OBAMA JOBS

The two charts below and the op-ed from the CEO of Carl’s Jr. explain everything you need to know about Obamanomics. Obama’s fiscal policies and Bernanke’s monetary policies are entirely Keynesian based. It doesn’t matter to them that theory hasn’t worked. Reality for real Americans living in the real world is shit jobs, shit pay, and inflation in their living expenses for food, energy, tuition, and healthcare. Don’t be fooled by the decline in government jobs. That includes the military and we have withdrawn from Iraq and Afghanistan over this time frame. If you subtracted the military reduction you would see that government hired more drones with your tax dollars.

The proof that Obamanomics has failed is in the real wages of Americans. The only way people can get ahead in life is if their real income outpaces their real expenses. It really is that simple. Adding student loan, auto loan and credit card debt is not getting ahead. Real average hourly earnings are lower today than they were when Obama took office. Gas prices are 125% higher than when Obama took office. Obama has converted America from a productive society to a food stamp society. And the best is yet to come.

Finally an honest CEO, speaking the truth. How refreshing.

Authored by Andrew Pudzer, CEO of CKE Restaurants which includes Carl’s Jr, and originally posted at The Wall Street Journal

In President Obama’s speeches this year, a steady theme has been creating jobs and economic opportunity for Americans. In his State of the Union address in January he said that “what I believe unites the people of this nation . . . is the simple, profound belief in opportunity for all—the notion that if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead.” And in his weekly address on Saturday, he repeated his strong appeal to young people: “As long as I hold this office, I’ll keep fighting to give more young people the chance to earn their own piece of the American Dream.”

Yet during the more than five years Mr. Obama has been in office, young people have been especially hard-hit by the slow and virtually jobless recovery. Given the destructive effect this has on individual initiative and the prospects of a productive and rewarding working life, the continuing struggle of young Americans to find jobs, start building families and contribute to society is no longer simply a matter of politics or policy. On a deeply human level, it’s profoundly sad.

Consider these grim employment numbers:

• In February the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) recorded the lowest percentage of 16- to 19-year-olds working or actively looking for work (32.9%) since the bureau started tracking the data in 1948. The BLS recorded the second-lowest labor-participation rate for this group in April (33.2%) and the third-lowest in January (33.3%). May’s rate was the sixth lowest (33.8%).

 

• Over the past two years, the BLS has recorded some of the worst labor participation rates for 20- to 24-year-olds since 1973, when the Vietnam War was beginning to wind down. In August 2012, the 69.7% rate was the lowest since ’73. The second-lowest (70%) came in March last year. This year, the third-lowest rate came in April (70.2%). May’s rate was a still-miserable 71%.

 

• Looking at the seasonally unadjusted data—which is what the BLS makes publicly available—for 25- to 29-year-olds, the April 2014 labor-participation rate was the lowest the BLS has recorded since it started tracking the data in 1982 (79.8%). May’s rate was the second-lowest (79.9%). January, February and March tied with the fourth-lowest (80.3%).

These disturbing numbers raise a simple question: Where are the entry-level jobs?

Five years of 2% average yearly GDP growth simply doesn’t produce enough jobs to absorb the natural increase in the labor force, and over the past eight quarters GDP growth has averaged only 1.7%. Between May 2008 and May 2014, BLS data show that the employable population increased by 14,217,000 while the number of people employed actually decreased by 94,000 and the number of people unemployed increased by 1,404,000. It remains a bad time for young people to be looking for jobs.

Nonetheless, various states and municipalities have increased their minimum wage, thereby increasing the cost of employing inexperienced workers. Minimum-wage jobs have always been a gateway to better opportunities. In making hiring decisions, businesses must weigh the quality and value of work that entry-level employees produce against the cost of employing them. For many businesses in high-minimum-wage states or municipalities—Seattle leads the list, having approved a move to a $15 minimum wage—that trade-off is no longer working.

The bottom line on labor: Make something less expensive and businesses will use more of it. Make something more expensive and businesses will use less of it. The Congressional Budget Office has forecast a loss of 500,000 jobs should the president’s proposal to increase the federal minimum wage to $10.10 an hour become law.

The CBO also forecast that this increase would lift a number of people who already have jobs above the poverty threshold. For 500,000 unemployed people, however, that’s 500,000 opportunities American businesses will never create.

