Last week’s devastating jobless numbers and President Biden’s explanation of them prove that he’s either woefully uneducated on business and economics, or he’s lying to the American people.
Take your pick.
Thursday’s jobless claims shot up by 19,000 to 316,000, making it a four-month high.
The numbers reportedly shocked insiders — but they should have expected them.
A Morning Consult poll released earlier in the month estimated that approximately 1.8 million workers have turned down employment in order to continue collecting unemployment benefits, because they’re enhanced by $300 per week under Biden’s $1.9 trillion federal American Rescue Plan.
Why work when you can make more money at home binge-watching TV while trying to beat your previous record for the number of beers you can consume within a 24-hour period?
A struggling restaurant owner brought this issue to Biden’s attention at his CNN town hall last week.
He told the president that it was becoming nearly impossible to find employees willing to work in the business.
Biden replied that "all kidding aside, I think it is a matter of people deciding now that they have opportunities to do other things. . . "
Yeah, opportunities like Netflix and beer.
But Biden offered an answer to the restauranteur’s labor shortage. Instead of paying servers the usual $7-8 an hour plus tips, pay them more — a lot more, "$15 or more," the president advised.
Get ready for the $30 hamburger.
The following day a reporter raised the small business owner’s concerns during the White House daily briefing. Press secretary Jen Psaki’s answer wasn’t any better.
She emphasized that the administration’s Restaurant Revitalization program, which provides federal funds for restaurants that were impacted by COVID, should have been a huge boost to the industry.
She explained that it was "part of the American Rescue Plan and helped many, many hundreds of restaurants across the country stay open [or] reopen . . . "
But the problem isn’t money — it’s workforce. She had an answer for that also.
“At this point in time it’s a worker’s market,” she said.
What she failed to acknowledge is that "it’s a worker’s market" only because the Biden administration chose to artificially turn it into one by continuing to add a $300 a week "bonus" to Americans’ unemployment benefits.
It’s forcing employers to compete with federal benefits, which they can’t do and still turn a profit.
Psaki added, "It may be that you have to pay more wages in order to attract workers."
Both statements — the one lauding the Restaurant Revitalization Fund and the "solution" that businesses double salaries in order to attract employees — reveal the mindset common among career federal workers and career politicians: if you throw money at the problem, it will go away. But it won’t.
This is the thought process of people who:
- Have never had to balance a budget so that revenue actually exceeds expenses; and,
- Have never had to meet a payroll — sometimes to the point of watching employees take home more money than the business owner.
In their world it’s no big deal if income doesn’t meet expenses — it’s called deficit spending.
In the real world when income doesn’t meet expenses, it starts with a phone call from the bank to let you know your checking account is overdrawn. If it continues much longer it ends up in bankruptcy court.
And Americans are understandably feeling uneasy. The results of an ABC News/Ipsos poll were released Sunday indicating that optimism in the country’s future for the next year plummeted nearly 20% since April.
The poll found that currently "45% are optimistic about where the country is headed over the next year, while 55% are pessimistic."
When polled in April, 64% of respondents were optimistic.
And that’s a reflection of why career politicians have no business in either Congress or the White House. The founders envisioned a citizen-government — one in which ordinary farmers, merchants, and professional people would take a few years off to help run the country.
The answer is to elect more economists and business leaders who can afford to take a hiatus for a few years to set the ship of state back on its proper course.
If only we knew someone like that.
Michael Dorstewitz is a retired lawyer and has been a frequent contributor to BizPac Review and Liberty Unyielding. He is also a former U.S. Merchant Marine officer and an enthusiastic Second Amendment supporter, who can often be found honing his skills at the range. Read Dorstewitz's Reports — More Here.
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