This is the Cato Daily Podcast for Friday, July 23rd, 2010.

I'm Caleb Brown.

There are more problems with the unemployment system in the United States than whether or not to continue extending those benefits to the chronically

unemployed, Cato Institute Senior Fellow Jeff Myron comments.

If you look at a chart of unemployment, those who have been unemployed for 26 weeks or more, it's pretty dramatic.

It is pretty dramatic. There's certainly been a much higher rate of long-term joblessness in this recession than in any of the post-war

recessions?

One of the concerns that I hear, and this is a point that gave me pause, which is human capital degrades.

And when people are unemployed, they lose human capital skills that they had,

that they were, you know they had finally tuned aren't there anymore being

re-employed in another area that has that has costs to the economy that these people aren't contributing as much

the economy as they might otherwise. So why not give them some unemployment

benefits to let them take extra time admitting the point that it does make people stay unemployed

longer, unemployment benefits, take that time to find a job that will actually help them develop or use the human capital that they've got.

Well, one concern is that if you make it easy for people to stay unemployed for an extended period of time, they may sort of

by not looking forward and thinking through the whole process carefully, let their skills

degrade, let themselves become less employable rather than getting back in the labor force

even if it's not as good a job as they had before so they may be being a bit pennywise

and pound foolish.

The other issue is that there are probably a lot of people

who are unemployed now for whom the jobs that they had are not going to be there. And it's not a question

of waiting until they find the right

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