Guest Post by John Stossel
America has a record 8.1 million job openings.
The media call it a “labor shortage.”
But it’s not a labor shortage; it’s an incentive shortage.
“No one wants to work,” says a sign on a restaurant drive-thru speaker in Albuquerque, New Mexico. “Please be patient with the staff that did show up.”
I never wanted to work. I got a job because I had to support myself. That was good for me. It forced me out of my comfort zone. It made me a better person.
Had government offered me almost equal money not to work, I never would have applied.
Today, government takes away that incentive.
The American Rescue Plan, passed in March, increased unemployment payments by hundreds of dollars and extended them for up to 73 weeks. Given the cost of commuting, etc., many people find they are better off financially not working.
Denmark once offered workers five years of unemployment. Then they noticed that workers found work after exactly five years. So, Denmark cut the benefit to four years. Then most workers found jobs after four years. Now Denmark, wisely, has cut benefits in half.
Incentives matter.
America’s unemployment handouts began during the Great Depression when desperate people really needed help. Still, you could collect for only 16 weeks.
Barack Obama extended unemployment benefits to up to 99 weeks.
“There are no jobs!” people I interviewed waiting in line for benefits in New York City once told me.
But that wasn’t true. There were lots of entry-level jobs within walking distance.
My staff visited 79 nearby stores. Forty said they wanted to hire. Twenty-four said they’d hire people with no experience.
People in the unemployment line also said that the government should do more to train them for jobs. But New York already offered “job training” centers, so I sent an intern out to see what they did. The first offered to help her get welfare. A second told her to apply for unemployment. Neither place suggested looking for a job.
When she insisted that she wanted work, not handouts, they directed her to yet another building. There she was told she could not receive help because she didn’t have a college degree.
Finally, a fourth office offered her an interview at the sandwich chain Pret a Manger. The boss there told her she’d wasted her time going to the government Jobs Center because she could have gotten that same interview using Craigslist.
Some politicians understand that handouts encourage dependence. Sixteen states are now ending extra unemployment benefits early. Montana and Arizona replaced extra unemployment benefits with a bonus for people who find work.
Even President Joe Biden has noticed the unintended consequences of his party’s benefits. “If you’re … offered a suitable job, you can’t refuse that job and just keep getting unemployment,” he said.
Seems more than reasonable. Yet a New York Times headline says, “Some say it presents an undue hardship.”
The reporter interviewed a “Mx. San Martin, 27, who uses the pronouns they and them.”
Mx. Martin wants to work with pets. They complained that “there simply weren’t enough jobs that I would actually want.” Restaurant work “is not in my field of interest.”
Too bad.
Bad for all of us when people think they’re entitled to our tax money if bureaucrats don’t get them the exact job they want.
John Stossel is author of “Give Me a Break: How I Exposed Hucksters, Cheats, and Scam Artists and Became the Scourge of the Liberal Media.”
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The labor shortage is caused by government over regulating every industry until the only jobs left was menial unskilled jobs at Denny’s, Home Depot, and Walmart. Nobody wants to go back to work because we have too many service jobs and it’s not profitable to work these jobs. There’s 3,006 counties in the US and 14, 146 McDonald’s locations. That’s overkill and it’s ruining the economy when some communities only have these shit jobs as their options because corporations and government ruined small businesses and skilled trade jobs.
Agreed on the deliberate destruction of small business. But any job is profitable – compared to not working at all – in the absence of government benefits for sitting on your ass.
Actually I’d argue that its profitable even considering the government benefits alternative. If you’re a hard worker and ambitious, you won’t be flipping burgers forever.
Governments cannot create prosperity or wealth, they can only consume it.
You are spot on. Any and all governments will evolve into the ultimate evil if those that are being governed allow it. The people ultimately have to shoulder the responsibility of keeping government in check. We the people are up to bat and it is the bottom of the ninth inning with two out and a full count on the batter. The bases are loaded and everything hangs on these last few moments of the game. If the people loose, there won’t be another game like this for hundreds of years I have a feeling. It is our, we the people’s call, win or loose. There is NO reset or do over button in this game of life. Make your choice carefully.
