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"I personally know two people who deliberately did not take jobs because they knew they could stay on unemployment" The plural of anecdote is not data. :) Furt

"I personally know two people who deliberately did not take jobs because they knew they could stay on unemployment" The plural of anecdote is not data. :) Furthermore, unemployment insurance is something people pay into in the first place. I imagine it's not setting the government back a heck of a lot more than, say, the Bush tax cuts. And cutting off people's ability to pay for rent, food, and a car seems like a pretty poor way of getting out of a recession. The fact is that millions of jobs have been lost and they haven't come back. I guess ~9% unemployment is the new normal, though— them's that got shall get, and those that don't deserve whatever happens to 'em because they're lazy. If they weren't lazy, they'd pull themselves up by their bootstraps, ???, profit! I have to ask a serious question here: what's the endgame here? You cut off unemployment insurance. What happens to the people who suddenly have _no_ money? Is the answer "not my problem"? I can't imagine how Americans expect to "win the future" if their default reaction to an entire class of their countrymen reads like Ebenezer Scrooge.

jerf 16y ago
"The plural of anecdote is not data." I'm not claiming it is. The point is that it's not a theoretical concern. It only takes one instance to show existence, I was actually being generous and giving two. "And cutting off people's ability to pay for rent, food, and a car seems like a pretty poor way of getting out of a recession." Second order effects, second order effects, second order effects. You are making the common-sense assumption that if you cut people's benefits off, they will simply have less money, and not change their behavior at all. That's not how it works. Common sense is not just wrong, it is pathologically wrong when thinking about the economy. "what's the endgame here?" Total economic collapse if we don't stop spending so much money on destroying wealth, no matter how good it makes you feel to do it. This is only a particular case of the general trend. You are also assuming that leaving people without unemployment assistance is more or less the worse-case scenario, and so I'm leading them into the worst case. It's not. Leaving people with no economy in which to get a job and no economy with which to give them assistance of any kind, government or voluntary, is, and that is distressingly close to on the table. How will a collapsed United States dollar render unemployment assistance? You have to think about the full consequences, not just the consequences to one particular instance of the problem at one particular point in time. I personally strongly believe with what I believe to be good reason that all of this soft-headed money spending and wealth destruction is far worse for everybody that tightening our belts and making people work for things, so I reject your attempt at moral authority. The problem of not having enough wealth for everybody can not be solved by policies that destroy yet more wealth and we are perilously close to a wealth-destruction death spiral here, if we're not already in one, all in the name of helping people while actually utterly burying them. It's your policies that lead to ruination, not mine.
- deleted 16y ago
  [deleted]
- wonderzombie 16y ago
  "Second order effects, second order effects, second order effects. You are making the common-sense assumption that if you cut people's benefits off, they will simply have less money, and not change their behavior at all. That's not how it works. Common sense is not just wrong, it is pathologically wrong when thinking about the economy." So what happens, then, when they're evicted, can't make a car payment, and can't feed themselves? For starters, being evicted in a lot of cities is enough to make it _extremely_ difficult to find a new place. And libertarian pixie dust doesn't pay the rent. I have to ask: have you ever _been_ on unemployment? I have. It's enough to keep you treading water. It's substantially less than the wages I had when I was employed. Do you imagine that people _enjoy_ barely making ends meet? Now, I'm sure there are some people who can do it. Good for them. Recognize, however, that that's a privilege. They can afford to live with approximately half of whatever they were making before! They probably don't have a family, aging parents, or medical problems, nor any substantial debt. "Total economic collapse if we don't stop spending so much money on destroying wealth, no matter how good it makes you feel to do it." I don't even know what this means. I mean, I think I know what it's supposed to mean. If I consult my phrasebook, "destroying wealth" is usually code for "taxing the wealthy." The implicit assumption is that most rich folks earned their wealth rather than inherited it. I don't buy it. They were largely born on third base and concluded that they hit a triple. I have no idea what this "soft-headed spending" refers to, either— if you're talking about the stimulus, well, I'm unsympathetic. If no one else is spending, the government can run at a deficit and mitigate the problem. Business was manifestly not stepping up. And personally I agree with Krugman, et al, that the stimulus wasn't big enough. We're in agreement that belt-tightening is disastrous, but that is precisely what animates the author's sentiment. No matter how bad everyone wishes it to be so, the jobs are gone. Punishing those who had the misfortune to be caught in the blowback from Wall Street's epic failure seems misguided and counterproductive. Expecting folks who're already in the hole to pony up thousands of dollars to retrain themselves is the height of privileged thinking. Bottom line: you won't "fix" unemployment by pretending the unemployed don't exist.
  - 16y ago

