I’ve been thinking about the extended unemployment and other benefits. Partly what caused this contemplation was a conversation with a neighbor who recently returned from the Philippines (use your almost worst imagination for why he was there). He’s glad to be back in the states after being locked in his house, he says, for nine months by the authorities in the Philippines, and he’s especially glad because of all the subsidies he has managed to wrangle for himself here, rent and food subsidies, a fake disability and so on. I’m still trying to bounce back from the monstor tax bill I got after filing an extension for this year’s income tax. So glad my taxes are going to support this asshole. Generally I don’t mind paying taxes. Somebody has to and as long as we’ve got enough to live I don’t mind paying, but the combination of a huge bill and seeing where they were going almost makes me choke. Anyway, while I was silently raging inside my own head, not only about my experience but about how I can keep telling my son to keep his job while he has friends doing nothing and earning more from unemployment benefits and every shop in town has a help wanted sign. Then it occurred to me that one benefit of these extended benefits is that they are rapidly raising wages. Desperate business are raising their wages as they try to attract workers. Perhaps this is the only way that wages were ever going to get raised to something close to a liveable level and maybe there is even some kind of strategy here–maintain the benefits and soak up the cheaters like my neighbor for long enough to raise wages for the people who actually work. Wages are sticky and are unlikely to come down even when the unemployment benefits are cut and more workers are looking for jobs. I hope so and i hope the unintended consequences aren’t too terrible.