Nineteenth century American politician and newspaper editor Gideon Tucker once wrote, “no man’s life, liberty or property are safe while the Legislature is in session.” The quote has been popularly attributed to Mark Twain, and is invoked in polemics damning the thieving nature of government. Regardless of misattribution, the quote holds an undeniable truth for those who understand, as sociologist Franz Oppenheimer did, the state earns its wealth through purely “political means.”
As a new session of the U.S. Congress starts, Tucker’s criminal class is once again preparing for another year of coercion, stealing, regulating, and worldwide bombing. Not even three days into the cycle, Majority Leader Harry Reid pushed through the Senate an extension of unemployment benefits. Reid was initially worried not enough Republicans would support the plan – even though, by and large, the Grand Old Party is just as susceptible to bolstering the welfare state as their counterparts. He declared that passing the extension will be “good for the economy” and “good for the country.” The bill now moves to the House of Representatives where terrorist-supporter Rep. Peter King is indicating a compromise with Democrats to continue paying the unemployed to not find work.
After a continuous five-year run, Congress failed to pass an extension of benefits and they expired back on December 28. The media sounded their altruistic alarm and called out conservative lawmakers for not acquiescing. The fourth estate may have lost the common man’s trust, but its narrative still shapes policy discussions in the District of Criminals. If Sunday morning talking heads are moaning over cutting benefits to the unemployed, the emotive push to extend payments becomes even more powerful.
It’s safe to say that despite fuss from some GOP members, benefits paid to the long-term jobless will soon begin again. The issue is too much of a vote guarantee to not continue. After all, a person without a job has no excuse to not spend ten minutes voting for the guy or gal who bolsters their checking account every other week.
Long-term unemployment is always a touchy issue because the hardship faced by those out of a job. The argument against anyone who opposes forced unemployment insurance is always the same: they revel over poor people being hurt. Kentucky Sen. Rand Paul is in hot water for suggesting unemployment benefits “provide some disincentive to work.” New York Sen. Chuck Schumer, in typical irate form, called Paul’s comments “insulting.” According to the Senator of Wall Street, calling payments to the jobless a disincentive is wrong because Americans “want to work.”
First off, if there is anything Americans want, it’s not to lift a finger. There is nothing inherently laborious about Yankees. Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society has destroyed most of the industrial spirit that built the country. Capital development still exists, but it has suffered a blow in the form of a lackadaisical attitude created by a wide-reaching welfare state. Anyone who has ever worked in a low-wage position in the U.S. can attest to this fact.
That isn’t to say that Americans, or any of their Western counterparts for that matter, are just plain lazy. Someone has to work to provide the revenue that’s taxed to pay a the bi-weekly welfare check. And the political class has to be sustained with some outside wealth generation.
Economics is the science of deducing what man can do to achieve ends; how then should preferences for leisure be accounted for? The Misean approach to the dismal science says that the disutility of labor – leisure preferred in lieu of labor – is not necessarily a category of action. I don’t agree; it can easily be deduced that some may opt for slacking off to enjoy the fruits of their labor. The alternative is a world where man forever produces, never stopping to take a breath and relax. Experience alone says that characterization is false. But it can also be concluded through logical reasoning.
Not laboring for a given end isn’t the only action that can be considered in a mental vacuum. Leisure itself is a good that commands some physical excursion to achieve. As Rothbard writes in Man, Economy, and State,
[W]hen such satisfactions from labor do not exist, then simply the expected value of the product yielded by the effort will be weighed against the disutility involved in giving up leisure — the utility of the leisure forgone.
It is in the context of disutility where observers declare that unemployment benefits contribute to the disincentive to find work. There is no hard-heartedness in pointing out this logical truth. Detractors of the disincentive argument have little debate to offer besides personal attacks. They won’t confront reality: that some people do take advantage of the system for their own benefit.
The most famous example of handout shysterism was the “welfare queen” trope used by Ronald Reagan to win back-to-back elections. For decades, progressives dismissed the caricature of tax-financed opulence as a racially-fueled, unjust truism. The portrayal of a fur-lined, heel-wearing, Cadillac-driving moocher on the dole was heavily criticized by liberal stalwarts Paul Krugman and Chris Matthews. But it turns out Reagan wasn’t actually lying. As Slate editor Josh Levin documents, Chicagoan Linda Taylor was indeed the crowned queen of welfare. She successfully defrauded the system for hundreds of thousands of dollars under numerous fake aliases.
Pointing out this example of insufferable swindling is met with charges of antipathy. But emotion hardly trumps facts. And the truth is that welfare provides an incentive to not be a productive member of society, even if it’s just in marginal cases. Unemployment benefits don’t subvert this rule. As Mises wrote in Socialism, “unemployment doles can have no other effect than the perpetuation of unemployment.”
As for bleeding-heart welfarism, there is no compassion in tapping the next generation to pay for today’s indolent. In an actual free market economy, the only unemployment is voluntary. Jobs can be performed at any price as long as the cost-for-hire is flexible. For instance, if a firm in the construction business is witnessing a loss in bids, workers can always take a pay cut to hold on to their positions. And they are always free to move to a more profitable company.
The universal elixir for any downtrodden economy is to lower the barriers to producing goods and services. That includes cutting government expenditures, lowering taxes (ransom payments), abolishing state licensure laws, and eliminating burdensome regulation. Basically, by removing the shakedown artists known as public servants from the economic equation, the sum total of value created is much higher.
If Congress was really concerned with lowering the unemployment rate, the economy would be reprieved of onerous barriers. Instead, the payoffs will continue to ensure a large turnout come election day. The unemployed will largely remain supine on the couch. Uncle Sam will continue to pick up the rent and grocery tab. Life will roll along, with the producers once again dragged down by the clingers.