“Unemployment benefits are not meant to provide replacement wages,” Johnson insisted. “That was provided during COVID when it was nobody’s fault that they were losing their job or they were being encouraged to stay home so they wouldn’t spread the disease.”
To the surprise of everyone, the guy interviewing him pushed back. I know right? He point out how low wages and high costs means there’s basically a net 0 in women working instead of taking care of their own kids.
“What about the argument that this situation is kind of shining a light on some of the out-of-control costs,” Bayatpour said. “The increase in costs that wages haven’t kept up with for folks like – things like childcare. A lot of women are choosing not to go back into the workforce right now because at the end of the day it’s a complete wash. Their wages would simply cover the cost of having to pay for childcare that they don’t have to pay for now.”
So naturally the sitting Congressman paid hundreds of thousands a year in your tax dollars and mine starts reeing about paying the plebs for their labor, starts crying about the poor destitute 1%ers, and about ~ Free Markets ~ crap.
“Businesses pay what wages they can afford based on the competitive situation, whether it’s in a restaurant, whether it’s in manufacturing, where they’re competing against foreign manufacturers,” the senator said. “I just have greater faith in the marketplace setting appropriate wage rates.”
“But there’s no doubt about it, wage rates are now being bid up because there is a labor shortage and if you’re a worker that’s a good thing,” he added.
Johnson then spoke about the “downside” of higher wages.
“Commodities go up and down and you can have a temporary increase in prices that are coming back down, whether it’s gas prices or lumber prices,” he explained. “Increase in wage rates ratchet up and that creates permanent inflation so you may feel good about getting a 5 or 6 or 7% raise but if general inflation is 6, 7, or 8%, that increase is just completely wiped out. That’s what the marketplace does.”
Finally the big boy caps it off by being so proud he gets to use a new word he heard before!
“I am highly concerned that what we’re looking at right now is a witch’s brew with all the ingredients for stagflation,” Johnson concluded.
As I said before, there’s something wrong with the fact that we live in a system where it pays more to not work than it does to work. And I’ll further that thought by saying there’s something more wrong about the solution to that being to make it less profitable to not work instead of working instead of the other way around.
