Ms. Romer's entire case is as follows (boldfaced sentences are direct quotes from her Washington Post article): For the families directly affected, layoffs mean not only lost wages but often lost homes and postponed dreams. True enough, but no moreso for the families of teachers than of plumbers or programmers. Because unemployed teachers have to cut back on spending, local businesses and overall economic activity suffer. Replace "teachers" with "plumbers" and the statement is rendered neither more nor less defensible. The costs of decreased learning time...will be felt not just in the next year or two but will reduce our productivity for decades to come. Ditto of course for the costs of delayed plumbing repairs or delayed pharmaceutical research or delayed IT maintainenece. Furthermore, by preventing layoffs, we would save on unemployment insurance payments, food stamps and COBRA subsidies for health insurance, and we would maintain tax revenue. Nope, nothing special about teachers here either.