Easily digestible tech news... http://www.techdirt.com/ en-us http://www.techdirt.com/images/td-88x31.gifhttp://www.techdirt.com/ Mon, 12 Oct 2009 04:42:57 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/1927006467.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20091008/1927006467.shtml unemployment benefits were greatly reduced, because his blog earned about $1/day in ad revenue. The whole thing sounds like a bureaucratic nightmare, with NY State asking her to get a form from her new "employer" who didn't exist. Then NY Department of Labor started giving her all sorts of contradicting information, and eventually an "investigation" into her "business" -- during which time her unemployment benefits were stopped entirely. She's now pulled the Google AdSense from her blog (total earned over the life of the blog $238.75).

It's really stunning how various labor departments are simply ill-equipped to handle a modern labor force. Reading through the story of this lawyer is not at all surprising. While most of our employees are in California, we've had employees in a few other states, and none of them seem to know how to deal with the idea that people in their state might work remotely for a company in another state. Just last week, we were dealing with one particular state, where we had an employee who hasn't worked for us in nearly two years -- but the state insists we still owe taxes for him and on our "office" in that state, for every day since he no longer worked for us. We've written letters, filled out forms, spoken to people at the local labor department -- and all to no avail. Every couple of months, they send us an updated statement insisting we still owe them money for someone we haven't employed in ages. All of these labor departments are designed based on an old model whereby there was a big company that had a presence in the state, and employed people. They can't handle the idea that someone might work remotely or that people might make some other income from a blog or other source. One of these days, perhaps they'll update their systems, but until then, it's just a bureaucratic nightmare.

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]]> well-how-about-that http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20091008/1927006467 Wed, 18 Mar 2009 13:29:27 PDT Mike Masnick http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090318/0134084161.shtml http://www.techdirt.com/articles/20090318/0134084161.shtml selling the tickets on eBay. This was silly for a variety of reasons -- including the misdirected anger at eBay. But, more importantly, we couldn't figure out who this was harming, at all. Geldof had chosen to give out the tickets for free -- and some people preferred to have money rather than the tickets. Others would get the tickets they valued more. Everyone's better off. Where's the problem?

Apparently, Jay Leno needs that same lesson, and economist Greg Mankiw is explaining it to him. Leno went to Michigan and gave out free tickets to unemployed workers in the state -- and then complained when people put the tickets up for sale on eBay. Remember, these are unemployed people. For many of them, do you think they'd prefer some extra cash or the opportunity to see Leno live? Hell, do you think they'd be better off with cash or the free trip to Leno? Obviously, some greatly prefer the cash -- and it actually seems quite mean of Leno to try to deny them that cash by demanding that eBay take down the auctions.

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]]> let's-explain-the-free-market... http://www.techdirt.com/comment_rss.php?sid=20090318/0134084161