We’ve entered a new phase in American progressivism. Let’s call it the ‘Beltway Wink and Nod
School of Economics’ where the Obama administration, his democratic acolytes and
spin meisters in the media propagate the narrative that the economy is booming;
that the unemployment rate is an astonishing 5.3%; that the country has 64
straight months of economic growth which translates into 12.6 million jobs!
It’s all a lie!
David Stockman, a former Director of the Office of Management and Budget
under Ronald Reagan, has branded this fiscal façade as bread and circuses
economy and with good reason:
There is no mystery as to how the White House and Wall
Street celebrate year after year of “jobs growth” when the long-term trend of
full-time, family-supporting employment levels is heading south. Its called
“trickle-down economics”, and not of the good kind, either.
What is happening is that the Keynesian money printers at the
Fed are fueling serial financial bubbles. This generates a temporary lift in
the discretionary incomes of the top 10% of households, which own 85% of the
financial assets, and the next 10-20% which feed off the their winnings.
Accordingly, the leisure and hospitality sectors boom, creating a lot of job
slots for bar tenders, waiters, bellhops, etc.
I call this the
“bread and circuses economy”, but it has two problems. Most of these slots
generate only about 26 hours per week and $14 per hour. That’s about
$19,000 on an annual basis, and means these slots constitute 40% jobs
compared to the breadwinner category at about $50,000 per year. Besides that, a
soon as the financial bubble goes bust, these jobs quickly disappear.
Isn’t it
ironic that democrats constantly wail about income inequality even though it’s
their policies that have created the very conditions they lament. Go figure.
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