WhatFinger


Mission accomplished: Obama's state-driven, command-and-control economy

The shrinking workforce of Obama's America



Ronald Reagan used to counter liberal conventional wisdom by saying he measured compassion, not by how many people the government helps, but by how many people don’t need the help. And he succeeded in that vision by presiding over an economy that grew massively – with net job creation of more than 16 million during his presidency. Reagan gave us an enormous and highly productive work force, and that’s why there was so much prosperity during his time in office.
Barack Obama has a very different idea about what life should be like in America. And he’s achieving his vision too. Obama thinks it’s a shame when people have to work too hard, and he wants the government to enact policies that give people more free stuff in exchange for less work. The current state of the work force indicates Obama is doing what he’s set out to do. That powerful work force that was built under Reagan has been completely dismantled, and there are now fewer people in the work force than at any time since 1978. This past month alone, an astounding 423,000 people left the work force. As a percentage of the population, the work force is now a paltry 59 percent. That’s terrible, folks. Absolutely terrible. Now you might think, wait a minute, didn’t they just announce that unemployment is down to 5.3 percent? Why yes they did. And how is that possible when economic growth is so poor that the economy actually contracted in the first quarter of 2015? It’s only possible for one reason: People who have left the work force are not counted as unemployed. If you’re neither working nor looking for work – you’ve given up, in other words – you don’t count. If these people were included in the count, the unemployment rate would be 10.8 percent.

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Now why has this happened? There are a lot of reasons. First, during much of Obama’s presidency Democrats continually extended unemployment benefits beyond the 26 weeks proscribed by law, and consequently lessened the incentive to seek work. They also passed a law called ObamaCare that says you can stay on your parents’ health insurance until you’re 26. So remember the days when your mother would bum-rush you out the door to go look for a job so you could have health insurance? Might as well eat some more Bon-bons! And of course, there is less incentive for companies to create jobs too. Obama’s regulatory regime makes it harder for them to make profits, and Obama’s NLRB is constantly putting its thumb on the scales to make it easier for unions to invade the workplace. But the bottom line is this: If you don’t want to work, you’ve got a friend in this president. The more people who depend on government for their subsistence, the more loyal lifetime voters the Democrats have. The last thing Obama wants is to incentivize you to go look for a job, and if you’ve given up, no one is going to be happier about it than he is. So rest in peace, Reagan work force. You were great. But you were too much of a threat for too many politicians, and you had to be dismantled in the interest of a state-driven, command-and-control economy. And in Barack Obama, we found just the guy to do it.


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