David Brooks Channels Mike Rowe While Dean Baker Takes the Dirty Job of Cleaning Up Their Pile of Crap

David Brooks goes all Mike Rowe with the BS about skills shortages in the US labor market:

It [weak job growth] probably has to do with a skills shortage, that as technology increases, skills have got to keep up and skills are just not keeping up...

It's a dirty job, but Dean Baker slaps Brooks upside the head with some basic economic facts:

If this claim were true it would mean that there are substantial segments of the labor market where we are seeing labor shortages. That would mean that workers in some occupations would be seeing rapidly rising wages. We should also see industries or occupations where the length of the average workweek is increasing rapidly. Employers would be trying to get the workers they have to put in more hours, since they can't find additional workers. In these industries/occupations we should also see a high ratio of job openings to unemployed workers. There are no major areas of the labor market where we see this evidence of labor shortages. In other words, Brooks is just making this up out of thin air.

Mike Rowe said he'd probably vote for Romney. This tells me that the Ford spokesman is likely a corporate shill. So it shouldn't be surprising to find out that his supposed "skills gap" is really a bunch of corporate bitching that they can't find people to do these jobs because they won't raise pay enough to actually attract the qualified applicants.

On Real Time, Rowe gave the example of a Caterpillar heavy equipment company in Las Vegas (probably Cashman, which doesn't post wages on it's job listings). He claims those jobs start at 40K a year, for operating heavy machinery. He says in a few short years you can make $120,000 a year. He's full of shit.

The U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reports the median wage for heavy equipment operators in the United States is $41,870, an hourly wage of $20.13 per hour, as of May 2012. The average nationwide for those who operate bulldozers, backhoes, cranes and road grading machinery is slightly higher than the median, at $46,270 per year, or $22.24 per hour.

So, here's the problem. He's spewing the right wing "skills gap" BS because this is how Republicans blame "lazy" and "uneducated" kids who don't want the dirty jobs, instead of the large corporations that refuse to follow the laws of supply and demand when it comes to labor.

Private fixed investment as a percentage of potential GDP. Via Wonkblog. 

And these people claim to be capitalists who believe in free markets... Free markets mean supply and demand rules apply. If you need more of a supply of skilled labor, and you're not getting them, then you need to pay more for it. Since, as Mr. Baker showed, there is no rise in wages for these kinds of jobs, and there is no increase in hours worked by those already employed in these jobs, then there is no shortage.

It's an elaborate Bullshit Mountain (™ Jon Stewart) constructed by our market-rigging financial elites designed to distract us from the real problems, which are lack of demand due to the housing bubble and Little Bush Depression, and lack of investment in infrastructure which would more than pay for itself by making us safer, more productive, and more competitive.

Borrowing costs are very low right now. Labor costs are low. Materials costs are low. Equipment is sitting idle. The markets are screaming at us to invest in infrastructure. What part of "buy low" don't these supposed capitalists get?

Republicans Care More about Beating Obama than They Do about Your Job

Ezra Klein likes to say that Mitch McConnell is the most honest man in Washington. In a recent post on bad debt ceiling arguments, Klein writes:

”I actually think it would be easier to pass a comprehensive plan,” he [McConnell] said. “Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill fixed Social Security in 1983. It’s lasted for a generation. Reagan carried 49 of 50 states the next year. They did it together. Reagan and O’Neill did tax reform in 1986, Bill Clinton and Republicans did welfare reform in 1996, and Bill Clinton and Republicans actually balanced the budget for a number of years in the late 1990s.” Aside from welfare reform, every single one of the deals McConnell mentions exchanged spending cuts for tax increases — the very deal McConnell has ruled out in this case.

Besides the obvious smug dishonesty of the turtle-necked Senate minority leader, there's a nugget there that reveals the bigger truth, which is that McConnell doesn't care what happens to the US economy as long as a Republican has a shot at beating Obama in 2012. To do that, Republicans have concluded, we will need another recession or worse.

Remember that McConnell said, "the single most important thing we want to achieve is for President Obama to be a one-term president." McConnell doesn't want the Republican priority to be to help people get jobs, or preserve the jobs we have, or help people keep their homes, or get us off the oil teat. He wants to beat Obama. Most important thing.

So, if you're wondering if we'll see a "comprehensive plan" come out of the debt ceiling hostage situation, go back to the first quote: "Ronald Reagan and Tip O’Neill fixed Social Security in 1983. It’s lasted for a generation. Reagan carried 49 of 50 states the next year." So, if the Republicans and Democrats reached some kind of "comprehensive plan," then, McConnell's reading of history suggests that Obama would win next year by a landslide. And he's already made it clear that the Republicans don't want that. Ergo, no comprehensive plan.

It's really quite simple. Republicans represent rich people. Rich people are richer now than they've ever been. They can survive another recession or even depression. They live in gated communities with private security, schools, etc. They really don't care about the rest of us. In my old labor union, we had a phrase to describe these greedy people: "I got mine. Fuck you."

And fuck us they will. Meanwhile some poor people, minorities, union members, and other folks who will be getting fucked still vote Republican because they believe the lies: Obama is coming for their guns, even rape and incest victims should be forced to give birth, we should all practice Biblical marriage, or some other theocratic bullshit. Bigots will vote for the Confederate Party, even it means the loss of their job and their home.

It's the infrastructure, stupid (or: Republicans kill jobs, again)

I hardly ever read Republican columnists, but this bit by Douthat caught my eye:

While the Bush administration overspent, it wasn’t spending and deficits that turned the country against conservative domestic policy between 2004 and 2008. It was the fact that the Republican majority seemed to have no answers to Middle America’s economic struggles, and no appetite for the structural reforms required to keep the United States competitive.

Put that in the context of new Republican leaders saying no to infrastructure, and you get yourself a nice replay of idiot Republicans once again unable to lead. They say jobs are the most important thing, but they think they will magically appear without actually doing anything to create them. There is no structural reform more important than infrastructure (the cost of which is really cheap right now).

And people like Douthat keep voting for Republicans anyway.

How many bridges will collapse before we hire some people to fix them?