My new piece at Fox News starts this way:
Does a 50 percent increase in unemployment insurance benefits increased the unemployment? You would think everyone would say “yes.” Yet, after the unemployment insurance benefits were increased the beginning of July, I was unable to find a single news stories, including Fox News, that attribute any of the increased unemployment or the loss of jobs to the increased benefits. If you believe the news media all of the bad employment news is just additional evidence of the weakening economy.
But why is it so hard for the media to understand or even mention that if you increase how much people get paid for being unemployed, you get more unemployment?
This hasn’t always been the case. On Fox News Sunday on December 16, 2001, Tony Snow understood the point:Senator Daschle wants to extend unemployment benefits even though the economic research indicates that when you extend those benefits, you extend unemployment. In fact, that was one of the insights behind welfare reform. If you set a date certain for getting rid of benefits, people find jobs.
Kevin Hassett, director of economic policy studies at the American Enterprise Institute, isn’t very surprised by the media ignoring the impact of unemployment insurance that, “The liberal parts of the media tend . . . to ignore the negative impact of welfare.”
New Op-ed at Fox News: The Unjustified Unemployment Panic
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Oleh
abudzar
