Get off that couch

THE tentative budget deal being worked out by Paul Ryan and Patty Murray will probably not include an extension of long-term unemployment benefits, reports Greg Sargent. And while much of the brewing tea-party anger over the deal is driven by opposition to government spending tout court, the specific opposition to long-term unemployment insurance has a theory behind it. That theory conforms to Albert Hirschman's classic "perversity, futility, jeopardy" model of conservative rhetoric: as Rand Paul (pictured) put it on Fox News on Sunday, conservatives think that offering unemployment insurance for longer raises the unemployment rate.

http://www.economist.com/blogs/democracyinamerica/2013/12/unemployment-insurance