Quote:
Originally Posted by ChinoCoug
Unemployment benefits shouldn't extend into perpetuity, but the optimal amount of time is higher than current levels.
Studies have shown that unemployed people cut back on their consumption even if they keep getting a check, which means the hardship of unemployment is sufficient incentive to find work even with unemployment benefits.
http://american.com/archive/2007/nov...s/the-theorist |
Who argues you must make people feel a hardship in order to create an incentive to find work? This is a red herring.
First, your correlation sounds simplistic and makes an argument which can be easily knocked down.
Second, incentives to find work seem related to many other factors rather than the existence of unemployment checks, though it seems implausible that some people won't prefer having a check rather than working. The analogy seems to be the concept of imposing the death penalty. If the imposition is not ambiguous and clear, it becomes a deterrent but if not then it's not a deterrent. Here, if you have too many benefits, the immediacy makes people scramble for work whereas a lengthy distant cut-off will deny a person the psychological urgency due to impending termination of benefits.