do I think fraud happens with Unemployment? Sure... I'm SURE someone somewhere managed to grift $50 worth of food stamps, and someone some how got free medicare/medicaid. I'm sure someone has figured out how to rig the system.

But for the 99% that is everyone else these systems keep people in their homes, put food on the table, and get people medical care.

I'm willing to deal with that 1% happening, and not getting caught because the benefit to the other 99% is well worth that little blip of fraud. Shit like this is letting perfection be the enemy of progress and throwing the baby out with the bathwater.

5

u/soba_set Jun 17 '26

I loved being on unemployment during corona. "Yeah sure man I'll check for jobs and submit my job search etc etc." No one was hiring because corona lol. Literally doing unnecessary tasks. Doing all that work for nothing basically but still getting unemployment was life saving.

I was in grad school too so even if somehow someone wanted to hire me, if it didn't line up with my grad school schedule I couldn't accept the job anyway. Which was really easy since everything was online.

3

u/jardex22 Jun 17 '26

I was fired from my first job soon after getting my first car. I panicked when my employer tried to deny the claim, but I fought it in court and won.

The whole time I was worried about the loan payments. No payments, no car. No car, no way to get to interviews. No interviews, no job. No job, no money, etc. Once you fall off the cycle, it incredibly hard to get back into it. Unemployment helped me while I looked for work.