jerf 16y ago

"The plural of anecdote is not data." I'm not claiming it is. The point is that it's not a theoretical concern. It only takes one instance to show existence, I was actually being generous and giving two. "And cutting off people's ability to pay for rent, food, and a car seems like a pretty poor way of getting out of a recession." Second order effects, second order effects, second order effects. You are making the common-sense assumption that if you cut people's benefits off, they will simply have less money, and not change their behavior at all. That's not how it works. Common sense is not just wrong, it is pathologically wrong when thinking about the economy. "what's the endgame here?" Total economic collapse if we don't stop spending so much money on destroying wealth, no matter how good it makes you feel to do it. This is only a particular case of the general trend. You are also assuming that leaving people without unemployment assistance is more or less the worse-case scenario, and so I'm leading them into the worst case. It's not. Leaving people with no economy in which to get a job and no economy with which to give them assistance of any kind, government or voluntary, is, and that is distressingly close to on the table. How will a collapsed United States dollar render unemployment assistance? You have to think about the full consequences, not just the consequences to one particular instance of the problem at one particular point in time. I personally strongly believe with what I believe to be good reason that all of this soft-headed money spending and wealth destruction is far worse for everybody that tightening our belts and making people work for things, so I reject your attempt at moral authority. The problem of not having enough wealth for everybody can not be solved by policies that destroy yet more wealth and we are perilously close to a wealth-destruction death spiral here, if we're not already in one, all in the name of helping people while actually utterly burying them. It's your policies that lead to ruination, not mine.

deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
wonderzombie 16y ago
"Second order effects, second order effects, second order effects. You are making the common-sense assumption that if you cut people's benefits off, they will simply have less money, and not change their behavior at all. That's not how it works. Common sense is not just wrong, it is pathologically wrong when thinking about the economy." So what happens, then, when they're evicted, can't make a car payment, and can't feed themselves? For starters, being evicted in a lot of cities is enough to make it _extremely_ difficult to find a new place. And libertarian pixie dust doesn't pay the rent. I have to ask: have you ever _been_ on unemployment? I have. It's enough to keep you treading water. It's substantially less than the wages I had when I was employed. Do you imagine that people _enjoy_ barely making ends meet? Now, I'm sure there are some people who can do it. Good for them. Recognize, however, that that's a privilege. They can afford to live with approximately half of whatever they were making before! They probably don't have a family, aging parents, or medical problems, nor any substantial debt. "Total economic collapse if we don't stop spending so much money on destroying wealth, no matter how good it makes you feel to do it." I don't even know what this means. I mean, I think I know what it's supposed to mean. If I consult my phrasebook, "destroying wealth" is usually code for "taxing the wealthy." The implicit assumption is that most rich folks earned their wealth rather than inherited it. I don't buy it. They were largely born on third base and concluded that they hit a triple. I have no idea what this "soft-headed spending" refers to, either— if you're talking about the stimulus, well, I'm unsympathetic. If no one else is spending, the government can run at a deficit and mitigate the problem. Business was manifestly not stepping up. And personally I agree with Krugman, et al, that the stimulus wasn't big enough. We're in agreement that belt-tightening is disastrous, but that is precisely what animates the author's sentiment. No matter how bad everyone wishes it to be so, the jobs are gone. Punishing those who had the misfortune to be caught in the blowback from Wall Street's epic failure seems misguided and counterproductive. Expecting folks who're already in the hole to pony up thousands of dollars to retrain themselves is the height of privileged thinking. Bottom line: you won't "fix" unemployment by pretending the unemployed don't exist.
- 16y ago