The Young Turks' Cenk Uygur let Mr. Trickle-Down Economics Jeb (!) have it for his nonsense claiming that Americans aren't working hard enough, and that the cure for our economic problems is that everyone just needs to put in a few more hours to get us to four percent growth.
Jeb Bush Thinks You Don’t Work Hard Enough:
Jeb Bush has an interesting idea on how to boost economic growth: people should just work longer hours. Despite the fact that US employees work on average 47 hours per week, more than most of the industrialized world, Jeb Bush thinks Americans have it too easy. He later tried to backpedal, saying he meant part-time workers, but not very convincingly. TYT host Cenk Uygur breaks it down.
Here's more from Raw Story: Young Turks’ Cenk Uygur blasts Jeb Bush: ‘Your family helped with the greatest robbery in history!’:
On Thursday, Cenk Uygur of The Young Turks TV tore into former Florida Gov. Jeb Bush (R)’s contention to the editorial board of the Manchester, NH Union-Leader newspaper that the key to rescuing the American economy is for workers to put in “longer hours.”
“(W)e have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours,” Bush said.
“He’s incorrect on so many different levels,” Uygur said.
Half of U.S. full time workers reported working more than 40 hours per week on average in 2014, explained Uygur.
“So it’s not like we’re not working enough,” he said. “Half of us are working more than 40 hours.”
In fact, U.S. employees work longer hours and take fewer vacations than workers in any other industrialized nation.
The worst thing about these statements from Bush, though, Uygur said, is that the former governor comes from an extremely privileged background, so what does he know about the fortitude and determination of the average U.S. worker?
“This is Jeb Bush, who’s been handed everything on a silver platter because of his name,” Uygur said, so the candidate can “spare me about how we need to work harder.”
He went on to point out that worker productivity in the U.S. has risen steadily since 1950 in a line that rises all the way to the present. Wages, however, stopped tracking alongside the productivity line around 1978 to 1980.
“Oh, by the way, who was the vice president in 1980?” Uygur asked. “Oh, right, George H. W. Bush.”
At that point in history, wages “flatlined,” said Uygur, and they’ve stayed there, “because Republican policy positions, because of the onslaught of money in politics changed so that the people at the top, the CEOs got to take all that money home.”
“They did an unbelievable redistribution of wealth,” he explained.
Uygar used the same chart as Hillary Clinton did when she got the better of Bush on Twitter this week to make his point.
Bush's comment about Americans not working hard enough when the opposite is true ought to be enough to sink his campaign, and I'll just leave us with Charlie Pierce's take on why::
It has been three generations since any member of the extended Bush clan of Kennebunkport has done any actual physical labor so, if we're being charitable, we can assume that Jeb (!) wouldn't recognize real work if you handed him a shovel and pointed him toward a ditch. Nonetheless, he would like you to know that you are not working as hard as you should work if you want to be as successful as, well, him.
"My aspiration for the country and I believe we can achieve it, is 4 percent growth as far as the eye can see. Which means we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows. It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families. That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in."
Holy Jesus H. Christ on a furlough, there's your "47 percent" moment for this cycle. What is it with this guy and with that other Florida Man, Marco Rubio? Is the sun so bright that neither of them sees the rakes until it's too late? Every legitimate survey demonstrates that Americans are working longer hours for wages that pretty much have remained flat for 30 years while most of the country's wealth was being shoved up to that level of the economy wherein reside Jeb (!) and his family of entitled layabouts. This is pure Romneyism in action. This one statement should kill his campaign. It should be hung around his neck like a dead raccoon until the last ballot of the 2016 election is cast. If it's not, it's only because some people will do anything to keep this guy viable because he allegedly is more "serious" than many of the other presidential candidates. Those people are wrong.
