Tom Corbett is not right, smart or good

Tom Corbett, the Republican candidate for governor in Pennsylvania, explains his understanding of unemployment:

During a campaign appearance in Elizabethtown, Lancaster County, Corbett told a reporter from Pennsylvania Public Radio that "the jobs are there," but he'd been told by business owners that, "one of the issues, and I hear it repeatedly – one of the individuals said, 'I can't get workers. People don't want to come back to work while they still have unemployment.'''

Corbett told the radio outlet that a business owner had "literally" told him that job-seekers were saying they'd "come back to work when unemployment runs out."

"That's becoming a problem," Corbett said.

Corbett added, "The jobs are there. But if we keep extending unemployment, people are going to sit there … I've literally had construction companies tell me, 'I can't get people to come back to work until … they say, I'll come back to work when unemployment runs out.'"

The first thing to say about this is that Tom Corbett is simply wrong on the facts. The number of job openings and the number of unemployed seeking jobs are both things that can be, and have been, counted and measured. Here, via Ezra Klein, are those numbers in graphic form:

The number of jobseekers is vastly larger than the number of job openings.

The reality, in other words, is the opposite of what Tom Corbett says it is. The reality does not support Tom Corbett's theory that unemployment is caused by laziness and by indolent malingerers refusing to work because they prefer the lush life of a $310/week unemployment insurance check.

Reality does not support Tom Corbett's theory that unemployment is the fault of the unemployed.

Reality does not support Tom Corbett's belief that people who have been laid off are Bad People, morally inferior people who merit only suffering.

The Book of Job teaches us that there will always be fools like this. They recoil in fearful denial from the idea that suffering or misfortune might not be the fault of those it befalls. Afraid of death or disease or calamity or economic ruin, they comfort themselves by blaming the victim. If they brought this on themselves, then I can make sure that it never happens to me.

I don't know whether Tom Corbett is such a fool himself, or if he has simply made the political calculation that a majority of Pennsylvania voters might be attracted to such foolishness and that there are votes to be won by appealing to the lesser demons of our nature. After all, there are far more people who are afraid of becoming unemployed than there are people who are currently unemployed — blame the jobless for their plight and you can reassure those frightened others that they don't have to be frightened of earning the sad fate of those lazy, inferior others.

So it's possible that Tom Corbett is a cynical nurturer of nastiness rather than just a fearful, ignorant fool himself.

But either way, there's something very, very wrong with this man.

UPDATE: Tom Corbett is not alone in this nasty, dishonest, kick-'em-while-they're-down, kill-kill-kill-kill-kill-the-poor nonsense.