Washington Post

An unemployment benefits primer

The tax deal, says Red State's Erick Erickson, "will also continue subsidizing unemployment — yes you read that right. At some point it becomes welfare, not unemployment compensation."

That's the sort of thing that's true in certain conditions, but sounds a little weird when we've got thousands of people lined up to take shuttle buses to a job fair . I wonder how they'd react to being told they're on welfare?

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But the idea that unemployment benefits are just "subsidizing unemployment" bespeaks a real detachment from what it's like to live in a hard-hit state right now. When you hear that unemployment is near 10 percent, you always have to remember that that's an average -- for about half the country, it's worse than that. For some of the country, it's much worse. What's stopping people in Nevada from getting jobs isn't too much unemployment insurance -- it's too few jobs.

Moreover, when a city has 20 percent unemployment, a lot of the remaining jobs in that city are relying on the purchases funded by those unemployment checks. Rip them out, and the unemployment problem will get worse, not better. Just as too much unemployment insurance can reduce employment in a tight economy, too little of it can reduce employment in a weak economy.

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I posted this for the information in the charts.

Worth discussion as well.  I happen to agree with Ezra.

-- Edited by Sanders on Monday 13th of December 2010 02:39:14 PM