Well, I suppose that could be the title of this entire blog. But, what I mean is, I hear people argue that the unemployed are lazy, and that they should do more to find work. We shouldn't give them UI benefits (even though it is insurance, not a handout). In thinking about this line of "reasoning," a question came up. Did we suddenly have a massive spike in laziness? Do people understand that when the unemployment rate when up 6% or so, it did not happen because people, en masse, began to think, "Hey, fuck work. I'll live on the dole, because the pay is so great, and I'd rather give up my job, the benefits, the gratification, and just be a bum?"
Forget all the rational arguments about demand, the collapse of the financial sector, the housing bubble imploding, all that. That's for you liberal intellectual types. How can anyone smart enough to find food to keep themselves alive think for one second that "the unemployed," as if they are some homogenous group, are ALL a bunch of lazy sponges who are merely living the high life with OUR money? I can see arguments from ignorance, because, as the title of this post implies, there are things (plenty) that I do not understand. But the idea that the unemployed are universally lazy and thus undeserving of assistance is so catastrophically stupid that I really can't get my head around it. Couldn't a child figure out the flaw in that argument? Hmm, maybe I just answered my own question.
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