From a recent post by Paul Krugman talking about Unemployment Insurance. As a background, Classical view states that if you pay someone to be unemployed, they will stay unemployed longer than otherwise. Here is Krugman:

But if you follow right-wing talk — by which I mean not Rush Limbaugh but the Wall Street Journal and famous economists like Robert Barro — you see the notion that aid to the unemployed can create jobs dismissed as self-evidently absurd. You think that you can reduce unemployment by paying people not to work? Hahahaha!

Quite aside from the fact that this ridicule is dead wrong,

Notice his arrogance. Aside from the fact that everyone I have ever talked to who was on unemployment insurance always talked about maximizing their benefit (only would resume searching for work when their “insurance” was running out), Krugman is militantly making the claim that people getting free money (to not work!) will be encouraged to seek a job.

As a corollary, my theory is that if the left pays absurd amounts to a Noble Laureate then he might write militantly ridiculous articles violating all common sense to further the left’s agenda.