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Saturday, July 23, 2011

Making Things Worse by Trying to Do Better

From townhall.com

According to a report in the Wall Street Journal, about 26 percent of the unemployed have not held a job in more than a year. Liberals point to these figures as proof that we need to extend unemployment benefits. In states with high unemployment rates, the unemployed are now entitled to up to 99 weeks of benefits through state and federal programs. But liberal policies may have actually created the problem rather than alleviated it.

… The long-term unemployment rate now is actually higher than it was in the Great Depression. But does anyone truly believe that our economy is in worse shape than it was in 1933, when the unemployment rate was 25 percent?

Something else is at work -- and it appears that we're succumbing to the European pattern of unemployment. For decades, the U.S. has had lower unemployment rates, in good times and bad, than many European nations. In 2007, for example, the U.S. unemployment rate was 5 percent, compared to 7.9 percent in France and 8.4 percent in Germany.

[I have been saying for quite some time that one of our biggest problems in the US was the public’s latest expectation that they deserved a job where they lived rather than have to chase one. This article is saying that the comparative mobility figures as late as 2008 are now quickly moving us towards the EU rates on the right of the graph. It would seem that our statists think it is a right to have 99 weeks of unemployment rather than take a less satisfactory or more distant job. This madness has to end! – JS]

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