There are a number of phrases that mysteriously disappeared from the lips of Democrat politicians and their PR flaks in the mainstream press somewhere around January 2009. Does anyone remember these hits from 2000 – 2008 – “Irresponsible spending”, “Increasing the debt to pay for his wars”, or “failed to grow in office”? Naturally we don’t hear any of these anymore because they would contradict the narrative of the greatest president in American history.
But three big disappeared phrases that come to mind are “Where are the jobs”, “McJobs”, and “Jobless Recovery”. Now we no longer hear these phrases despite the fact that the United States has had a real unemployment rate of over 10% for the entire duration of the Obama presidency, and we’ve been hovering at Jimmy Carter levels of low labor force participation.
There’s no need to go into the reasons for this – if you’re reading this post you’re either intelligent enough to know why or enough of a true believer in President Obama to deny the obvious. But what is more damning is the unending quest by the Radical Left to increase the minimum wage. ICYMI, last week I gave a detailed breakdown of how having a minimum wage hurts the poor far more than it can possibly help them.
But what’s most telling is why the Radical Left has to champion this cause. For any youngsters reading this, there was a time when the words “entry level job” meant exactly that – they were meant to be entry level, not jobs that were meant to be able to support a family of four. But this is the product of eight years of a presidency whose economic policies failed to produce 3.0% in any single year (An historic first!), the ranks of Americans on food stamps swelled by 50%, up from 31 to 46 million, and a record of $10 thousand million ($10T) has been added to our national debt. When you have policies specifically designed to disincentivize growth and hiring (Obamacare, environmental regs, minimum wage, power to union bosses, etc) it’s no surprise that good job opportunities are scarcer than they were pre-Obama.
So why #FightForFifteen? Because it’s all that a failed administration has left to offer. And the fact that union raises (and dues collected) get pegged to minimum wage increases doesn’t hurt, either. The jobs aren’t out there, so the best they have to offer is force employers to pay more to those who are able to get entry level jobs, at least until reality catches up.
But then again, when has reality ever been the basis of the policies of the Radical Left?
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Cross posted from Brother Bob’s Blog
