"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, the Republican nominee for senator of Kentucky
"continuing to pay people unemployment compensation is a disincentive for them to seek new work."
~Sen. Jon Kyl (R-AZ)
"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
I suppose they wish to presume that incentives don't matter and that no one should have to work for less than what their previous mortgage-banking job paid them, even if that job was, in retrospect, purely counterproductive. Why not also think that Madoff's investors should be able to peg their portfolio statements at their high water mark, and to suggest otherwise is mean-spirited lunacy?
Prior to this recession, it was generally acknowledged that increases in welfare increased unemployment spells. Now, saying such a thing is considered taboo, like saying that statistically, it's possible that women aren't as dominant at math at the highest levels (Larry Summers seems to have two opinions on all these subject)
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