Someone on Facebook wanted to know what Biden — or any sitting president — has to do with the employment rate.
The media doesn’t explain this very well, but it’s really pretty simple.
Biden (or any other president) hires them.
It’s just a tiny bit more complicated than that. Biden pushes for government projects and programs, Congress approves them through the federal budget process, and then the “deep state” — the federal bureaucracy — distributes that money to businesses that qualify for the funds.
All presidents do this, and they do this every year. They’ve been doing this since the mid-1800’s.
What makes Biden different is which jobs he is hiring for.
Biden is supporting “losing” jobs in the Game of Capitalism, meaning jobs that Capitalism doesn’t want to dirty its hands with, because they are less-profitable than other jobs. Here are some examples:
highway repair
bridge repair
electrical grid repair
healthcare
eldercare
Most of these fall into the economic category of “second best,” meaning that profits come in second to the value of the work itself. In many cases, the work isn’t profitable at all, like eldercare, and under Capitalism, cannot be justified. An efficient Capitalist solution to old people is Soylent Green.1
A successful Capitalist business minimizes costs (employees, wages, materials) and maximizes income. It tends toward outsourcing labor when possible, paying good wages only to employees who have paid for their own education (a college degree) and are absolutely necessary to the business, while minimizing the number of paid employees; they offer “flex time” that lets you freely take time off for your children’s school plays, but compensate with brutal schedules and the expectation of substantial unpaid overtime and burnout. Pay is geared to profits, not inflation. The workforce is subject to arbitrary layoffs. All of the work itself is geared toward profit, and it absolutely doesn’t matter whether the product is a life-saving medication, or My Pillow (i.e. pure marketing markup). Quality matters only insofar as it affects profits.
Profits are distributed through “share prices” in stock. Stocks are a game for the rich. I’m old enough to have seen three major stock crashes, in 2001, 2008, and 2016. I don’t want to try to explain any of these — I can’t — but after losing half my tech-invested funds in the 2001 tech bubble collapse, which also took out the entire brokerage firm managing my money, I’ve come to the sensible conclusion that it’s a form of gambling, and to play that game, you need a big stake, a play limit, and a devil-may-care-but-I-don’t attitude. It’s really a game for the rich, and they do not play it to share the wealth.
The second-best businesses are usually low-profit, and are often not profitable at all. In particular, the “free” elements of society, like public roads, are things that people will not pay for.
But the real magic of these businesses is that many of them do not require a prior college education, provide on-the-job training, secure employment, collective bargaining for wages and work conditions, and support long, steady employment. Unlike the rich, who tend to re-invest their money, ordinary people tend to spend their money, which supports local businesses and activities. Those employees also spend their money.
This is called the “virtuous cycle” of money.
Why prices are so high is a different story. I’ll only say that it isn’t inflation.
But that’s a subject for another time.
Soylent Green is a 1973 film based on the 1966 novel Make Room! Make Room! by Harry Harrison.