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Given the millions of people who filed for unemployment insurance AGAIN this week, a quick thread on work disincentives 1/
Don't get excited, this thread will not have cool data analysis. @ernietedeschi has all the cool data analysis on work disincentives 2/
What I'm interested in is WHY people are CONVINCED any work disincentive impact of unemployment insurance will dominate everything else 3/
I just think we're obsessed with making policy by anecdote and theory. Can you find workers who haven't gotten back to work because of UI? Sure. Is that the vast majority of workers in this country? Clearly not: we have numbers that tell us that 4/
But the STORY that they're not is great. And it makes theoretical sense! UI>wage, we're done here. 5/
But that ignores the fact that compensation is not just wages, and that there is net present value to having a job. Workers are not idiots. 6/
Plus, the whole point of policy is that good policy involves trade-offs (there is no real world equivalent of everyone gets a puppy, and I do want to point out that everyone getting a puppy would in fact involve trade-offs - some people are allergic, etc.) 7/
The question is what type of error do you want to make? A few people don't go back to work because they are on UI? Or many people starve/get evicted/can't pay utilities (thanks @TrevonDLogan for reminding us to scream about utilities as well) 8/
We are so willing in this country to cause suffering for millions because a few people might get more money than is "optimal". That is insane. It is simply insane. 9/
It is PARTICULARLY insane because we have multiple analyses (CBO, Yale, Ernie, etc.) showing that work disincentives do not dominate and our economy is better off with the $600 10/
But THEORETICALLY we're not, and the anecdotes are out there, so we're stuck in this hell where people aren't going to be able to pay their bills and our entire economy will be worse off for it 11/
The standard for policy that helps people cannot be that one person somewhere doesn't get the policy that's perfectly tailored to them. We do not hold tax policy to this standard for instance, yet somehow when it comes to our safety net, we do 12/
Anyway, in conclusion, this is insane /end
