Back to work, okay?
This is still a very toxic political environment, so let’s get the unpleasantries out of the way. If you’re a business owner trying to make payroll and deal with inventory and balance sheets (I’m the moderator of the Over-50 Entrepreneur Master Forum), you need the truth without the commentary. So let’s boil this 15-page article down to 6 paragraphs.
Fed Chair Jerome Powell has been pumping out trillions, a raging river of unprecedented debt for a bit over two years. When Trump was in office, the debt was urgent, necessary, and timely. When Biden took office, the adjectives changed to massive, wasteful, and unsustainable. This is normal politics, reframing the football and throwing it as far down the field as possible. The problem arises when business owners act on the rhetoric rather than the facts.
Let’s take the king of debt, Harry Truman, out of the mix since he was fighting a war.
Trump added the third most of any President, around $2.1 trillion extra compared to Obama $3.4 trillion extra. If you look past the political labels, you find that economists praise Obama for keeping the world economy from going over the cliff under the weight of Greenspan-endorsed toxic derivatives. It was urgent, necessary, and timely. Trump’s spending was tied to an upper-class income tax overall that kept the economy going strong, perhaps, the strongest economy we have experienced … until the COVID-19 pandemic.
Today, inflation is still low to moderate (NOT raging out of control), and the economy is on track to come roaring back. But the speed depends on a number of factors and one of them is the incentive to go back to work. Studies show the vast majority of people want to go back to work. To get elected, however, politicians crank out the stories their constituents want to hear. One of those stories is that “LARGE” groups of “LAZY” people are sitting around with their hands out, wanting the government to take care of them. The data shows that, before the pandemic, most of these people were working multiple minimum wage jobs to make ends meet, two or three Walmart, KinderCare, security guard, UBER jobs to make up for the low pay. But who’s going to believe government data.
Let’s just dismiss this Commerce Department, SBA, Census propaganda as fake news.
YES, absolutely, YES, there is a remnant group of people (my unofficial estimate is 10 -12%) who are looking for a handout. They took their stimulus check and bought new nails, long wigs, new phones, and big car rims instead of seeing a new future of empowerment, taking a beginner’s Microsoft certification or Adobe or SEO and making $28 an hour … to start working their way out of poverty and it’s shortsighted mentality. They didn’t see the once-in-a-lifetime narrow pathway out, brought to their doorstep by COVID-19. These are the poster children that politicians dangle before their constituents. THEY EXIST. But does it make sense to base the nation’s entire policy on a remnant?
Now here is where the rubber meets the road. What is your price point? How much would they have to pay YOU to smell cancer-causing rooftop tar fumes or pick up three-day-old bags of fly-invested baby diapers, shattered glass, rotten food, and dead birds? … as your garbage man does every day. How eager would you be to put on your smelly boots or hotel cleaning uniform and go back to work? Please don’t tell me you’re dragging your feet in conjunction with the new job description. Please don’t tell me you’re part of that “LAZY” group.
The government stimulus CANNOT go on forever … SHOULD NOT go on forever. But the States have adopted an indentured slave policy designed to starve the workers back to work rather than offering an incentive tied to pay. Bernie Sanders’ $15 an hour minimum wage proposal is not reasonable, maybe even outrageous. Most small businesses could not survive. But no one is talking about what is NOT outrageous … what is reasonable. That discussion is lost in the election rhetoric of “Lets’get tough on LAZY people. Elect me!”
My final word is this. The US Shadow economy of low-paid immigrants cannot take care of this matter of an underpaid, under-valued labor force. You want workers to come back? You want your dead birds picked up every day? Then give workers a decent incentive. Pay.
– Leander Jackie Grogan –
Author of: