Monday, October 06, 2014

The "Obama Boom": An Army Of Burger-Flippers

by JASmius



Say, remember way back during the Reagan years, when 21 million top high-paying jobs were being created like pez and ragingly frustrated Democrats were left to choose between trying to dismiss them as "burger-flipping" jobs and going "humina-humina-humina"?

Fast-forward to now, when Barack Obama is ridiculously claiming to have created ten million jobs in the midst of the second Great Depression.  Here's a hint: none of them are top, not of them are high-paying, none of them are full-time, none of them include benefits, and all of them involve a figurative - and sometimes literal - spatula:

Despite another seemingly good jobs report, President Obama's approval rating is lower than a snake's belly, and Republicans could retake the Senate in November.

Missteps in the Ukraine, Iraq and elsewhere weigh on voters' minds, but the economy — especially the jobs picture — is not what Obama cracks them up to be.

The 5.9% unemployment rate is a fraud. The percentage of adults working or seeking employment is the lowest since women began entering the labor force in larger numbers in the 1970s.

Were the labor force participation rate the same today as when Obama took office, [U3] unemployment would be about 10%. Wages remain stagnant and household incomes are well below pre-crisis levels.

Drill down a bit and you uncover the Obama Regime's War On Men:

The earnings of women, especially young women, have fared somewhat better than it has for men, but increasingly women have to support their husbands, sons and boyfriends. One in six men between the ages of 25 and 54 — too old for college and too young to retire — are without jobs. Many have quit looking altogether and sit around the house all day watching ESPN.

Perhaps that's Hillary Clinton's vision of a better America, but it doesn't sit well where most people live.

Currently my wife is supporting my son and me.  He and I don't "sit around the house all day watching ESPN" - he's a fledgling YouTube entrepreneur, and I, of course, blog here, podcast, broadcast, and am part of something much bigger than myself.  Which is to say, we work at undertakings we love and about which we are passionate, but which do not yet provide any income.  I, as you know, used to be an accountant - in fact, I still hold a CPA license - but was anally intruded out of my once-fond and secure post as financial controller of a local bakery and into Barack Obama's "labor market," where being (1) male, (2) white, (3) fifty, and (3) heavily experienced and having been, accordingly, adequately compensated for my overworked, underappreciated efforts have not and will not make me a prime recruit on anybody's hiring list.  This I know precisely because I have not quit looking altogether.

Although I cannot deny wondering why I still bother.  Must be that pesky food addiction.

But then, in my long career, I was always able to land someplace comparable to, or better than, where I had been when I was screwed by a boss or the company went toes-up because the U.S. economy was a growing, vibrant, prosperous capitalist "ecosystem" where "good jobs at good wages" could always be found with a modicum of commitment and determination.

That is not the U.S. economy today.  In today's Obamaconomy, "good jobs at good wages" are an endangered species:

The economy is creating too many low-paying jobs in industries like retailing and hospitality, but industries where men find good-paying jobs are languishing. Since Obama took office, manufacturing has shed 400,000 jobs and construction nearly 500,000.

Mr. Morici goes through industry after industry chronicling the decomposition of the one-time "engine of prosperity" and the American middle class right along with it.  And it has come about as a direct consequence, not of a "do-nothing Congress," but from Barack Obama getting every economic policy he wanted:

The president likes to blame a "do nothing" Congress, but he largely got his head during his first five years — ObamaCare, Dodd-Frank, Pell grants and generous student loans, other new spending and higher taxes on upper income Americans.

Most of that has not worked out very well — too many American employers are eager to take even more jobs to Asia or relocate their corporate headquarters outside the United States.

Which he's bent on outlawing instead of ceasing his incentivizing of it.

Bottom line (heh): Obamanomics is an all-out war against job creation by making it maximally expensive and businesses minimally able to afford it through lower revenues and encouraged debt loads.  Small wonder that the result has been an economic depression and an evaporating labor pool.

Contrast the current engineered miseries with the legacy of the POTUS O has done everything in his demidivine power to expunge from the face of American history:

President Reagan was dealt a tough hand by history too....

Barack Obama and his party, on the other hand, engineered his.

....He weathered a deep recession early in his first term and unemployment peaked at 10.8% — but he cut spending and taxes, eliminated much unnecessary government meddling in business and boosted employment by 8.4 million, or more than 9%, his first 5 ½ years.

Obama has managed to increase employment only by 5.5 million, or approximately 4%.

Sure he has - at the Krusty Krabb.



Would you like fries with that?

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