Posted on 03/06/2015 9:04:11 AM PST by SeekAndFind
To listen to President Obama, the U.S. economy is firing on all cylinders. Yet it is hardly creating jobs at a breakneck pace, and too many able-bodied men have grown lazy and show no interest in working.
Friday, economists expect the Labor Department to report 230,000 jobs were added in February—down from 336,000 averaged the prior three months. Economists at Wells Fargo expect the pace for the entire year to be only 224,000.
The culprits remain slow growth, and Obama’s attempts to remedy income inequality with government programs that fail to lift millions of Americans to dignified work.
Since the recovery began, the economy has averaged 2.3 percent GDP growth and created 183,000 jobs per month. Adjusting for a smaller economy in the 1980s, the Reagan recovery accomplished twice that progress.
The headline unemployment rate has fallen to 5.7 percent, but more than 10 million men between the ages of 25 and 64 have no job and make no effort to find one.
Indolent men will create major problems for Obama’s successors as fewer workers will be paying taxes to support Social Security, Medicare, Obamacare, and other entitlements as productive baby boomers retire.
Obama has made abuse of federal disability programs, easy access to free health care and food stamps and other benefits programs, and mooching off girlfriends, wives and other relatives, a reasonable alternative to work.
Some operate in the grey economy—illegally swapping services for in kind income such as free rent—but most form the new leisure class that watch endless analyses of college basketball and NFL matchups on ESPN.
Paradoxically, anecdotal reports indicate major employers of lower skilled workers in retailing, restaurant and hospitality and business services—such as T.J. Maxx, Starbucks and Aetna—are raising wages to find and keep employees.
Simply, too many prime working age men—many with college diplomas and work experience but who lost higher paying jobs during the recession—have determined it is either unprofitable, beneath their dignity or too inconvenient to get up off the couch and look for gainful employment.
Historically, young people entered the job market through the retail, restaurant and hospitality industries, and then went on to better paying positions as they completed their education or developed marketable skills on the job.
Now many appear permanently locked into those low-paying jobs, as opportunities in manufacturing, construction and finance become scarcer.
Another problem is that many young people gained little more than a huge student debt from four years at college.
Much has been made of the folly of majoring in Peace Studies and Art History at second- tier colleges and universities, but four in ten college graduates lack critical thinking, analytical reasoning, literacy, and communication skills necessary to perform reasonably well-compensating white collar work.
Many lack the organizational and self-management abilities—commonly called executive skills—to perform well without persistent instruction and supervision.
Those are skills colleges are supposed to impart and degrees should certify, but neither is any longer true.
Obama has used Pell Grants and students loans to enroll large numbers of dysfunctional and academically unqualified adolescents at community colleges and second tier universities, and kept them out of the job-seeking population for the purposes of computing the official unemployment rate.
Many college graduates will remain barristers because their degrees are fraudulent, and they will eventually default on their student loans. Fortunately for the ever boastful Obama, the collapse of the $1 trillion plus student debt pyramid will come after he leaves office.
Ah, the best of all possible worlds. Young and aging men dependent on government largess and more inclined to vote for Democrats to continue the gravy train of free stuff, and falling unemployment numbers to tout from the Rose Garden.
One thing for sure, America can boast the first civilization in history with a leisure class at the bottom.
-- Peter Morici is an economist and professor at the Smith School of Business, University of Maryland and a national columnist
The United States of Entertainment.
Free health care and food stamps and other benefits programs, and mooching off girlfriends, wives and other relatives, a reasonable alternative to work.
Obama’s Chicago way
0bama’s Free Stuff Army continues to grow exponentially.
It still seems like it would be hard to get by, and a very insecure way to live.
Maybe some of them actually have money? You don’t need much of an inheritance, $750K will yield $30K a year if properly invested.
Does anybody proofread anymore?
He obviously meant barrista.
He meant Lawyers.
Many people with fraudulent degrees become lawyers, and chase ambulances all day, or file civil rights claims.
Those who are incapable of doing that become politicians.
Who needs dignified work? We've dignified multigenerational dependence on a wealth of government hand outs.
What this report fails to delve into is that many of these people are not in fact on the couch, but are working for themselves either self employed but being paid in cash or in kind or they are working fixing their own homes/cars/yards etc (instead of paying someone to do this work)or are growing their own food (instead of buying it), doing small building projects etc. This work is labor and time intensive, but it can be more rewarding than working at for low pay and low esteem for someone who does not appreciate their skills or will lay them off in an instant.
Some of people have cut way back on their consumption so they don’t need full time paid work ... but that does not necessarily mean they are sitting on the couch doing nothing.
A lot of people not counted as employed are in fact working but they are investing in themselves, not in other people. They have gone Galt or partially gone Galt.
Even if he meant to say barrister it still doesn't make sense. You cannot get an undergrad degree and start practicing law. You have to get your undergrad degree before you can even apply to law school.
BTW, Mr. Morici is an American.
Jeeeeez! I was just making a joke!
When welfare pays more than the minimum wage, employers wanting entry level people may have to pay more than the minimum wage to fill positions.
Many college graduates will remain barristers because their degrees are fraudulent,”
Well, there are an awful lot of lawyers with crappy almost fraudulent degrees.
de Tocqueville was right
The small business boom that occurred during the 80’s and 90’s will not be repeated thanks to the dumb masses who demand their ‘fair share’ of your efforts. Risks are very different now in the command and control economy being set up by our government. No one has to tell you that the surge in taxes and regulations is coming because of the paradigm shift since 2008. ‘You don’t have to be a weatherman to know which way the wind blows’.
Why work for a living when you can vote for a living?
Sorry.
I’ve heard jokes that illegal aliens get to ignore tax law working under the table and immigration law - and compromise would be letting them stay if Americans get to ignore the tax law, too.
I work a lot, like 80 hours a week. But I like what I do and have a shop full of toys to keep me occupied.
But if I didn’t like it and could get away with it I would be a lay about. Why work? Why support the system that is so against working men? Daily I am indirectly called an evil capitalist racist who hates children, families, and minorities. Why should I support Obama’s vote buying schemes? If I was able to work under the radar, like illegals, and barter services for food and rent I would. Maybe keep a menial part time job to qualify for welfare and keep sort of legal with the tax man. Why work for 40 years and retire at 60 when you can never work and retire at 18?
Why work? The harder you work the more you are demonized and the more you are taxed.
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