Anything for free has no value. Have you ever noticed that most people that get something for free don’t respect it or take care of it. This is true about nearly everything in life. If you don’t have sweat equity in something you tend to not take care of it. I don’t care what it is. I get the feeling that our Constitutional freedom, job issues, etc., etc. are all having the same problem. People have it to easy. I also have a stronger feeling that all of us are going to experience a wake-up call of biblical proportions because of this free crap. To all the hard working good folks, soldier on, keep your head on a swivel and build a strong faith in God. We are all going to need it. The human race tends to be a very slow learner IMO.
Sage observation regarding free things having no value, not respected nor taken care of.
To understand the concept, one only has to drive through a public housing authority complex. Within a year of being built, the deterioration is starting to show by the missing window screens, broken glass, trash, graffiti, etc. After 10 years, it looks like a normal inner city slum and after 20 it should be torn down to start all over again.
To really understand the concept give the average person some free vegetables you grew.
Most likely never a thank-you even, teaches one why there is such a rejection of grace pretty quick.
That’s some old school wisdom right there, oldtimer505. Wisdom younger generations lack. Which is why they’re a huge part of the problem. The Free Shit Army thinks they entering a golden age. Too ignorant to see how the cycle works.
1. Free money makes lower production
2. Lower production makes scarcity
3. Scarcity makes higher prices
4. Higher prices makes money worthless
They’re about to learn some tough lessons from the school of hard knocks.
Infuriating.
EVERY PROBLEM is caused by government.
Not every problem is caused by government, Mr. L.
Some are caused by the likes of private individual busybodies i.e. Bill “The Vax Programmer” Gates, George “Pizuzu” Zoroz, and Mark “Fuckface” Fakebook Suckerborg.
And others by international conglomerates and criminal organizations: Pfyzer; Sacks of Gold Man!; Kazarian Mafya; mass media…
And some others by “do-gooders”. Fill in the “do-gooder” blank with your favourite dangerous imbecile Neo-Con/Antifa/BLM/ SJW etc.
Plenty of blame to go around; but, yes, government is responsible for much of a world full of problems and the toxic fallout from them.
Please explain how any of the “private” problems would actually be problems if not for the government creating the fiat money that sustains them or the protectionist regulations that keep the free market from keeping them at bay. Nope, government 100%.
Sure, but every single one of the agents you list above USE government, influence government, and coerce government to do their bidding; and the relationship is both systematically embedded and symbiotic. Without government, they cannot cause those problems by themselves.
Somali pirates aren’t the government, except in New Mogadishu, MN, and pirates everywhere -like in Silicon Valley – would like to not have any government or their navies around as competition for their activities.
MrLiberty, normally I would agree with you, but I think government is only half the problem in this case. The other half is the asshole parents who raised all these entitled kids who expect to be hired as Executive VP for their first job.
I took nearly 35 years to find a job that I actually enjoy going to every day. Yet this participation-trophy holders will collect government welfare and play video games in their parents basement until they are offered their dream job.
The sooner government goes bankrupt and these losers need to fend for themselves, the better.
And….If not for Government protecting these snowflakes with all of their “policies” of “inclusion” these asshole parents, as well as their asshole snowflake progeny would be living in the street until they got a quick attitude adjustment as to how the real adult world works. Government is protecting the parasite class mentioned above, as well as the lower down parasite class as well. Remove ALL Government protection, for everyone – then you will see reality come to the fore rather quickly.
Modern civilization hangs on a gazillion dubious threads of electrons. Watch for concrete reality, and soon.
The Black Horse Drought comes, farmers and ranchers can’t feed all the Welfare Maggots, peaceful protesters first destroy all the stores and then attack the White neighborhoods, White males find their Balls and SHTF.
