Paul Krugman: The Punishment Cure

Six years have passed since the United States economy entered the Great Recession, four and a half
since it officially began to recover, but long-term unemployment remains disastrously high. And
Republicans have a theory about why this is happening. Their theory is, as it happens, completely
wrong. But they’re sticking to it — and as a result, 1.3 million American workers, many of them in
desperate financial straits, are set to lose unemployment benefits at the end of December.

Merry Christmas.

Now, the G.O.P.’s desire to punish the unemployed doesn’t arise solely from bad economics; it’s
part of a general pattern of afflicting the afflicted while comforting the comfortable (no to food
stamps, yes to farm subsidies). But ideas do matter — as John Maynard Keynes famously wrote,
they are “dangerous for good or evil.” And the case of unemployment benefits is an especially clear
example of superficially plausible but wrong economic ideas being dangerous for evil.