Unless policy gets back on track, unemployment train will continue
Your recent editorial “Help the unemployed” [Opinion, April 14] criticized the GOP for resisting efforts to extend unemployment benefits. It said “helping those without work to sustain themselves until things improve is hardly a radical economic concept,” yet the position of The Times appears to be based more on misplaced empathy than the time-proven economic principles that actually get people back to work.
The Wall Street Journal’s lead editorial of the previous day quoted President Obama’s economic adviser, Lawrence Summers: “The second way government assistance program programs contribute to long term unemployment is by providing an incentive, and the means, not to work. Each unemployed person has a ‘reservation wage’ — the minimum wage he or she insists on getting before accepting a job. Unemployment insurance and other social assistance programs increase [the] reservation wage, causing an unemployed person to remain unemployed longer.”
Statistics show that most people will ride the unemployment assistance train to nearly the end of the line before they get serious about seeking work. Policies that encourage such behavior, on balance, benefit neither the unemployed nor the economy.
— Bob Benze, Silverdale