Inflation is felt much more widely than unemployment and puts more pressure on businesses to cooperate with labor. Unemployment localizes discontent to those it immediately affects. Everyone feels inflation. So they’re trading a problem which the affluent experience for one that they don’t
Unemployment localizes discontent to those it immediately affects.
and this also has upsides right? It’s a targetable group. There’s nothing like unemployment insurance for the entire price level.
Also the great recession lasted a few years of high unemployment but it’s not like it was the same 20 million people from 2008-2012. It was higher rates of layoffs so that 20 million had different people in it from one quarter to the next. Still not localized discontent. A recession IS felt broadly, that’s what makes it a recession.
I got laid off from covid and it basically derailed me so I get it
If we’re talking egalitarianism here, the most marginalized already aren’t employed. Employment favoring policies aren’t doing much for the disabled, the elderly, the unhoused, the undocumented.
