here now is casey mulligan, professor of economics, university of chicago, author of the redistributioncome back. so -- >> thanks, larry. >> -- we are essentially paying people not to work. is that the basic story? >> right. a lot of benefits reward those who are not working or working less. they reward the poor. and that's helpful to some people for sure. but when you pay poor people, you're going to have more of them. when you pay unemployed people, you have more unemployed people. >> all right. so what do you say to my liberal friends? i've got at least one here at the table. >> i'm glad you're calling me a friend. >> always. always. casey, what do you say to liberals who say they need this, this is a safety net, this is because of the recession? i think we have another chart that shows how the percentage of poverty people have gone up, too. is this just a recession or is there more to it? >> you know, we had a safety net before the recession. and it was kind of the outcome of balance. president clinton worked on it. president bush worked on it. we had i asafety net there. and we cou