Krugman: Stop Punishing the Jobless

That American workers face the worst job market since the Great Depression is old news. What shouldn’t be old news, however, is the focus of Paul Krugman’s op-ed in The New York Times today: that unemployment benefits were not extended by the Senate going into last weekend, despite there currently being five job seekers for every job opening. “We’re facing a coalition of the heartless, the clueless and the confused,” writes Krugman. Translation: Republicans, who try to block anything President Obama wants to do, are coming across as heartless; Sharron Angle, the Republican Senate candidate for Nevada, who continues to argue that the unemployed are deliberately choosing to stay out of work, is clueless; and almost everyone else appears confused about whether benefits reduce the incentive to seek new work. Krugman tries to clear up the confusion. “Cutting off benefits to the unemployed will make them even more desperate for work,” he writes, “but they can’t take jobs that aren’t there.”