The Patriot Post® · Stop Subsidizing Unemployment

Political analyst Charles Krauthammer offers an explanation of what unemployment is going down – the end of extended unemployment benefits. “These six months, which Obama heralds as the fastest growth in jobs in the U.S. since 1999, have coincided with the six months of which we have no longer extended emergency unemployment, long-term unemployment insurance,” Krauthammer observed. “Remember at the end of last year, the furious debate – the Democrats [and] the president saying, ‘If you end this, the sky is going to fall, people will go starving, it’s going to increase unemployment.’ It’s had precisely the opposite effect. In these six months, where you ended the extended unemployment – and the conservative argument was if you subsidize something, you’ll get more of it, if you stop the subsidy, you’ll lessen it. So, these six months coincide with a decrease in the median length of unemployment from 17 weeks to 13 weeks. The largest six-month decline in the length of unemployment ever measured. Which means the real problem of long-term unemployment was a function of this anomaly, emergency extended unemployment, which should never have happened, and whose end has created this – has contributed to this excellent result. The debate on that extension is over and the conservatives were right.”