I like Chris Hayes and I respect his work, but he’s wrong about why Washington DC doesn’t care about jobs. He makes good points in looking at the relatively low unemployment rate in the Washington area and among those with at least a bachelor’s degree. The recovery is proceeding nicely within the circles in which most capitol workers move. But that has next to nothing to do with why Washington DC doesn’t care about jobs.
They don’t care about jobs because the Republicans don’t believe the government should create jobs. Most of them actually believe that the government cannot create jobs. If the government hired four million people to scrape gum off sidewalks, the Republicans would convince themselves that the money needed to pay them could have been used more efficiently in the private sector to create four million better paying jobs. Actually, they don’t just think that could happen, they believe it will happen. If we fire those four million gum-scrapers and return their wages to the rich, the rich will create more than enough jobs to make up for it, and those jobs will be better.
They believe this, so there is no chance that they’ll spend money to employ people directly. They might consider hiring people indirectly by appropriating funds to their favored contractors, but they only like to do that when they have total control of the purse strings. Otherwise, some of the wrong people will get money.
So, the reason that Washington DC doesn’t care about jobs is that the Republicans have too much power.
The Democrats aren’t blameless, but they don’t like to waste time. After a few days, it gets really boring trying to reason with Republicans. Then you just figure out what you can muscle through and you go for that. The Democrats know that they can’t close the unemployment rate because anything expensive enough to work is just going to get voted down in the House or filibustered in the Senate. So, they move on. They focus on other things that they can make progress on rather than sitting around moping and feeling impotent.
That’s it. That’s the whole explanation. The unemployment rate could by 90% in Northern Virginia and it wouldn’t change the basic dynamics. The Republicans are ideologically incapable of using the government to alleviate unemployment and they have just enough power to make sure no one even tries to do that.
And just for a kicker, not that one is needed, they actually like high unemployment because it hurts the president and it keeps labor cheap.
