4 ms·

Yup. Politicians and governments are, by and large, oblivious to the fact that laws induce behavioral changes. Like extending unemployment benefits to 99 week

by T-hawk 15y ago

Yup. Politicians and governments are, by and large, oblivious to the fact that laws induce behavioral changes. Like extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, then somehow being surprised when the rate increases of people staying on unemployment rather than finding jobs. Or creating a tax credit for low-income families who have children, then being surprised when the low-income birth rate increases. In the politician's world, if a $100 million business exists and a tax rate of 7% is imposed, that is obviously $7 million in revenue, because no company would ever think to try to work around the tax structure or would lose business to competitors not subject to that tax.

cheez 15y ago
> Yup. Politicians and governments are, by and large, oblivious to the fact that laws induce behavioral changes. Come on. Politicians are some of the smartest people in the society. Do you really think they are oblivious or do you think they're just looking out for #1?
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  > Politicians are some of the smartest people in the society. [citation needed] Not that I necessarily disagree, mind you; nor do I want to drag the whole social vs. whatever we call it now intelligence.
  - cheez 15y ago
    I'd say it takes a certain degree of smarts to be able to manipulate people as well as politicians do!
- maxharris 15y ago
  But are they really looking out for themselves by doing so? A captain that helps sink the ship he's on (and keeps him from drowning) is not "looking out for #1" long-term.
  - bilbo0s 15y ago
    He is if he has a dinghy no one else knows about.
    - maxharris 15y ago
      The problem with this is that there is no such dinghy in real life. Immigration is hard (try it sometime), and there's no guarantee that there will be anywhere better to go.
- T-hawk 15y ago
  The closest answer would be willful obliviousness. Like how voting for war funding means borrowing the money from sometime in the future. Politicians know these consequences on some level, but willfully just push them out of consideration. Whatever politicians pushed this in California were counting up the tax revenue that would be collected from Amazon. They couldn't have truly been ignorant that Amazon would pull out, but just kind of put the thought aside to push through the tax plan. edit: I like btilly's point in the child post too.
  - btilly 15y ago
    You have an excellent point and I think that it is even more cynical than that. They know full well that they wouldn't collect that revenue, but by passing the bill they can pretend that they will, and then they can add that line item to the budget to make it easier to balance on paper (which it has to be before it can be passed).
  - pavel_lishin 15y ago
    Nothing that happens after you're out of office matters.
  - cheez 15y ago
    I'm trying to understand how anyone votes for these people.
vailripper 15y ago
I don't think politicians are nearly as ignorant of the situation as you claim. They know full well what they're doing, however their main objective is to get reelected, so they're going to do things like extend unemployment benefits, because their unemployed constituents will no doubt vote for them come reelection, and the negative consequences are abstract and vague, thus easily dismissed.
guelo 15y ago
> extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks ... people staying on unemployment rather than finding jobs > tax credit for low-income families who have children ... low-income birth rate increases Citations please
- olalonde 15y ago
  http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits-will-increase-unemployment-hurt-economy http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits... http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=428343# http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=428343# http://youngilkim.webs.com/Kim_2009.pdf http://youngilkim.webs.com/Kim_2009.pdf https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=iipf64&paper_id=108 https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi...
  - nl 15y ago
    >http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits-will-increase-unemployment-hurt-economy http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits... I think the poster was looking for evidence that this actually occurred, not someone else saying that it will. I didn't look at the others.
    - olalonde 15y ago
      > The University of Chicago’s Bruce Meyer and Harvard’s Lawrence Katz found that for every week that unemployment benefits are extended, the average duration of unemployment goes up by 0.16 to 0.20 weeks. According to a paper coauthored by Alan Krueger, President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, the unemployed more than triple the time they spend job-hunting, from 20 minutes per week to 70 minutes per week, in the weeks right before benefits expire. Should read passed the title next time.
      - nl 15y ago
        The referenced papers (which aren't actually referenced) are hard to find. I did find this though: One of the best-known empirical results in public Önance and labor economics is the ìspikeî in the exit rate from unemployment around the expiration of jobless beneÖts (see e.g., Robert Mo¢ tt, 1985; Lawrence Katz and Bruce Meyer, 1990a; Katz and Meyer, 1990b). This sharp surge in the hazard rate is widely interpreted as evidence that recipients are waiting until their beneÖts run out to return to work However, from the same paper: Our main finding is that the way in which unemployment spells are measured has a large e§ect on the magnitude of the spike at exhaustion, both in existing studies and in our Austrian data... We conclude that most job seekers in Austria are not waiting to return to work until their UI benefits are exhausted. Rather, a large fraction simply leave the unemployment registry once their benefits end and they are no longer required to register to maintain their eligibility for benefit http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~card/papers/unemp-hazards.pdf http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~card/papers/unemp-hazards.pdf
nl 15y ago
Like extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, then somehow being surprised when the rate increases of people staying on unemployment rather than finding jobs. Wow. I've never seen a better example of the phrase correlation does not imply causation.

