I'm personally a proponent of imposing unpleasant conditions on unemployment insurance to reduce moral hazard and make minimally productive use of the unemployed. For example, we can build a physical (rather than virtual) border fence with mexico with labor costs close to zero - we do is select random able-bodied unemployed people and make working on the border fence a condition of receiving further benefits. (Or similar projects - for example, we can reduce the waiting time at the DMV to 0.)
Again: "I'm not endorsing Greenspun's plan, I'm just pointing out that the original poster didn't even bother to read Greenspun's blog post."
My belief is that most of the unemployed should accept lower wages, less pleasant jobs, and many should relocate. (Government assisted relocation was another one of Greenspun's suggestions, BTW.)
As for lowering wages, that's a good thing. Wage stickiness is a major contributor to recessions - this is one thing that Keynes, recalculationists, Austrians and ZMPists can all agree on. Downward wage pressure can help break the back of wage stickiness.
1) Preserving high wages by stifling the availability of workers and then charging a higher tax on the employed to pay unemployment benefits.
And,
2) Letting there be more competition for available jobs, forcing wages down, but employing more people.
There isn't really a controversy about whether unemployment benefits incentivize unemployment. They clearly do. In the absence of beneits, people would very rapidly find ways of obtaining income. The point of unemployment benefits is to allow them to find better income streams; ie, not by selling blood. If all unemployment benefits do is delay the inevitable trip to the blood bank, they are indeed a poor idea.
How does unpaid ditch digging help unemployed find employment?
What is the effect of unpaid ditch diggers on employed earthmovers/DMV workers?
What happens if the unemployed are laid-off earthmovers/DMV workers?
This is just another conservative/libnerdtarian [sic] anti-social rant against lower-class people. Ditch-digging doesn't work, neither does job training. If the government doesn't want to interfere in job creation, the most viable alternative to prevent mass social unrest is to just give people money. The real waste comes from trying to spend it on ditch-digging and job training welfare programs.
Read Gordon Lafer's The Job Training Charade for the statistics, to understand what will happen to the US in the next 20 years, and for an answer to tptacek's original question (spoiler alert: such a program doesn't exist, because it's impossible).
If you're a conservative and steam starts coming out of your ears at the thought of the undeserving welfare queens getting your tax dollar hand-outs, think of it this way: they're going to have the freedom to spend it on whatever they want, no big government telling them what to do to keep their welfare check. Isn't that the essence of economic liberty?
"Moral hazard occurs when a party insulated from risk behaves differently than it would behave if it were fully exposed to the risk."
What is the behavior change of people if government provides money to the unemployed, and why is it bad?
If I have someone giving me money every week, that I can use to buy food, I might be less motivated to look for a job.
If you're reading this, chances are you're here because you've read Paul Graham's writing and want to be an entrepreneur. Paul Graham says that jobs are bad things (http://www.paulgraham.com/hiring.html) and you should be an entrepreneur instead.
The problem is that something like 90% of startups will fail. I bet there are more than a few people on HN who have worked on a startup while receiving unemployment benefits. So if you're on unemployment benefits and decide to do a startup under the table, there's at least some chance something good will happen.
The chance that nothing productive will come out of people working in the unemployment GULAG digging the Great Mexican Ditch (btw, wouldn't it be cheaper to hire Mexican laborers to dig it?) is 100%.
Of course, none of this applies to you, because you're a special entrepreneurial snowflake. No one you know or care about has ever, or will ever, be unemployed. But everyone else is supposed to be your wage slave, willing to move across the country to work on your social media startup, cleaning toilets for stock options (because, you know, janitorial services is a dead industry). Either that, or they're a welfare queen spending their days snowboarding and playing x-box while sipping champagne and smoking cigars rolled from your tax dollars.
And fuck their safety net and their medical care.
This is why I have no problem calling out "libnerdtarians" and other social conservatives. There's a surprising lack of self-awareness, empathy, and the ability to perceive things from other people's perspectives. Some people call it being a sociopath: http://addictinginfo.org/new/?page_id=342
They become employed as ditch diggers at a wage equal to unemployment benefits. The effect on employed earthmovers/DMV workers is that their wages will probably be lowered. Let me point out (again) that I'm not advocating job training, since I don't think it will work.
My theory is that the only way to improve our employment situation is to lower wages, relocate workers, and accept that technology has made some people obsolete.
libnerdtarian
Calling me a nerd, while correct, adds no value to this conversation. Of course, I wouldn't expect a stupid bleeding heart liberal to understand that. (Notice how pointless the last sentence is?)
So you're advocating government creation of low-wage, dead-end make-work jobs on projects that don't create any value, and the destruction of current job wages and benefits through artificial government-subsidized worker oversupply.
This is the GULAG, but I don't understand what the ideological benefit for the inmates is. Oh yeah, and the GULAG actually created a lot of value from gold mining and timber-cutting.
"My theory is that the only way to improve our employment situation is to lower wages, relocate workers, and accept that technology has made some people obsolete."
The market is already doing all of that, why do you need to get the government involved? I'm arguing that the employment situation does not need improvement. We should accept the productivity improvements of technological change, and use it to work less. People playing x-box on unemployment benefits is a good thing.
No, it isn't.
People playing x-box on unemployment benefits is a good thing.
No, it isn't.