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The Unemployed Aren’t Lazy; Landlords Make Bank
Finance stories for Wednesday, March 31.
More Unemployment Money Doesn’t Make You Lazy
No politician will come out with these exact words, but the political rule of thumb is this: Give lazy bastards money to live, and lazy bastards won’t ever want a job.
The reality is dead wrong.
I’ve written about this before, but it turns out all the hubbub about the extra $300, $400, $600, $whatever of federal unemployment money that was added to the state unemployment money was nothing but hot air aimed at planting flagpoles to use as marketing fodder during the next election.
To wit: The fuss over extra unemployment is just pure political bullshit.
Turns out, extra benefits do the opposite of what the fearmongers claim.
A new working paper from Professor Arindrajit Dube of the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, however, suggests that policymakers need not worry: higher unemployment benefits don’t seem to affect employment levels the way many economists assumed.
…states with low unemployment insurance benefits (and thus the strongest incentives for returning to work) did not increase employment levels more than states with high levels of…
