Fraud in Unemployment Claims by State

Fraud is rampant in virtually every federal and state welfare program.  The extent to which the government has been able to determine what it is in unemployment insurance benefits is revealed in the map below:

This may be just the tip of the iceberg, with most of the fraud undiscovered.  Apparently, the highest discovered fraud was in Louisiana, though Arizona, New Mexico, Colorado, Nebraska, South Dakota, Wisconsin, Indiana, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Maine, Virginia, Tennessee, South Carolina, Alabama, and Mississippi are all made more than 14% fraudulent payments.  In Louisiana's case, the fraudulent payments were a colossal 38.67% of all payments.  Taking advantage of government programs and taxpayers has long been developed into a fine art in Louisiana.

There are many people who have no compunction about stealing money from the businesses whose only crime is to take the many risks of being in business to produce needed goods and services and of hiring people to work for them.  What is more, as a businessman, I am sure that Congress and virtually every state legislature believes I am guilty of a crime because I actually take the many risks of hiring people.  They penalize me with many taxes and most of them do not even depend upon whether my business is making a profit or whether I am able to pay myself for my many hours of work.  Quite a few of which I am required by innumerable laws and regulations to donate to local, state, and the federal government totally without recompense.  That is what you do to criminals -- you punish them.  It makes one wonder why anyone is fool enough to own a business.

Perhaps all businessmen should quite hiring others and only provide themselves with a job.  That sure would go a long way toward reforming government!  Can you imagine the howl if every taxpayer was required to file his own payroll taxes to the state and the federal government?  There would be no unemployment taxes to provide unemployment benefits.  Everyone would have to generate their own W-2 forms and send them to the governments.  Everyone would be required to provide their own Workmen's Compensation Insurance.  Everyone would have more complex personal income tax filings.  Everyone would have to pay taxes on any business facility and equipment they used to generate their income.  Everyone would have to run equipment depreciation schedules and do the personal property tax filings.  Oh, what a plaintive howl there would be!  Government would become much smaller very quickly and many taxes now hidden from the employee dominated public would become known and hated.