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Comment by PureParadigm | Hacker News Reader

Yes, they're temporary. The concern is that if the shut down ends soon (seems unlikely but who knows) then it will delay an economic recovery until the temporary benefits expire. For a faster economic recovery we would want as many people getting back to work as possible. If you make more money not working, the rational choice is to wait for the temporary benefits to expire and then go back to work.

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Again, unemployment requires you to actively search for work and accept offered employment or you lose benefits. Higher benefits don't create an incentive to voluntarily stay out of work since you can't have them if you do that.

The requirement to be actively searching for work has actually been temporarily paused in many states, including eg/ CA https://www.edd.ca.gov/unemployment/eligibility.htm. Presumably that provision will be removed along with the SIPs, but just figured it was worth being precise here.

That seems to rely on an assumption that there's no variation in amount or quality of job searching effort, above the minimum required, which might be influenced. It also assumes inability to fake a job search, or sabotage an otherwise legitimate one, which might let an individual so intending to fall below the required minimum. The latter seems questionable, the first seems wrong.

I feel like there's a lot of pedantry in this thread and this topic in general. The point is that people not wanting to work is just so very far from our problem that it is ridiculous to see people harping on it so much. People aren't working because they were furloughed or laid off because aggregate demand is way down, it has nothing to do with the unemployment benefits they're getting. The vast vast majority of those people just want their boss to call them and say "good news! our customers are back! see you tomorrow!".

Of course we are all speculating on what people want or will do in this situation.

But take a hypothetical continuum of unemployment benefits. At which point will your thesis that "people want to work but are unable" switch to "people aren't working because they're being paid way more to not work? The switch will probably be binary at the individual level but will look like a continuum when looking at the population level.

Individuals will of course respond differently depend on the specific contexts of their life. I think in the end a quantity that will matter will be the ratio of unemployment benefits to old job salary. Other factors such as job satisfaction in previous job will contribute to the variance.

My actual point is that this is an ideologically driven distraction, not a real policy debate.

I was speaking just to the argument made by dragonwriter that, because something is banned, the possibility has no impact. If you think this was motivated by an ideological objection to government assistance... well, you're mistaken, because I don't have one of those. I can't speak to anything up-thread.

Ok you're right, maybe I have two points: I think this distraction is driven by ideology and partly maintained by (or taking advantage of) pedantry. It is far too tempting for logically-minded pedants to say "but you can clearly see what the numbers show", which is true, but is not a useful point except as further fuel for the distraction.

The real problem we're going to have is people struggling to find jobs as demand ramps back up slowly in fits and starts. This whole conversation is an attempt to portray those struggling people as the problem. It is indirection, like in a magic trick. And the pedantic "well actually"s are falling for the trap.

It's a real bummer because it's definitely going to work, which is going to cause us to underinvest in unemployment insurance over time, which is going to make this even more painful than it was already going to be. It would just be nice if people could see that they're being played.

Calling out significant flaws is not pedantry. Defending arguments because they are "on your side", irrespective of merit, is destructive to the kind of reasoned discussion I value on this site (certainly it's not always available, but let's aim for more of it, yeah?). And I actually think that repeating obviously flawed arguments does the other side's work, turning away the undecided - especially on a site like this.

For some topics that are intended purely as distractions, the whole goal is just to get people talking about it. So mission accomplished.

Cura te ipsum, but if that's your remaining issue I won't distract further.

Indeed you're right! Plus I enjoyed looking that up :)

The CARES Act extends unemployment benefits through the end of 2020 delegates to the states what the job search requirement means. States have a strong incentive to interpret it loosely because the federal government is footing the bill. Additionally, the “offered employment” thing is not hard and fast line. Restrictions will be lifted incrementally—there will be no “everyone back to work moment.” Businesses with furloughed employees will want to call them back up sooner rather than later, but workers earning more on unemployment have an incentive to not come back to work as soon as they could. Businesses, particularly smaller ones, aren’t going to be in a position to say “come back or you’re fired.” (Can you imagine the liability?) It’s during that transition period when the incentives could slow down the recovery.

Businesses are going to have trouble finding enough customers to support the staff they do hire, not this fantasy problem of having trouble finding staff.

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