Q. President Obama has talked about his desire to be bipartisan. But the vote on the economic stimulus package went straight down party lines. Is it just the state of politics in America right now?
A. When you really analyze it, if you want to stimulate economic growth, you have to have people investing, creating capital and creating jobs. Basically, a big part of that (stimulus package) went for extending unemployment. It's a nice thing to do, but when you extend unemployment, you take the incentive away from people to go out and get a job. So it almost has a counter negative effect.
Well, let's start with the obvious double-negative. This man was a school teacher, for crying out loud, and he uses phrases like "counter negative?"
But more important, exactly how big of an idiot do you have to be to think that extending unemployment makes people somehow want to be unemployed? Does Hastert think there are people out there wishing and praying every night that they get laid off so they can collect the super sweet extended unemployment to provide for their families, put food on the table, and pay the mortgage, etc., etc.?
H/T: Sullivan.
Posts
1 comments:
While it's foolish to think everyone on or potentially on unemployment prefers the marginal payout to employment, I do believe a substantial number of people, to various extents, do exploit the system, and providing more payouts would necessarily scale up such exploitation. I'm not sure exactly what Hastert refers to within the package--maybe I should read up--but there might be a better way to disperse funds to those who need it. Then again, with job losses growing seemingly by day, maybe there is no really better way.
Post a Comment