Eric Falkenstein notes that the following quotes are considered patently idiotic by TalkingPointsMemo:
“I’ve literally had construction companies tell me, ‘I can’t get people to come back to work until…they say, I’ll come back to work when unemployment runs out.’”
—Pennsylvania Attorney General Tom Corbett“As bad as it sounds, ultimately we do have to sometimes accept a wage that’s less than we had at our previous job in order to get back to work and allow the economy to get started again. Nobody likes that, but it may be one of the tough love things that has to happen.”
—Rand Paul, Republican nominee for senator of Kentucky“[C]ontinuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work.”
—Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)“[It's] facilitating the problem if you give an animal or a person ample food supply,” he said. “They will reproduce, especially ones that don’t think too much further than that. And so what you’ve got to do is you’ve got to curtail that type of behavior. They don’t know any better.”
—South Carolina Lt. Gov. Andre Bauer
You’re just not supposed to say that incentives matter; it’s taboo.
My question is this: What is the rationale for making unemployment benefits a grant and not a loan?
Addendum: Unemployment benefits are nominally insurance payouts — but I can’t imagine too many insurance companies structuring a policy to be so susceptible to moral hazard.
If the goal is to get people through a rough patch, why give them money outright, when we could help more people, more efficiently, by loaning them (more) money?