A subsidy to end unemployment

Tom Keller, Henderson

Sunday, Jan. 5, 2014 | 2:02 a.m.

In his Wednesday column, Eugene Robinson rails against ending the extended unemployment benefits initiated during the recession. And there is no question that people who need to work to support themselves and cannot find a job need that help.

The problem is that paying people who can’t find a job also encourages those who don’t want to work to game the system. I saw this in Europe in the 1990s where shop owners lamented that people they hired worked for only a few months until they again qualified for unemployment.

Somehow the system needs to be changed to prevent this $25 billion-a-year added cost from becoming permanent. Using the money to subsidize employers to hire the unemployed instead of just passing out checks could go a long way toward eliminating the whole unemployment problem.