Why work when Joe Biden and the Democrats will pay you more not to?
Or when you can’t afford to work - because the schools you paid for via your property taxes are closed and you can’t just leave your kids home, alone.
“Stimulus” checks came - several times. Unemployment never went - and the spending keeps increasing, including trillions for what the Democrats style “infrastructure." Much of which doesn’t involve roads or putting people to work building new ones and repairing existing ones.
Rent and mortgages, forgiven. Landlords stiffed.
It’s not just a free lunch.
It’s free breakfast, dinner and midnight snack, too. Plus all the Internet porn you want.
It’s not surprising the latest employment report is dismal; only 266,000 new jobs were added in April - roughly two-thirds fewer than the million that had been expected.
Unemployment is up, now hovering at 6.1 percent.
Under former President Trump, there was full employment and record job growth.
But now there is a different president - and a different attitude. Instead of back-to-work, it’s get-on-the-dole.
And stay there.
It’s a problem that hits home for chef and restaurateur Andrew Gruel, founder and CEO of Slapfish seafood restaurants as well as the pizza joint, Big Parm in California. Governor Gavin Newsome has graciously given his personal permission for the restaurants he forced to close to serve customers again - but there’s a problem:
Finding people willing to serve.
Chef Gruel was on Fox Business News the other day and explained the dilemma. He can’t pay his servers more than the government is paying them not to serve, via the increased - so called "supplemental" - unemployment benefits doled out to people decreed to be “nonessential” during the height of the government “lockdowns.” This dole is still being doled out in many states - along with rent/mortgage abatement and the dangled-before-their-eyes possibility of more “stimulus” to come.
It makes it hard for some people to want to get out of bed.
“There are no employees available in California. We are paying dishwashers $21 (per hour) to start," says Gruel. That's pretty good money. "In each market outside of California, we're paying at least 50 percent above whatever the mandatory minimum wage is," he adds.
But it's not free money.
People have to work for it.
That's becoming abnormal in the "new normal" of Joe Biden's America.
Gruel told Fox: "There are two main reasons people tell me they won’t work: One, they are making enough on unemployment and would rather not work; two, with schools closed they can’t pay someone to watch their children."
This isn’t just a California problem, either. As the recent jobs report highlights.
“We’ve got franchise locations across the United States; the labor pool is dry in all markets."
Because people who used to work can now wet their beaks.
First, the government sent them home. Then it paid them for staying home - as much as $1,000 per week (the normal-times average $600 weekly check plus an extra $400 in China Virus compensation) which amounted to nearly $50,000 a year to stay home.
It’s no wonder the chef is having trouble finding kitchen help.
“So how are you keeping your places running?” Fox asked.
"We’ve limited hours at some of our restaurants,” Gruel responded - explaining that one of them is closed two days a week. "We've also limited hours . . . we're burning the candle on both ends."
In the old Soviet Union, there was a joke that went: We pretend to work and they pretend to pay us. Only in America, there's no longer any need to pretend you're working in order to get actually paid.
Soviet-style government in America created this problem. Because it is in the interests of Soviet-style government to make people desperate - and then dependent - on government.
But there is a cure for this sickness. It is not being administered by Dr. Fauci - or Joe Biden - but by men like South Carolina Governor Henry McMaster, who has decided to turn off the federal "supplemental" unemployment teat - in order to encourage people to get back to work.
And Florida Governor Ron DeSantis, who just announced that people currently on the dole in his state will soon be required to show proof they can't find a job in order to continue receiving it. As they used to be expected to do.
"Normally when you’re getting unemployment, the whole idea is that’stemporary," he said.
"You need to be looking for work (in order) to be able to get offunemployment," he added.
Unemployment isn't supposed to be a lifestyle, a kind of golden ticket to an endless buffet of other people's money. DeSantis says that the proof-of-work requirement was suspended during the first few months of the pandemic, but that the time has come for that temporary exception to end.
"I think it’s pretty clear now, we have an abundance of job openings."
Many of them at Chef Gruel's restaurants.
Apply within. Time to work for a living.
I'm hungry.
