The Unemployment Debate or the new Congressional Turkey

OK, so this is not one of your cheerful thanksgiving blogs espousing the joys of feasting, family and friends. At the excellent Tannery Reading Series in Newburyport last Saturday author Rishi Reddi summed it up about best for me when she said “Thanksgiving sucks.”


All holiday cheer aside congress will be tackling the extension of unemployment benefits in December. There has been much intellectual (and not so intellectual) debate on this issue by many leading economists and the Republican leadership. The argument centers on the idea that the extension of unemployment benefits effectively disincentivise work and actually further exacerbates the problem, and of course there is the “we can’t afford it” fallback position. Needless to say these economists can prove their cases using extensive historical data. I get it, the concept is rather simple, I am paid to stay home therefore I decide not to work, or I refuse work because my unemployment check is bigger than the pay at the job I was offered. I suspect the argument has some merit, in that there must be some drain on human incentive when a regular (free) check is coming in. That being said I have NEVER heard a client (in my office) receiving unemployment elucidate that thought; they would all rather be working. Very few people enjoy or derive pleasure in long term unemployment, it is demeaning and dehumanizing. Furthermore unemployment checks are not much more then subsistence and do not provide a comfortable living.

I see this issue in really simple terms, no need for any pie charts, graphs or historical data. Behind all these horrible unemployment numbers are real US citizens that are suffering, many with families, and these are folks that cannot find any job and (in many cases) cannot even move to a new part of the country to seek job opportunities because they cannot sell their house. Relocation has historically been a remedy for unemployment but these days that cure that been short circuited by our housing crisis. On the opposite side of this equation is a government that can spend millions of dollars defending Chinese workers busy in Afghanistan mining that countries national resources, spend millions on foreign aid and farm subsidies for corporate farms, support the obscene corporate welfare that is a significant part of our current defense budget and is willing to bail out all sorts of industries that have gotten themselves into trouble. Republicans passed the first bailout (TARP) under George Bush after only hours of “debate” but is perfectly willing to have a knuckle busting fight about helping its fellow citizens in trouble thru absolutely no fault of their own, are you fucking kidding me!

After all the economic analysis, good or bad, accurate or inaccurate we find our fellow citizens in trouble, how can we not help them? I feel like saying to all the economists that write on this subject with such alacrity, I really like your thesis and think there may be real merit in them but we still need to vote for the extension of unemployment benefits because at the end of the day we cannot continue the immediate suffering for our fellow citizens just to “bend the curve” of long-term unemployment a few points.