Unemployed Without Benefits: A Couple's Struggle (grab a hankie!)

National Public Radio ^ | January 12, 2009 | Kathy Lohr

[bpjam]

I hate to show any sympathy/empathy/understanding/agreement with NPR, but....

This is a situation which doesn’t exist in the media - self employed people who are getting killed in this economy because businesses who were their clients are disappearing right and left. And the ‘safety net’ out there is not designed for those who don’t want to work for the government or have a 9-5 job.

I haven’t been ‘employed’ for a third decade now. I don’t expect anybody to feel sorry for me specifically but I don’t consider myself any less harmed by this economy than somebody who has made $35,000 for the last 10 years. People who make $70-80K a year may not have much higher disposable income than somebody making $40K. And if you are self-employed, you are also paying for all the other fees, licenses, marketing, advertising, etc which ‘employees’ never have to consider.

Obama has absolutely no contact with the innovative, entreprenuerial self-employed sector of America. He don’t know them and his Cabinet is made up of a bunch of people who’ve never been employed outside government/government contractors (ie, Hillary or Michelle type jobs).

At one point, a couple of years ago, I drew up a chart of the number of people whose livelihood appeared to be made up substantially or majorily based upon my own personal economic activity. I was ‘trickling down’ income to support my own business activities to more than a dozen people who made more than 10% of their total income/salary from me as a client of theirs. And if I included all of the landscapers, pool guys, etc, etc, I could have listed a good 25 people on my ‘payroll’ who are harmed when I’m not succeeding as a self-employed entrepreneur.

The self-employed are businesses in themselves. They throw off income, jobs, services and everything else that GE does (with the possible exception of political contributions and corruption). The way to help the self-employed is to get government out of the business of bailing people out so that we (as the small ships on the sea) and better figure out how to navigate this storm without having to worry about the government causing killer waves of its own to sink our collective ships.

Oh, and you could cut personal income taxes since that is how most self-employed people pay taxes to the Federal Government. Raising our rates on January 1, 2010 is like telling us all that we about to see our operating costs go up in the near future so there is more reason to be cautious.

[redgolum]

Sometimes, you don’t have a choice to retire. There is a lot left unsaid in this article.