by T-hawk 15y ago

cheez 15y ago

> Yup. Politicians and governments are, by and large, oblivious to the fact that laws induce behavioral changes. Come on. Politicians are some of the smartest people in the society. Do you really think they are oblivious or do you think they're just looking out for #1?

pavel_lishin 15y ago
> Politicians are some of the smartest people in the society. [citation needed] Not that I necessarily disagree, mind you; nor do I want to drag the whole social vs. whatever we call it now intelligence.
- cheez 15y ago
  I'd say it takes a certain degree of smarts to be able to manipulate people as well as politicians do!
maxharris 15y ago
But are they really looking out for themselves by doing so? A captain that helps sink the ship he's on (and keeps him from drowning) is not "looking out for #1" long-term.
- bilbo0s 15y ago
  He is if he has a dinghy no one else knows about.
  - maxharris 15y ago
    The problem with this is that there is no such dinghy in real life. Immigration is hard (try it sometime), and there's no guarantee that there will be anywhere better to go.
T-hawk 15y ago
The closest answer would be willful obliviousness. Like how voting for war funding means borrowing the money from sometime in the future. Politicians know these consequences on some level, but willfully just push them out of consideration. Whatever politicians pushed this in California were counting up the tax revenue that would be collected from Amazon. They couldn't have truly been ignorant that Amazon would pull out, but just kind of put the thought aside to push through the tax plan. edit: I like btilly's point in the child post too.
- btilly 15y ago
  You have an excellent point and I think that it is even more cynical than that. They know full well that they wouldn't collect that revenue, but by passing the bill they can pretend that they will, and then they can add that line item to the budget to make it easier to balance on paper (which it has to be before it can be passed).
- pavel_lishin 15y ago
  Nothing that happens after you're out of office matters.
- cheez 15y ago
  I'm trying to understand how anyone votes for these people.

vailripper 15y ago

I don't think politicians are nearly as ignorant of the situation as you claim. They know full well what they're doing, however their main objective is to get reelected, so they're going to do things like extend unemployment benefits, because their unemployed constituents will no doubt vote for them come reelection, and the negative consequences are abstract and vague, thus easily dismissed.

guelo 15y ago

> extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks ... people staying on unemployment rather than finding jobs > tax credit for low-income families who have children ... low-income birth rate increases Citations please

olalonde 15y ago
http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits-will-increase-unemployment-hurt-economy http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits... http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=428343# http://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=428343# http://youngilkim.webs.com/Kim_2009.pdf http://youngilkim.webs.com/Kim_2009.pdf https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi?db_name=iipf64&paper_id=108 https://editorialexpress.com/cgi-bin/conference/download.cgi...
- nl 15y ago
  >http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits-will-increase-unemployment-hurt-economy http://cei.org/news-releases/extending-unemployment-benefits... I think the poster was looking for evidence that this actually occurred, not someone else saying that it will. I didn't look at the others.
  - olalonde 15y ago
    > The University of Chicago’s Bruce Meyer and Harvard’s Lawrence Katz found that for every week that unemployment benefits are extended, the average duration of unemployment goes up by 0.16 to 0.20 weeks. According to a paper coauthored by Alan Krueger, President Obama’s Assistant Secretary of the Treasury for Economic Policy, the unemployed more than triple the time they spend job-hunting, from 20 minutes per week to 70 minutes per week, in the weeks right before benefits expire. Should read passed the title next time.
    - nl 15y ago
      The referenced papers (which aren't actually referenced) are hard to find. I did find this though: One of the best-known empirical results in public Önance and labor economics is the ìspikeî in the exit rate from unemployment around the expiration of jobless beneÖts (see e.g., Robert Mo¢ tt, 1985; Lawrence Katz and Bruce Meyer, 1990a; Katz and Meyer, 1990b). This sharp surge in the hazard rate is widely interpreted as evidence that recipients are waiting until their beneÖts run out to return to work However, from the same paper: Our main finding is that the way in which unemployment spells are measured has a large e§ect on the magnitude of the spike at exhaustion, both in existing studies and in our Austrian data... We conclude that most job seekers in Austria are not waiting to return to work until their UI benefits are exhausted. Rather, a large fraction simply leave the unemployment registry once their benefits end and they are no longer required to register to maintain their eligibility for benefit http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~card/papers/unemp-hazards.pdf http://emlab.berkeley.edu/~card/papers/unemp-hazards.pdf

nl 15y ago

Like extending unemployment benefits to 99 weeks, then somehow being surprised when the rate increases of people staying on unemployment rather than finding jobs. Wow. I've never seen a better example of the phrase correlation does not imply causation.