Wait. Losing Unemployment Benefits Incentivizes People To Get Employment? NO WAY.

According to this, it's been a year now since NC Governor Pat McCrory and the state legislature decided to opt out of the federal government's extended unemployment benefits program months before it expired, effectively reducing the amount and duration of benefits.

Liberals went nuts when that was first announced, apparently.  They were already miffed at McCrory's other policies, and a movement called Moral Monday brought a bunch of protesters to the capital in a fairly steady stream, prompting arrests (because you know liberals find it difficult to protest without violating rules of some sort).  Paul Krugman, who is now raking in the big bucks for doing very very little, naturally called McCrory's move a WAR ON THE UNEMPLOYED.  Because that's what the left does.  If they disagree with you about something, they call whatever it is that you disagree about a war on that thing.  It's their favorite.

But guess what happened?  For the last 6 months of 2013, when North Carolina was the ONLY STATE where the unemployed were NOT eligible for extended benefits, they had one of the BIGGEST improvements in labor-market performance and overall growth. 

Shocking, isn't it?

You can get all the detailed stats at the sourcelink if you're interested, but the point is, by pretty much every measure, North Carolina had one of the country's biggest drops in unemployment.  Their labor force participation is now on a growth track, and they're adding jobs at a rate of 3X the national average.

But here's the best part. Since January of this year, the extended benefit program expired across the country, and yet somehow, despite liberals' insistence that cutting off unemployment could have devastating consequences, jobs are being created, and employment is creeping up. This is, if you ask me, in SPITE of Obama, and certainly not because of him.

North Carolina did these other novel things like reduce/reform their tax policy, and they streamlined some regulations – you know, stuff conservatives are always pushing for.  And lo and behold, their economy is growing.

Huh.  Nancy Pelosi must be really confused right now.