Millionaires on Unemployment

http://www.futureofcapitalism.com/2011/12/millionaires-on-unemployment

My Webster's Second Unabridged dictionary defines a millionaire as "a person whose wealth comes to at least a million dollars, pounds, francs, etc." Somewhere along the line, the New York Times, and President Obama, seems to have changed their definition from an asset-based one to an income based one. From an article in today's Times:

Under the Republican bill to extend a payroll tax holiday scheduled to be voted on in the House as early as Tuesday, those Americans with gross adjusted income over $1 million would no longer be eligible for food stamps or jobless pay...Yet as it turns out, millionaires on food stamps are about as rare as petunias in January.... some millionaires do indeed pursue unemployment pay when they find themselves out of job.

From 2005 to 2009, millionaires collected over $74 million in unemployment benefits, according to an estimate by Senator Tom Coburn, Republican of Oklahoma, who has paired with Senator Mark Udall, Democrat of Colorado, to push to end the practice.

According to Mr. Coburn's office, the Internal Revenue Service reported that 2,362 millionaires collected a total of $20,799,000 in unemployment benefits in 2009; 18 people with an adjusted gross income of $10,000,000 or more received an average of $12,333 in jobless benefits for a total of $222,000.

Senator Coburn's Web page on the issue is here, and the link to the IRS data is here.

by Editor  |  Dec 13, 2011 at 10:58 am Related Topics:  Unemployment receive the latest by email: subscribe to the free futureofcapitalism.com mailing list