Unemployment benefits extended?

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2009/09/28/BU9419TU0V.DTL

The more you pay people not to work the more they will not work. This is not rocket science. In California the maximum unemployment benefits are already 72 weeks. Let’s spend our time reducing the expenses and the bureaucracy involved in hiring a new employee rather than subsidizing more people taking it easy. The more we subsidize things the more we get of it – very simple math.

When a government monopoly (like education) signs a dumb contract

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2009/08/31/090831fa_fact_brill

Outstanding NewYorker article "The battle over New York's worst teachers".

Please do not think of this as an article about the teaching profesion. Think of this nonsense relative to unions for all government employees (like all those new health workers we are about to get) and how unions mock common sense.

Teaching (like manufacturing cars or brain surgery) can ge done poorly or with excellence. The important question is how does a union environment impact the quality and cost of the service delivered?

In the private sector (the auto industry not withstanding) when managment commits to a dumb contract the company usually goes out of business and the contract becomes a non-issue. But when a government monopoly (like education or air traffic control) signs a dumb contract there are few mechanisms for correcting the mistake and years later the public is still suffering. After all the government monopoly makes it virtually impossible for new entrants to compete.

This is possibly the strongest argument for having government doing less for us rather than more. We all make mistakes but government is incapable of correcting these mistakes.