No, Rand Paul, There's No Reason to Cut Unemployment Benefits

[n2doc]

People aren't long-term unemployed because they prefer getting benefits. People are long-term unemployed because there still aren't enough jobs.
RAND GHAYAD

Rand Paul says he cares about the unemployed.

He says it's "our moral obligation as a society to take care of those who cannot take care of themselves." That "no one asserts that the problem [of long-term unemployment] is people not wanting to work." Rather "the problem is not in the minds of the unemployed, but in the minds of employers."

So why does he want to end unemployment benefits for people who have been out of work for 6 months or longer? Well, Paul cites my work on long-term unemployment as a justification—which surprised me, because it implies the opposite of what he says it does.

Now, we clearly have a long-term unemployment problem. The question is why. Paul says it's all about incentives. He thinks extending unemployment benefits does a "disservice" to the unemployed by encouraging them to stay unemployed for too long. And as a "big-hearted" member of a party that cares about the jobless, he wants to protect them from making such mistakes—by cutting their benefits, of course.

But Paul misreads my work to try to back up his argument. He says my paper, which shows that companies don't want to hire people who have been unemployed for more than 6 months, proves his point about long-term benefits (though he confuses it with another paper I authored with William Dickens). How does he figure this? Well, Paul thinks that "extending long-term benefits will only hurt the chances of the unemployed in the job market," because longer benefits will make them choose to stay unemployed longer—at which point firms won't hire them. But just because companies discriminate against the long-term unemployed doesn't mean long-term benefits are to blame. Paul might know that if he read beyond the first line of my paper's abstract.

more

http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2013/12/no-rand-paul-theres-no-reason-to-cut-unemployment-benefits/282698/

[arcane1]

1. Rand is an idiot. One is still unemployed whether they're getting benefits or not.

[daleanime]

2. What?

You want rand paul to read? Who are you Dr. Suess?

[Rex]

3. Fuck Rand Paul.

Really don't know what else to say about that shithead, but fuck him and the high horse he rode in on!


Okay thought of something...why is he so fucking stupid!? Why does he get everything wrong or backwards?

What a supreme moran or Moran Supremo to some.

[Johonny]

4. wouldn't an intelligent person read this as a call for more jobs programs

Private companies don't want to hire people 6 months out of work. Thus the best solution to get chronically unemployed due to the Bush depression is more job programs to bridge them back into the active work force. The Republican idiots were elected on the jobs, jobs, jobs platform. Something the have not even tried to do. No jobs programs, no unemployment = either death or crime. If the Republicans want a highly unstable society create a huge underclass of unemployed and desperate. That Republicans won't pass job programs and cut social programs pretty much shows once again they are terrible at homeland security.

[DirkGently]

5. None of these "incentive" theories are true,

but that never seems to slow down conservatives or "Libertarians" a bit. Chris Hayes did a good job dismantling Paul's pseudo-logic just before Christmas, but apparently there is no amount of logic or reason that can overcome the "helping people is really hurting people" double-think.