Last month, the unemployment rate dropped to 6.1 percent as 288,000 jobs were added to the economy. Not only is this the lowest rate since President Obama took office, it means every single job lost during the Great Recession has been recovered. But not everyone is happy about more people finding the jobs they need.
The conservatives who work at Fox News have bitched and moaned for years about how the economy isn’t being fixed fast enough after Republicans nearly crippled it during the Bush Administration. At the same time, they’ve had no problem complaining about people using food stamps and unemployment benefits to get by until the job market improves. The GOP propaganda arm has accused the jobless of being lazy moochers who are stealing from taxpayers. Fox has literally demanded that these people get a job to solve their own problems. But now that more people are getting jobs and the economy has improved, at least one Fox host is whining about the economy becoming too improved.
Charles V. Payne took to his Twitter account to openly complain about the lower unemployment rate and implied that the numbers were fixed by the government. Apparently, too many people are finding work and that’s somehow bad for the economy.
Here’s the tweet.
Is the jobs number too good for the stock market…equity futures are drifting lower not sure how to react
— Charles V Payne (@cvpayne) July 3, 2014
In a comment to another Twitter user, Payne said he didn’t have faith in the jobs report put out by the Bureau Of Labor Statistics and suggested the numbers were exaggerated to “move markets and policy”.
The June jobs report marks the fifth straight month in which over 200,000 jobs were added to the economy. In May, 217,000 jobs were added. It also marks the 52nd straight month of job growth. The principle driver of this economic improvement is the healthcare sector, which is responsible for the bulk of the jobs added recently. 55,000 healthcare jobs were added in May alone. Obviously, conservatives aren’t happy about this because it blows away all of their bullsh*t claims that Obamacare is a job killer. Furthermore, the Dow Jones Industrial average has broke 17,000 points for the first time ever. It’s also more than double what it was on the day President Obama took office in 2009. This great news comes despite continued Republican obstruction and sabotage efforts.
The argument that low unemployment is bad for the economy has been used by conservatives before. During the Clinton Administration in the 1990s, conservatives absolutely threw a temper tantrum as the unemployment rate dipped lower and lower. All sorts of doomsday warnings were tossed about. The result? Only the strongest economy in decades with an unemployment rate under 4 percent, low inflation, higher wages, and a surplus in the US Treasury.
The reason why conservatives fear a really low unemployment rate is because a tight labor market forces employers to offer higher wages and better benefits in an effort to keep good workers. You see, when the demand for labor rises due to a tighter labor market, employers must raise wages to retain the workforce they have. A low unemployment rate means employers can’t simply go find unemployed people with similar skills. That’s because most of them already have jobs. But if the unemployment rate is high and the economy is a more unstable, businesses are better able to control wages because people are just happy to have a job that’s making any amount at all. There’s not as much of a desperation factor driving the labor market.
So when it comes to Fox News, they whine when the unemployment rate is high to satisfy their political agenda, and then they’ll turn around and whine when the rate is low to satisfy the corporate agenda of increasing bottom lines and keeping workers under the boot heel.
A lower unemployment rate is good news, and any so-called business or economic “expert” who says otherwise shouldn’t be allowed to keep their own job.
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