Wages & Prices
You had to figure that a left-leaning journalist somewhere would denigrate Friday's news that the nation's seasonally adjusted unemployment rate fell below 4 percent for the first time since 2000. Jordan Weissmann, in a Slate.com column beginning with a headlined contention that "The Unemployment Rate Is Meaningless," came through.
When President Bill Clinton signed the welfare reform act in 1996, which he negotiated with then-Speaker Newt Gingrich, the left claimed people would starve. They didn't. According to the nonpartisan Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, between 1996 and 2000, the employment rate for single mothers increased from 63 percent to 76 percent.
You’ve probably heard already. April 10, was “Equal Pay Day,” a symbolic day media, politicians and celebrities use each year to complain about gender-based pay discrimination — by abusing a statistic that does not illustrate that.
NBC’s Superstore leans in on sexism and falls flat on its face. On Thursday night’s episode, appropriately titled “District Manager,” after Jeff’s departure to be with Mateo, it is announced that for the first time Cloud 9 will have a female district manager, which leads the more liberal-minded employees to rush to celebrate the hire.
A recent article in The Guardian dons the foreboding title "Robots will destroy our jobs -- and we're not ready for it." The article claims, "For every job created by robotic automation, several more will be eliminated entirely. ... This disruption will have a devastating impact on our workforce."
The propagandists disguised as "fact-checkers" at the Washington Post unleashed pent-up frustration Wednesday when they evaluated President Donald Trump's February 5 claim that wages are, "for the first time in many years, rising." They gave Trump's claim its worst possible evaluation of "Four Pinocchios," i.e., a "whopper." Too bad for the Post that detailed work published by Reuters two days earlier had already debunked its evaluation.
On Monday, shortly after President Trump asked two employees at a suburban Cincinnati manufacturer to describe their plans for the $1,000 bonuses they had received, MSNBC's Katy Tur ridiculed them on Twitter. Tur considered $1,000 a pittance, and contended that the bonus money wouldn't genuinely help the employees involved achieve their stated goals. On Wednesday, Tur responded poorly to the outrage over her condescension by trying to change the subject.
At the Cincinnati Enquirer on Monday, reporter Jessie Balmert "fact-checked" President Donald Trump's afternoon speech at a suburban manufacturer. Balmert is the Enquirer reporter who in mid-2016 told readers that there were 220,000 U.S. murders in 2015 (actual number: 15,192). As would be expected, her Monday "fact check" was riddled with obvious errors and distortions.
On January 11, Nancy Pelosi slammed as "crumbs" the wage increases and bonuses well over 100 companies had announced at that point after the new tax law's passage in December. Thursday, she went to the same well more stridently. The establishment press, including the Associated Press, still won't report Pelosi's and others' similar comments, because they know how toxic they are.
On Wednesday, Starbucks added itself to the long list of companies announcing moves benefiting employees while crediting the tax law passed in December. The company's strong leftist pedigree is making things awkward for the left-leaning press, which has, among other things, conveniently forgotten that just three months ago, Howard Schultz, the company's executive chairman and former CEO, slammed the Republicans' tax-cut plan as "fool's gold," claiming that corporate America "does not need" a sharp cut in its top tax rate.
On Tuesday, Verizon announced that it would grant 153,000 of its 155,000 employees a bonus in the form of 50 shares of restricted stock (approximate value: $2,650), while Disney announced $1,000 bonuses for 125,000 of its cast members. Verizon also announced a significant increase in donations ($200-$300 million over the next two years) to its STEM education philanthropic effort, while Disney is "making a $50 million initial investment" (plus $25 million per year in future years) to help 88,000 employees cover college tuition costs. CNN Money's coverage of these developments still refused to fully acknowledge how unprecedentedly good the past five weeks' tax cut-driven news has been.
Reporters continue to concoct reasons to complain as more than 2 million American individuals and their families have suddenly become better off than they were three weeks ago. Even the news that the nation's largest retailer is raising its nationwide minimum wage while paying bonuses of up to $1,000 to every employee, and that an automaker is investing $1 billion in U.S. production, haven't moved cynics who refuse to concede the unconditional positivity in all of this.