ObamaCare is also increasing the cost of hiring inexperienced workers. The health-care law requires that businesses with more than 50 full-time employees offer medical insurance to employees working 30 or more hours a week. The administration knows that the employer mandate will kill jobs and has twice delayed implementing it. With an election on the horizon, American businesses know that these delays were political and that the mandate’s economically damaging impact is in the pipeline, coming their way.

ObamaCare gives businesses an incentive to either eliminate entry-level jobs or keep the workers’ hours to under 30 a week. It also gives businesses a reason to reduce the hours of experienced employees to under 30 a week. These experienced employees are now working second jobs to compensate for their lost hours—resulting in fewer positions for less-experienced workers.

To get on the ladder of opportunity, America’s young people need jobs. Creating disincentives to hire them diminishes the notion that “if you work hard and take responsibility, you can get ahead.” The reality is that you can’t get ahead if you can’t find a job.

I’m not speaking primarily as a business CEO. My company will adjust to new laws. I’m speaking as someone from a working-class family. I started work scooping ice cream for the minimum wage at Baskin-Robbins. To put myself through college and law school while supporting my family, I cut lawns, painted houses and busted concrete with a jackhammer. I know how important these jobs are. For one thing, they taught me—as no lectures from my parents ever could—that I needed a good education so I wouldn’t have to settle for low-paying work the rest of my life. Too many young people today are being deprived of even that basic lesson.

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Bostonbob

Admin,
I was on another board last Friday where they were wringing their hands congratulating themselves at what a fantastic job Obama had done creating jobs. I pointed out a few of these statistics, their follow up was that I was a racist republican and if the damn republicans would get out of Obama’s way he would have created twice as many jobs. I pointed out what a poor job the administration had done creating jobs for minorities so it must be the Obama administrations that is racist. What followed what a torrent of hate and invective. It is so fun to watch progressives collectively lose their minds.
Bob.

harry p.

bob,
it can be, but often it is like interacting with bb.

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bostonbob

Admin,
Ironically I am painfully polite especially when I point out there hypocrisy of their amazing intolerance to anything that does not echo their brilliance. They so want a screaming right wing neocon to affirm their views on who the enemy is. On a lighter note I got an email from my esteemed Congressman, Joseph Kennedy, yes one of those Kennedy’s. He is have a phone conference town hall, I thought I might troll in and ask him if he got his driving lessons from Uncle Teddy. You have any suggestions what I should ask my turd of a congressman?
Bob.

Bostonbob

harry p.,
So true, sometimes I just can’t help myself.
Bob.

Bostonbob

I thinking about asking him if he took skiing lessons fro his cousin Michael:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/jfkjr/stories/mk010198.htm

or maybe courting lessons from his cousin Willy:

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/national/longterm/jfkjr/stories/mk010198.htm

So many questions and so little time.
Bob.

Stucky

bostonbob

It’s always a good thing to open with a joke … warm ’em up. Lot’s of ’em on the net but, maybe this one;

Q: What’s the difference between Ted Kennedy and the Iraqi Army?
A: The Iraqi Army never killed anyone.

Zarathustra

Dear Congressman Kennedy,

Is it true that the reason your uncle Jack’s PT boat was cut in half by a Jap destroyer is because he was below deck banging a native girl?

AWD

Obamanomics is a disaster, because it’s based in socialism; steal from the productive and give it to deadbeats in hopes of stimulating the economy. So productive capital is destroyed, and the debts and spending go exponential. Consumers, being paid less, getting their hours cut thanks to Obamacare, and getting robbed blind by taxes, are simply running up more debt. 88 million more people get money from the government than have jobs. Obama and the liberal progressive democrats are have destroyed and bankrupted this country, and for what? So deadbeats can sit on the couch, screw and squeeze out welfare babies, become obese, and suck the blood out of productive people, at the gunpoint thanks to Obama and the IRS.

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Bostonbob

Posted this on a different thread, but works here just as well. I could not find the little green onion.

Actual headline from a the liberal/progressive blog PoliticusUSA:

President Obama Makes History By Accomplishing 100% of His Domestic Agenda
By: Jason Easley more from Jason Easley

Actual quote from the article;

“In the face of such day to day frustration over the Republican refusal to govern, it is easy to forget how much that this president has achieved. He has ended two wars, been bold on education reform, put the economy back on track, and most importantly has delivered a healthcare reform that has helped hundreds of millions of Americans beyond the newly insured.”

You truly cannot make this stuff up.

Bob.

bb

Harry ,I’m not liberal , I’m not a leftist of any kind including an anarchist. I am that I am.Meathead.

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