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July 10, 2013

'Slavery was a full-employment system'

By Ethel C. Fenig

Robert B. Reich, former Secretary of Labor in the President William Clinton (D) administration and now professor of Public Policy at the University of California at Berkeley, knows how to create full employment in 140 characters or less.  He tweets

Easy to create lots of new jobs. Just cut wages and benefits. Slavery was a full-employment system.

So slavery in the US, defended by Democrats for many years, was merely a benign "full-employment system."  Hmm.  Ostensibly against slavery--and full employment, Reich advocates for jobs with  high minimum wages with lots of benefits to avoid it.  But, as the realistic and non professorial in the real world Twitchy staff notes,

The types of policies he supports have been in use in countries such as France (unemployment rate: 11.0 percent), Italy (unemployment rate: 12.0 percent), Portugal (unemployment rate: 17.8 percent), Spain (unemployment rate: 26.8 percent), and Greece (unemployment rate: 26.8 percent).

Those are great models for the U.S., eh professor?

Also, the Reichian model of high wages--the Democrats support increasing the minimum wage--and expensive benefits--the now-we-know-what's-in-it-passed-but-delayed-Obamacare--has unamazingly accomplished a post World War ll record length of 54 straight months of high unemployment in the US. 

Trying to avoid unemployment, many workers are turning to the nation's second largest employers, temporary agencies, which usually offer low wage, minimal benefits jobs. Slavery?
Since January 2009, when Barack Obama was inaugurated as president, the United States has seen 54 straight months with the unemployment rate at 7.5 percent or higher, which is the longest stretch of unemployment at or above that rate since 1948, when the Bureau of Labor Statistics started calculating the national unemployment rate.  This, in turn, has created another unpleasant record--about 1/3 of Americans, or 100,000,000 people--are now receiving subsidized food from one of the 15 government programs available creating still yet another unpleasant record "the number of Americans receiving food assistance has surpassed the number of full-time private sector workers in the U.S."

And this doesn't even count the number of people receiving subsidized food from private food banks. 

So Reich's tweeted model of jobs with high wages and expensive mandated benefits leads to large numbers of unemployed/underemployed government dependent people serviced by ever more government workers all supported by private sector workers.  The circle is complete. 

But, on the bright side, according to Reich, there is no slavery. 

On the realistic side though, this is slavery of private sector workers.  It is unsustainable.   As the late British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher noted, "Eventually you run out of other people's money." 

And then, even slavery will look good. 





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