“But I do not begrudge the unemployed one single dime of the benefits that they’ve paid into for years and years.”
Actually, its the employer that pays into the insurance... not the employee.
I too don’t want to see people suffer, but this hand out stuff has got to stop.
hand out=handout
Check your pay stub if you get one. At least in my state, both employer and employee pay contributions to the unemployment insurance fund. I paid into it for 25 years and never collected a dime from it.
Is insurance a “hand out”? Is Social Security a “hand out”? That, also, a fund into which both employers and employees make contributions.
I consider a hand out to be direct cash payments with no contribution made by the recipient. It’s especially pernicious to me when the recipients aren’t even checked for need or income, for example, agricultural subsidies. But receiving unemployment benefits doesn’t fall into that category.