Rep. Blake Farenthold (R-TX) spoke to a group of constituents during a "listening session" this week, and his constituents certainly received an earful. Farenthold repeated the tired talking-point that unemployment is simply too good and that people who are on it have no incentive to change their ways. They're just like alcoholics and drug users!
FARENTHOLD: Drug testing for recipients of various welfare programs, I really think that’s something that needs to be considered. We’ve gotta, you know, nobody wants to starve anybody. Everybody wants to help folks out. But we’ve got a system where you can stay on unemployment for an awfully long time. And I think we need to create a system of decreasing benefits over time to encourage you to get a job. I think anybody who’s had an alcoholic in their life or somebody with a drug problem, realizes that until things get bad enough there’s no incentive to change. I think that we’re so generous in some of our social problems that people are unwilling to get a job outside in the heat. Rather than get 15 dollars to go get roofing they’d rather get 9 or 10 dollars in benefits. I think drug testing is not an unreasonable requirement to get benefits.
According to Goldman Sachs, only ½ of a percentage point of unemployment can be attributed to the existence of extended-unemployment benefits. So maybe. Just maybe. There aren't enough jobs to go around right now, as evidenced by McDonalds recent national hiring day.
McDonald’s Corp. (MCD), the world’s biggest restaurant chain, said it hired 24 percent more people than planned during an employment event this month.
McDonald’s and its franchisees hired 62,000 people in the U.S. after receiving more than one million applications, the Oak Brook, Illinois-based company said today in an e-mailed statement. Previously, it said it planned to hire 50,000.
Over one million people filed an application at McDonalds during their national hiring day, and they only hired 62,000 of them, which means that at least 938,000 of those who applied were not hired.
Following Blake Farenthold's logic, the 938,000 who were not fortunate enough to be hired at McDonalds are merely too lazy to find a job. They may even be alcoholics or drug users! We should probably drug test them before they receive their unemployment benefits. Ya' know, just to make sure.