The Economy and Biden Brainwashing
Why Americans are not Buying Biden’s Ridiculous Jobs Report…And What’s Really Causing American’s Bank Accounts to Suffer
Authored by Becky Behrends, M.D. Vice President of Research for Michigan Citizens for Election Integrity (MC4EI).
Mar 3, 2023 – Originally published on 100 Percent Fed Up
Are you better off than you were four years ago? That was the question Ronald Reagan posed to Jimmy Carter in their presidential debate in 1980 and it has become one of the most famous and important campaign questions of all time.
Four years ago, the US and the world experienced the start of Covid -19 and all its economic fallout since then. The economy has suffered ups and down subsequently. The question now is, has government policy under Biden since 2021 helped or worsened the situation?
In other words, is America better off economically under Biden?
The job report released ahead of Biden’s recent State of the Union Address was hailed as “excellent” by the Dem drooling media eager to put some lipstick on a poverty-stricken pig. They chastised the Republicans for “staying silent” on the good news.
The Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) claimed that in 2022, the US saw the creation of 4.8 million jobs, and in 2023, 517,000 new jobs in January alone! The unemployment rate dropped from 6.3% to 3.4% in just two years, the lowest since 1969, before we had even landed on the moon!
Whew, aren’t we just giddy with excitement??!!
Again, to quote former President Ronald Reagan, “the trouble with our liberal friends is not that they’re ignorant; it’s just that they know so much that isn’t so.”
So, let’s drill down and study this “funny money” Biden version of the status of the economy.
Forbes notes that the unemployment rate may be low, but more ominously, so is the labor force participation rate which is the better index to look at.
In the past, the unemployment rate has been one of the most important measures economists used to gauge the health of the economy. If the unemployment rate is low, it means the economy is strong because most workers can find jobs. But the BLS tracks six different measurements of unemployment rates. The one you hear reported in the news does not provide a complete or accurate picture. This is because it does not include people who are not looking for work or identify people who want full-time work but can only find part-time jobs. The labor participation rate tracks these statistics. And it is currently at a historic low.
Suppose you have 100 people, and only one of them is employed. If none of the 99 others are looking for work, the unemployment rate could be 0%. That would be a deceptive basis for determining if the economy is doing well.
What are the reasons for low labor force participation? Obviously, the Covid pandemic had an impact on this. But the labor force participation has been falling since the 1990s. It took more of a nose dive during the pandemic and has recovered slightly, but it is well off its pre-pandemic high.
Explanations given by the BLS include:
– increased dependent care needs
– fear of getting covid
– higher unemployment benefits
– desire for higher wages reducing interest in low-paying jobs
– higher pace of retirements due to an aging population
– slower population growth
What about slower population growth?
Here is what a “baby bust” looks like, as noted by Steven Hayward in Powerline:
An aging population is a big reason for the worker shortage that has helped fuel inflation over the past 2 years.
In 2022, “prime-age” workers ( ages 25 to 54) have increased by 40,000. Meanwhile, the number of Americans 65 and older has jumped by 2 million during that time period.
What about higher unemployment benefits?
In 2001, a liberal British economist said the following:
“There is ample evidence that unemployment (and employment) is affected by how the unemployed are treated. Other things equal, countries that offer unemployment benefits of long duration have more unemployment (and less employment). This is because employment depends on the effective supply of labour.”
This should be a no-brainer.
As noted by the Heritage Foundation, “widely available and super-sized $600 weekly bonuses and expansions made preventing fraud and abuse difficult, leading to criminals taking advantage of easy access to large benefits and stealing people’s identities, and an unprecedented labor shortage in the US.”
What about the desire for higher wages reducing interest in low-paying jobs?
This is one of the reasons the restaurant industry is imploding. Some observers say it is a necessary “correction” or “reset” as the nation was saturated with too many restaurants in 2019. Of course, it is the little homegrown mom-and-pop restaurants that take the nose dive first. Major chain restaurants can weather it through.
The battle over minimum wage hikes also hurts the bottom line of the “little guy” restaurants. It is interesting that woke, leftist chains like Starbucks have donated over $ 1 million to Save Local Restaurants, which is a local coalition opposing a California law that would increase the minimum wage to $22 an hr. At the same time, Starbucks is all on board in mainstream media with increasing minimum wages.
Hypocrisy!
So, in summary, these are some of the leftist, liberal policies that are responsible for or contributing to the precarious economic situation we are in. Let’s refer to them as the downstream or drip effect:
Green energy policy focus
(truth? led to fossil fuel industry shutdowns with a rise in gas prices resulting and a rise in the price of most everything else)
Inflation reduction act
(truth? it has actually increased inflation and will fuel long-term deficits and inflation)
Abortion and scare tactics about the world being overpopulated
(truth? Baby Bust! with insufficient workers to sustain the economy)
Perpetual unemployment benefits
(truth? helps keep people out of the workforce)
Keep raising the minimum wage
(truth? puts small businesses out of business and reduces available jobs)
Biden and folks think they can cover up the true status of the economy by printing money and increasing taxes on the middle class.
Biden brags about “creating more jobs in two years than any president created in four years.” He inherited an artificial, state-induced shutdown of the economy due to Covid-19. If the government, states, and politicians compel businesses to shut down, it is not “creating jobs” when they reopen.
Biden also claimed that food and energy prices are down for “working families.” Americans are not buying it.
The average American pocketbook is not “roaring back.” Build Back Better? Think not.
It is bad enough that Biden and crew are delusional. But what is even worse and more dangerous is that journalists are either delusional or intentionally misleading the public.
As one writer opined, Biden and his fawning lapdog media acolytes are apparently graduates of the William Jefferson Clinton School for the Advancement of Prevarication.
There is quite a long list of illustrious alumni from that school, ya think?!