Obama Blames Technology
December 19, 2011
At his recent speaking event in Osawatomie, Kansas (as always, his campaign trip funded by you, the taxpayer), President Obama once again cast blame for the nation’s woes on someone other than himself. This time it’s technology’s fault.
Here is what the-buck-stops-anywhere-but-here President had to say about his administration’s inability to create jobs:
“Layoffs too often became permanent, not part of the business cycle. And these changes didn’t just affect blue collar workers. If you were a bank teller or a phone operator or a travel agent, you saw many in your profession replaced by ATMs and the Internet.”
So, three years into his hope and change Presidency, Mr. Obama is blaming technology and innovation for the continued joblessness. Rather than tout entrepreneurship, innovation and American exceptionalism which has brought us such recent tech-related job creators as Google, Facebook, and Twitter, the Downer-in-Chief blames ATMs and the Internet for his administration’s failure to create jobs.
Last month’s jobs report indicated that the unemployment rate had dropped to 8.6% for the month of November. However, with only 125,000 new jobs reported in the private sector, most of the statistical improvement in the unemployment percentage was due to a 315,000 increase in the number of discouraged Americans no longer looking for work. Since the denominator in the unemployment rate calculation is reduced by this number of Americans theoretically dropping out of the workforce, the resulting fraction shows a statistical reduction in the overall unemployment rate.
Indeed, if you add back to the denominator the number of Americans who have stopped looking for work since Mr. Obama took office, the current unemployment rate would be at 11%.
This might be the key to Mr. Obama’s reelection strategy: rather than reverse course and abandon the big government, increased regulation, and higher tax policies that have so devastated the U.S. economy, President Obama will continue to create a labor situation so dire that more and more Americans lose hope and give up looking for work. The resulting reduction in the unemployment calculation denominator as increasing numbers of discouraged Americans leave the work force will make the unemployment percentage look statistically better.
The Obama administration and its media cheerleaders will boast that the President’s policies are working, even as outrageous numbers of American workers continue to suffer.
Incredibly disingenuous strategy to assure four more devastating years in office, but not beyond the capacity of what has been an incredibly disingenuous administration.