The Shifting Employment Paradigm

"One of Mr. Obama's political gifts is that he can sound so plausible describing the opposite of his real intentions." – WSJ editorial – January 3, 2013

 

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BO has started a series of speeches that he will deliver around the country - the purpose of which is to pretend to be interested in helping the middle class come out of their long funk which of course he has done nothing but purposely & deliberately worked to extend.  The BLS July unemployment report released on August 2 is the latest confirmation of this.  How much more evidence do people need?

 

Although the percentage of the labor force that is unemployed dropped from 7.6% in June to 7.4% in July this apparent good news camouflages the real unemployment predicament plaguing America.  There are still over 22 million people unemployed or underemployed (11.5 million unemployed + 8.1 million working part time but wanting full time employment + 2.4 million marginally attached to the labor force of which 988,000 have become discouraged & stopped looking for work @ all). The total number of people working or looking for work fell by 37,000 in July from the month before & the number of discouraged workers increased by 136,000 in the last year.

 

Not stated in any of the official government reports from which the above statistics were derived is that the pay for the majority of what jobs are available would not sustain a traditionally thought of American middle class standard of living because many people are taking jobs that pay a fraction of their previous compensation.   The percentage of people working part time is the highest in decades under BO's entire time in office – which exacerbates the unemployment problem.  Further, part-time workers rarely have benefits like healthcare insurance so ObamaCare will be another hardship starting in 2014 whether the part timers pay the penalty or buy insurance on the exchanges.  BO's destructive plan for America continues to fall into place with hardly a whimper from an apathetic citizenry.

 

Also substantially unreported is that many companies such as Caterpillar & Microsoft cannot find Americans with the skills they need.  Wal-Mart remains the nation's largest employer & is followed by Kelly Services, a temporary worker service with a record 2.7 million people working temporary jobs. This seems to be a growing trend & the fact that it was reported earlier this week that only 31% of NY state students (third to eighth grades) were proficient in math & reading does not bode well for America's improvement let alone even being able to participate going forward in the global economy to any significant degree.

 

So far BO has given his economic speeches in Illinois, Missouri, Florida, & Tennessee & he plans to deliver more speeches on the economy through September.  This allows BO to continue his presentation of his economic poison but it also gives us an opportunity as well. 

 

Anyone who reads this message & is concerned about our future can participate in BO's venues by mingling with the audience @ the speeches to ask exactly which of BO's policies create one job that results in wealth creation.  Ask how do you create sustainable wealth-producing jobs by taxing income?  How do small businesses expand when you increase taxes?  What economic freedom principles are enhanced when you raise taxes?  You have to look, not as a trouble maker, which you are not, but as though you are there to learn yourself.

 

If you can't attend one of BO's planned speech cites there are letters to the editor & op-eds you can present to local newspapers.  I know of many in the RTE readership who are already doing this & I thank them for their effort.

 

We must return to the mindset where everyone in the country understands what a job really is under a free enterprise system – namely, an opportunity to create more present or future value for an employer than it costs to maintain the worker in the job.  This is why, by this definition in the private sector, employed people hustle.  If the employee's value drops below the cost of maintaining the employee the job disappears.  Government employment has an entirely different definition of a job.

 

As long as BO is President the employment paradigm will continue to shift from one of good jobs with benefits for people who value work & contribute to an increasing standard of living for themselves & everyone else in the country to one of a declining standard of living where people piece together some kind of existence through part-time work, getting benefits from some government program, moving in with family, & spending down whatever wealth their family has accumulated over the years until the entire country looks like Detroit – the former richest per capita city in America that is now a ghost town.