A few months ago, I found myself in the unfortunate position of being unemployed. I’d like to attribute it to a steep decline in real estate transactions, as I was previously working in the real estate industry. I was reminded of this today, because I had lunch with a few of my old co-workers. For the record, I had a scrumptulescent sirloin steak salad, and a bowl of lobster bisque. The bisque was so-so, the salad was phenomenal. In any event, I saw the layoff as a blessing in disguise, I had been in a malaise for quite some time, unsatisfied with my job, the potential, etc. I dearly miss a few of my co-workers, but that’s where it stops. Unfortunately, being underemployed full-time has serious disadvantages, the most notable of which is the inability to search for new jobs, and more importantly, to interview for new jobs.

Interviewing, is like a sales job. And with most sales positions, it’s a numbers game: the more you pitch your sale, the more you make – you just play the odds. But when you’re employed full-time, it becomes exceedingly difficult to schedule interviews without drawing the ire of your employer – you can only have so many doctor’s appointments and long lunch breaks. So I was opting out of interviews I should’ve taken, and I wasn’t looking very hard for a job. Basically, I was waiting until I finish my Master’s degree, at which point I would begin to commit myself to the job-search.

Being unemployed allowed me to focus 100% of my efforts on finding opportunities, and I had no impediment to interviews. I was no longer declining interviews because I couldn’t reasonably make it there & back on my lunch break. As a side note, I learned in my FIN 575 class, that the long-run historical average term of unemployment is 5 weeks. It took me 5 weeks to secure another job which paid as well (with better bennies) than my previous dead-end job. But it wasn’t what I was expecting, for alot of reasons. Fortunately, two weeks in to that job, I got a call back from a company with which I’d interviewed for an internship position. The HR contact told me that the interviewers were very impressed, and wanted to recommend me for a full-time position that had since become available. A week or so (and three interviews) later, I had another – better – offer on the table, in a growth-oriented division of an international, diversified firm. The position was in Market Research. I was extremely impressed with the 5 or 6 individuals with whom I interviewed, and so I accepted their offer.

Which brings me, roundabout, to the topic of this post. During the initial month or so which I was unemployed, I was taking full advantage of unemployment “insurance.” I was receiving a paycheck, from the State of Michigan, for not having a job. A classmate of mine, having unjustly lost his job in the health-care industry, is now in the same position. Our mutual academic advisor and department chair, also an unabashed libertarian, has expressed his concerns with “taking advantage” of this “insurance.” He looks at from a doctrinaire position: We don’t believe that unemployment insurance is a legitimate function of the state; therefore, we should decline the benefits.

But this is a point on which I disagree with my advisor, and I think my position is principled enough. The long-and-short of it is; insofar as UI is unjust, every dollar appropriated from our paychecks and used to fund the program is inherently illegitimate. But once that money is in the State coffers, it’s gone to the workers who earned it.

Now, only two sorts of people ever collect those “benefits”: People who accept it as an entitlement – as something deserved to themselves, people who believe the money is rightfully theirs, and people like myself and my classmate, who believe that such benefits shouldn’t exist to begin with, but accept them anyways. Is this a contradiction? Our advisor says “yes,” and to remain consisten in our beliefs, we should deny the benefits.

Our position is pretty simple: The only people who can justifiably receive UI benefits, are those who know that such benefits are wrong per se. Otherwise, if we don’t take them, it just permits the state to dole out more undeserved money to people who believe they’re legitimately entitled – i.e., communists of varying shades. So from a pragmatic point of view, given that the benefits exist, we should do what we can to make sure that they fall in to the “right” hands, lest they otherwise reinforce the idea that such policies are legitimate. If we libertarians find ourselves in the position to benefit from money which was taken from us to begin with, we should reclaim it to the maximum extent possible.