Limbaugh Is Old Enough To Remember When Unemployment Wasn't Cool
Written by Leslie Rosenberg
Published
Rush Limbaugh has spent years railing against the evils of unemployment benefits and labeling those who accept them as “taking a vacation.”
So it was surprising to hear him tell about his own past taking unemployment benefits while out of work in the 1970s:
The whole time I was trying to find a job as quick as I could. Back then -- this was the seventies -- it was a stigma. It was a real stigma. I didn't want to be on unemployment. I didn't want anybody to know. There was a stigma to that kind of thing.
Listen:
This is not the first time Limbaugh has hearkened back to the good old days, when people were truly shamed by unemployment. He once recalled a better time, “back in the FDR days” when “unemployment was called relief,” and “you had to work for it.”
Of course, today, as in decades past, benefits are only extended on the condition that the individual "is actively seeking work."
In fact, Limbaugh has repeatedly asserted that unemployment benefits incentivize people not to work, and promote “laziness” and “slothfulness,” once opining:
There is no stimulative effect of unemployment benefits. Whether you borrow the money or print it or get it via taxes, you still have to take it from someplace in the private sector to give it to somebody else in the private sector. It zeros out and probably is a net negative because it also has the added benefits of promoting laziness, slothfulness.