By Rick Manning
The MSN.com headline reads, “Jobless rate dips to 7.6 percent,” and the casual observer thinks about how the economy must really be improving even as they see the contradictions of this thought all around them.
Here is the inescapable truth revealed by a cursory glance at the actual March unemployment report. Our nation’s workforce has given up.
The numbers are stark. 663,000 Americans dropped out of the workforce last month. 206,000 fewer Americans were employed. 290,000 more Americans were unemployed.
And because more people dropped out than lost their jobs, and in the world of math, this makes the overall rate of unemployment lower.
The headline writers should be sued for malpractice.
The lie of the Obama economy has never been more starkly revealed than on April 5, yet very few will know it either due to abject media laziness or an insidious attempt to cover it up.
The crashing of workforce participation rates to levels not seen since the Jimmy Carter economy of 1979 is a story of the dangers and failings of Obama’s government dependency state.
When a record number of Americans are on food stamps, the Obama economy is not working.
When the poverty level in America has reached levels not seen since the so-called War on Poverty began in the 1960s, the Obama economy is not working.
And when since the recession “ended” in mid-2009, the number of people who have applied for disability benefits is double the job growth figure, something is seriously wrong with the Obama economy.
Yet, these are not discussions that America is having, deluded by headlines that bear little to no resemblance to real life.
America has fought a fifty year war on poverty, and America lost.
But worse, America is now shackled with a dependency normalization where any former stigma has been completely eliminated from being on government assistance.
This normalization is best personified in the most famous viral video of the 2012 presidential election where an enthusiastic Obama supporter urged everyone to vote for Obama and get their free Obamaphone.
Government largesse is no longer hidden behind the ideal of helping those in need, and instead has become nothing but naked vote buying.
Yet, somehow the failed path of government dependency marches on undeterred by the failure to lift up the least of these, while dragging down those who once aspired to lives of independence.
America’s dependency system convinces the people that their personal survival depends upon the government, not on their own initiative.
In March 2013, the bitter fruit of government dependency policies continue as 663,000 people voted with their feet against the failed Obama government dependency state by leaving the workforce.
And yet somehow the first headlines coming out of the unemployment report initially declared the unemployment rate down without bothering to notice why.
Rick Manning (@rmanning957) is the Vice President of Public Policy and Communications for Americans for Limited Government.