I don’t think anyone will argue the authors answer to this simple one sided problem. Unfortunately, problems have many sides and different perspectives. My critical mind starts to think of all the outliers i.e. quality of jobs, automation, pay vs cost of living, phantom jobs. Then the answer becomes a little more complex.
Not to mention that I don’t believe any government statistic being spewed out these days.
This country/world is in real trouble and I think everyone on this website is just waiting for the first chip to fall so we can see what the aftermath looks like.
This is the Democrats / socialists / communist plan to create a whole class of people not willing to work and be dependent, a slave to the government.
During 0bama’s years, I called it trickle up poverty and since this is his 3rd term, I expect it to accelerate. Once we are all equally poor, except the ruling class, of course, then they can fully implement their final solution.
It’s a very hard to dismiss ear-worm when regular folks have been conditioned to believe the rewards of not working can be so lucrative:
Now then, who wants their stimmy?
So many Crap jobs that don’t pay a living wage. Many are meant for part-timers and students, not people with a mortgage to pay. Biden just makes it worse with his ending fossil fuels thinking and spending and the pushing of fear. Who was the idiot that decided to shut down the country in the first place? It’s all part of the plan to destroy the country and bring about the reset.
Then don’t have a mortgage? Look, globalization has and is destroying this country, no doubt about that.
But I see jobs advertised all over paying $15-$16 an hour (when the minimum wage here is $9). Evidently there are plenty of people too good to make around $30K a year. More than I made out of college. No one owes people anything.
First job out of college in ’74, I was making $600/mo. & my rent was $150. I felt really lucky to have the job. For the next 42 years, I was fully employed, except for 1 week when I was moving between states for my new job. I found that the harder I worked, the “luckier” I got and the promotions kept coming.
You have to start somewhere and at the top is usually not an option.
Agreed.
When BigGov E.O.’s wipe out your industry entirely, is a 50 y.o. really supposed to go back to 20k a year? 25k for the basics, and a family to raise.
Asking for a friend.
Just about everywhere I go, jobs are posted at $15 – $20/hr (30 – 40K). My 36 y-o grandson got a job in an industry which he had never worked, but had a little knowledge of at $60K. He told me the boss was so desperate that she would try to hire anyone she met who had an outgoing personality and presented themselves well.
The alternative is to go on the dole and accept whatever scraps your masters want to give you.
This brought back a memory I’d sooner forget, but… Some 30 years ago, I was at a twelve-step meeting and unemployed. “Just aren’t any jobs”. Then this snaggled-tooth, tatted guy who might as well have had “Just released”” on his forehead says “Excuse me, sir, but comin’ on over here, I seen that the filling station up there on the corner had a help wanted sign. Now’s I think of it, so does the pizza place just a couple of doors down. I think y’all ain’t lookin’ fer no job; you want a po-SITION.” He was right, of course, but it hadn’t ocurred to me. White privilege, I guess. Humiliation cubed. Happily, soon after I got a “position” of sorts: writing scripts for self-help cassette tapes. Long ago and far away now, but I learned a valuable lesson.
For those who are too young to remember
One thing you got to say about this Country is that people seem to have a quick wit about them.
Jimmy Kimmel and his ilk should take note and maybe hire them.
Most of those with a quick wit do not meet the p/c requirements needed for people like Kimmel or the networks. He was a funny guy when he was objectifying women on “The Man Show”.
There is no more good TV. Hire them to watch TV?
this past sat. pm i had a coupon 4 popeye’s chicken so we decided to use it–
i get out of the truck to go in & get it but this sign was on the door–
“lobby closed because we cannot find enough people to work,only the drivethru is open”
Same thing going on at many of the food joints around this area, including the local Chili’s.
I guess long haired freaky people can now apply…………
The labor shortage is so severe that long-haired freaky people are now welcome to apply.