Dave Swenson: Treating the unemployed as if they were social pariahs is not the path to economic recovery.
When a bogus meme gets a head of steam, watch out!
Conservative circles decided last summer that the economy wasn’t growing because of lucrative, federally-funded unemployment benefits. It was clear to those with this view that eliminating extra unemployment benefits would shock all of those over-compensated idlers into finding work.
And so it was that about half of the states, Iowa included, declined extended and emergency federal benefits for their unemployed beginning in June of 2021. A boom in job growth, they were convinced, would soon follow.
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