The Benefits of Unemployment Insurance

In the U.S., unemployment insurance has a replacement rate that is below 50%. In many other countries, the replacement rate can be as high as 75 or 80 %. If you're in a base line where you're thinking yourself, whell unemployment insurance is giving you an 80% replacement income, then the step to take is, oh, why don't we just make sure that firms don't separate from their employees when we have this very crazy shock? That seems far more effect because you're not pushing people out of work to begin with. And so there's a whole set of ideas about individual responsibility and the way we think about what unemployment means.