2016 June 28^th

Mona Charen has a column this morning and in it she is busy complaining about the “labor participation rate.” She also constructs a couple of straw men which she then nicely demolishes. Mona is well to the right of everyone on most issues although she is almost as opposed to Donald Trump as she is to President Obama. If it weren’t an impossibility I’m sure she would organize a “Bibi Netanyahu for President“ movement.

She begins her column by pointing out that, “…neither Trump nor anyone else can bring those jobs back because they weren’t lost primarily to foreign competition…Manufacturing jobs have been in steep decline mostly due to automation and efficiency.” That is mostly nonsense. She is right that Trump can’t bring the jobs back but to suggest that jobs haven’t been lost because plants haven’t moved overseas represents pure ignorance. For example; Flextronics loss 147 jobs; Hewlett Packard loss 500 jobs; Jabil loss 500 jobs: Philips Lighting Co. loss 345 jobs-- and the list could go on and on of companies who have very recently moved jobs overseas. If she doesn’t know this she is willfully ignorant.

She tells us that, “…particularly for men the labor force participation rate has been declining steadily.” Charen then tells us about that, “…non-work is associated with a host of troubles: Job loss is connected to increased body weight….” And she goes on to give us a litany of the physical, mental and family problems produced by job loss. But many in the 25-54 men’s age group have not been fired at all; they are unemployed, because they have retired, gone back to school or perhaps they are physically unable to work. You can retire from a civil service job at 50 if you have 20 years of service; you can join the military at 17 and retire after 20 years of service at 37. My brother-in-law joined the army at seventeen and retired after 22 years of service as a major when he was 39.

Moving on to family stability, Charen says, “Unsurprisingly the CEA (Council of Economic Advisors) offers Democratic Party boilerplate: infrastructure spending projects, expanding paid family leave increasing the minimum wage and reforming the criminal justice system.” She then says any proposal should begin by asking if it would discourage or encourage family stability.

Charen claims that a higher minimum wage, part of this “Democratic boilerplate,” is not family friendly? Where the minimum is much lower, the wage earner qualifies for supplementary assistance from the tax-payer. Charen apparently believes that business friendly and family friendly coincide.

Paid family leave, another part of the Democratic boilerplate, is not family friendly? One wonders how Charen defines family friendly if it excludes paid maternal leave.

Spending to fix the infrastructure would supply many good paying construction jobs. Funny how the right wing used good paying jobs in their pitch for the Exxon-Valdez pipeline but now the jobs’ infrastructure construction will produce is just part of some Democratic boilerplate.