Speaker Pelosi was right that that is what this is all about. And she and the Congress continue to destroy them and prevent their creation:
…millions of full-time workers are being downgraded to part-time, as businesses slash labor costs to remain above water. Because people are working less, wages have fallen by 0.3% this year. Factories are operating at only 65% capacity, while the overall jobless rate hit 9.5%. Throw in discouraged workers who want full-time work, and the labor underutilization rate climbed to 16.5%.
The news is even worse for young people, with nearly one in four teenagers unemployed. Congress has scheduled an increase in the minimum wage later this month, which will price even more of these unskilled youths out of a vital start on the career ladder. One useful policy response would be for Congress to rescind the wage hike to $7.25 an hour (from $6.55) that is scheduled for July 24. But the union economic model that now dominates Washington holds that wages only matter for those who already have jobs. The jobs that are never created don’t count.
This is right out of the New Deal play book. Price labor out of the market by government fiat. And keep kids (many of whom live with their parents) from climbing on to the first rung of the employment ladder. Teenage unemployment is 24%, and they raise the minimum wage. Brilliant.
And then there’s this (part of a huge grand indictment of Waxman-Markey):
Naturally, Big Labor gets its piece of the pie, too. Projects receiving grants and financing under Waxman-Markey provisions will be required to implement Davis-Bacon union-wage rules, making it hard for non-union firms to compete — and ensuring that these “investments” pay out inflated union wages. And it’s not just the big research-and-development contracts, since Waxman-Markey forces union-wage rules all the way down to the plumbing-repair and light-bulb-changing level.
Via Kaus, who also notes that if this insanity is extended to health care, you can kiss any hopes of cost savings goodbye. We’ve got to put the brakes on all this economic vandalism, somehow. I hope that we can finally stop it in the Senate.
[Update a few minutes later]
The dog will hunt, but it can’t find anything.
[Late morning update]
The worst job market for teens since 1965. But let’s be sure to raise that minimum wage.
With WM it just keeps getting worse.
http://mfrtech.com/articles/2293.html
20% of U.S. manufacturing could die.
Clearly, recovery isn’t important to the politicians.
Just consider this, if they were all facing dire consequences for lack of economic improvement in the short term (like say reelection this year or even more imaginative… execution) what would they do differently?
Would they do things differently?
And if it’s a real crisis, why aren’t they acting the same as if it were a personal crisis?
As Reynolds says about Global Warming: “I’ll believe it’s a crisis when people in charge start acting like it’s one.”
Economically, it’s similar. The gov doesn’t see this as a crisis, but as an opportunity, their rolls and pay scales keep increasing. The economic recession is a boon to them. Why rock the boat?
Oh, they are — as in, “Never let a crisis go to waste.”
Did anyone seriously expect them to act like it’s the kind of crisis to be fixed rather than exploited? Please.
The Democrats intend to do for the national economy what they have done for the states of California, New Jersey and Michigan. God help us.
The young adult market has never been good in terms of employment. My view is that the current high unemployment dovetails nicely with the education bribes that the Obama administration will put out. This will put off the problem till some later administration. No doubt the new graduates and college dropouts will be a bit upset at having acquired education which isn’t so valuable and a bunch of debt that is. But by that time, I imagine some cold-hearted Republican administration will have to clean up the mess.
If it’s going to be stopped in the Senate it will have to be by you people outside of state–MA’s senators (yech!) will be delightdd to vote fr both it and socialized medicine. Kennedy, Kerry, and Markey and Frank in the house. The people of my state are mad.