We Have to Pass the Check to See How You Can Spend It

Oh, geez… (Thanks, Doug Powers over at Michelle Malkin’s site)

Unemployment benefits are creating jobs faster than practically any other program, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi said Thursday. 

Talking to reporters, the House speaker was defending a jobless benefits extension against those who say it gives recipients little incentive to work. By her reasoning, those checks are helping give somebody a job. 

“It injects demand into the economy,” Pelosi said, arguing that when families have money to spend it keeps the economy churning. “It creates jobs faster than almost any other initiative you can name.” 

If you haven’t been paying attention to this, the R side of the aisle is evil because it insists that any extensions to unemployment should either come with cuts or come out of existing spending (like the stimulus dollars).  So now the D side of the aisle is all in a tizzy, and it’s trying to explain why we should just pay for people not to work.

Doug Powers:

I think I’m catching on to Pelosi’s line of reasoning though (which, frankly, frightens me): If unemployment is the best way to create jobs, then the economy won’t be fully functioning until nobody’s working, and that’s another goal Obama, Pelosi, Reid & company can now boast about helping us get closer to. (Sister Toldjah has the Pelosi video just in case reading it wasn’t alone enough to make you ill)

No thanks, I have to eat tonight.

But think this through.  Unemployment usually doesn’t pay you what your job used to pay.  So you’re not spending that money, you’re using it to buy the basics.  It would be better for you to have a job that paid near to what you made before.  Well, not really, because if you had a job, you’d be taxed to death paying for all the unemployment…

But if you’re getting a check, and you get offered a job that doesn’t pay as much?  Well, likely you’ll see 99 months or whatever of a low-end “paycheck” and just sit back and relax.  Or spend time with the kids.  Or go buy some beer.  Where’s Iowahawk when I need him?

I’m not even an economist… but it seems to me that we should just let businesses create jobs rather than finding government jobs that disappear in six months or road jobs paid for by the government that aren’t really all that necessary.  Though I guess all the road-building is also increasing auto-repair from all the damage of driving on makeshift roads.

Whatever, I said not long ago, two points make a line.  Lynn wondered, straight or curved?  We now have our curve.  It’s vectoring its twisted little path to oblivion.

Updated 7/2: Ed Morrissey looks at all the straw men hidden in the message.