Incentives
by digby
Asked whether it was bad strategy to make a budget stand on a $10 billion extension of unemployment (as opposed to, say, the Bush’s $720 billion prescription drug package), Delay insisted that if the PR had been done right, Bunning would have been applauded. Helping the unemployed with federal assistance, he said, was unsound policy. “You know,” Delay said, “there is an argument to be made that these extensions, the unemployment benefits keeps people from going and finding jobs. In fact there are some studies that have been done that show people stay on unemployment compensation and they don’t look for a job until two or three weeks before they know the benefits are going to run out. Host Candy Crowley: Congressman, that’s a hard sell, isn’t it? Delay: it’s the truth.
I would guess that this is going to catch on among the dittoheads. The right is reasoning that they can appeal to a good number of the majority who are employed and make them question why they should subsidize all those losers who are not. It worked with health care.
Empathy for your fellow man, or even a selfish sense that you might personally need some assistance someday, is being attacked by the right wing head on. And I would guess that there are more than a few people who secretly have thought these things but didn’t have the social support necessary to say it out loud. Now they do.
This isn’t a widely accepted point of view. Yet. But its infecting the body politic.
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