Obama's O-fer Vision of America

The Obama administration has achieved a feat no President, recession or war has been able to achieve during the past 70 years: since January 2009, the American labor force has stopped growing. The biggest employment trend among working age Americans is not telecommuting, flextime, or hopping on the next internet rocketship, but is, rather, to join our most rapidly growing labor category - the unworking American.

The labor numbers released Friday tell the tale. For the first time since World War II, the civilian labor force has shown no growth during a president's term. In every single year since the Truman administration, the growth in population has been matched with a growth in labor force; that is, the number of people who are working or say they would like to be working.

The chart nearby shows the unprecedented severing of this relationship. Obama apologists attempt to deflect blame to others but are thwarted by the facts. Since Harry Truman's "the buck stops here", no President, rain or shine, peace or war, boom or bust, has shrunk the American labor force.

Even in the difficult decade preceding this administration - the significant setbacks of 9/11, the dotcom bust, and the subsequent recession notwithstanding -- the civilian labor force grew at 1% per year. Had normal growth continued, we'd have over 159 million in the labor force today, not 155 million. Inconveniently, if those additional 4 million unworking Americans retained "hope", they'd push the unemployment rate to an unpalatable 11.0%.

Evasiveness aside, the buck stops with Obama.

This accomplishment has been achieved rather deliberately, through a combination of antipathy and harmful empathy. As the author of the largest career advice newsletter in America, I have seen how the hopelessness leads to despair leads to resignation. And it is clear to me that this distinctive feature of the Obama economy shows that the jobs crisis is a moral failure, not an economic one.

The Obama administration has surprisingly succeeded in turning Americans away from valuing work in a way no other president has sought to achieve. An administration that disparages and demeans successful people, that disapproves and devalues the private sector, that demands handouts and delivers on threats, will discourage productive work.

The best way to find a job is to have a job. When workers are separated from the social support and positive reinforcement of the work environment for more than one year, their re-employment prospects decline dramatically. Unemployment programs that misleadingly inform workers that 99 weeks of unemployment is a sustainable number, from which one's prospects can recover, are extremely deleterious and inflict upon the psychologically vulnerable a terrible harm, oftentimes with permanent repercussions for one's employability.

The Obama values do not include work itself. That is, work in the sense of accomplishing something for which another citizen will freely pay you. The voluntary contract is an anachronism, which the central planner finds an inappropriate and exploitative ordering of society. When fairness is granted by the government rather than earned in the marketplace, entitlements flourish.

Michelle Obama infamously exhorted children "don't go into Corporate America," which we are now to understand was more in the way of a command than a statement of taste. And Obama's cabinet is populated with those more comfortable with an impact statement or deposition than a P&L. Even Bill Daley couldn't stomach a year of it.

Shirking has replaced working for too many citizens. The share of Google searches on "Social Security disability" has increased by 36% under Obama compared to the prior four years. While we've certainly become 36% more enfeebled, it is in the moral, not the physical, sense. If cash and comfort are available without effort, it sure beats working.

Each departure from the labor force is, in some ways, a reinforcement of our departure from the American dream under this administration.

Indeed, the O economy is revealed as the O-fer economy -- O-fer on jobs, O-fer on workforce growth, O-fer on increasing the employment rate. Yet our real concern should be with what a second term would bring, because the O-fer vision of America is to turn us into a nation of loafers -- dependent and dependable clients -- as ever more of our fellow citizens are pushed out of work, encouraged to forsake productive activity, and forced to sit on the bench watching life pass by.

You won't be able to say he didn't warn us.