Courtesy Daily Kos, here's George Will on ABC's This Week explaining why Republicans won't vote to extend unemployment benefits:
TAPPER: George, why can't they pass this unemployment extension? I don't understand. The Republicans say spending cuts should pay for this, the Democrats know it's emergency spending. It seems like this is something where there could be a compromise.So if people get unemployment benefits they won't take one of the millions of jobs on offer, apparently.WILL: Well, partly because they believe that when you subsidize something, you get more of it. And we're subsidizing unemployment, that is the long-term unemployment, those unemployed more than six months, is it at an all-time high and they do not think it's stimulative because what stimulates is the consumer and savers' sense of permanent income. And everyone knows that unemployment benefits are not permanent income.
I would love to see Republican members of Congress (and Republican pundits) suffer through a period of unemployment such that they had to worry about how they were going to feed their children and pay the mortgage and car loans. Politicians, even when voted out of office, usually find highly-remunerative work pretty quickly, from what I can tell. They get hired by corporations which want them to use their influence with their former colleagues to sway those colleagues to vote in the corporations' interests. And I can't recall the last time I heard of a pundit not finding another outlet for his opinions, either.
Believe me, Congressmen and Senators, no employers are knocking on the doors of the long-term unemployed offering good jobs with benefits. Not when there are 5.4 unemployed people for every available job according to the latest numbers from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, Table 1, January 2010 (.pdf). The argument that "if only we'd stop helping these people they'd go out and work" doesn't wash.
Posted by Linkmeister at June 28, 2010 10:32 AM | TrackBack"...they believe that when you subsidize something, you get more of it." So why not subsidize job creation? GAAAH! That would involve spending money, and that's the last thing we want the government to do in this economy, right? Tax cuts for the wealthy, and austerity for everyone else! That's the only way to ensure the growth of a permanent underclass.
Posted by: Harold at June 28, 2010 12:27 PMGeorge Will has demonstrated time and again that he's an obnoxious horse's ass who cares only about the maintenance of the privilege of his own race, class, friends, and relations (and the adulation of the pseudo-intellectuals who consider him a pundit). Listening to him only increases one's blood pressure and depresses one's mood. Trying to persuade him of the falsity and injustice of his opinions does no good, and annoys the pig.
Posted by: Bruce Cohen (Speaker to Managers) at July 1, 2010 02:17 PM