Speaker 1: So Republican Senator Rick Scott wants America to get back to work.
Now, it's a strange talking point to use when unemployment is as low as it's essentially been
for 50 years. So we're going to look at this video. And the important thing to think about
here is once you commit to certain talking points as the Republican Party has, you can't change them
based on what's going on. And we've seen this with debt and deficit. We've got to balance the budget.
Well, Republican presidents never do, so they just stop talking about it. When a Republican
is in office and blowing up the deficit. But they don't abandon the talking point. They just don't
mention it anymore. Now that there's a Democrat in the White House, they have to go to America,
has got to get back to work. We need people working and people are working. And we're
going to look at those numbers. But check out Rick Scott. When all you've got is a hammer, everything
looks like a nail or whatever you want to say. But the talking point is Republicans get people
to work. Democrats are lazy. And so when there's a Democratic president, people don't work. Doesn't
matter if it doesn't line up with the facts. Speaker 2: Here's what I believe.
We've got to get Americans back to work. If you're able bodied, you don't have young children to, you
know, incapacitated, dependent, get to work. Speaker 1: Right. Just go and stop being lazy.
If you're not handicapped, if you don't have a disability, if you don't have
a physical issue. I get I mean, maybe they would consider mental issues, too. I don't know. That's
touch and go with Republicans. They claim to care about mental health, but then they don't seem to.
You got to get to work because nobody's working these days. And it's part of the
culture and the economic policy of Biden. And then you look at the unemployment rate
and you see that the unemployment rate right now is essentially as low as it's been since
the early 1970s. You have to go. I mean, okay, you've had this brief period in 2019
and then you've got to go all the way back to the early 1970s to find a period during which
unemployment was this low. Now, I know that there are people going to hear me say that
and they'll say, But, David, the unemployment rate tells us nothing. The truth is in the labor
participation rate, remember, we've talked about this claim from the right for the last decade
and I've explained the labor participation rate many times before and I will do it again. Now,
the labor participation rate is a more complicated issue, and I'll tell you why in a moment.
But when you look at the labor participation rate, you'll find that it's right around 62%,
roughly where it was in 2015 as well. Now, why isn't the labor participation rate a really great
indicator for the health of the economy? Well, there's a couple of different things. Number one,
the size of our population keeps growing. So at almost any time period, you can accurately
say there are more people than ever working and there are more people than ever not working. So
what does that really tell us? But there's also a few important things to consider. Number one,
we are in the midst of a significant retiring phase for baby boomers. That takes people
out of the labor force. Is is it an indicator the economy is bad? No. In fact, you could argue it's
an indicator the economy is good when people can afford to retire. It signals that you have an okay
economy. The other thing about this is that when you look at the labor force participation rate,
if you have full time parents who aren't working by choice, that lowers the labor labor
participation rate. But that's a good thing when the economy gets worse. Some of those full time
parents say, hey, I can't afford not to work. I have to go and get a job. Labor participation rate
goes up, but not because the economy's good. It's actually because the economy is bad. And also, as
another reminder, if you're in college, undergrads in college, if you're just in school full time,
you count against the labor participation rate. But again, when there's a better economy,
18 to 22 year olds can afford to go to school full time instead of having to get a job to help
help their family, help their parents or whatever the case may be. So labor participation rate not a
good indicator. Back to the main point we have right now, significant levels of employment.
We have a labor participation rate that is normal. It's not particularly high
or particularly low. You have many companies looking to hire and yes, we have high inflation,
which I believe has peaked and is going to start coming down. Gas prices have already been coming
down for the last six weeks, etc. It is very hard to argue that this is a disastrous economy. Now
you can also talk about wages. Inflation adjusted wages are actually doing okay. Have there been if
you look at a 40 year period, stagnant wages, has productivity growth dramatically outpaced
inflation adjusted wages? Yes. And that's a bigger issue. That relates to technology and
corporate power in so many different things. But by the standards we use to look at wages.
We've seen some pretty okay wage increases. So while they have not kept up with productivity,
there is no doubt that that indicator also isn't the sign of this terrible economy. So Rick Scott
and other Republicans. There has never been a time. Even under Barack Obama during this
massive recovery from the 2829 recession, even then, when we started to see unemployment drop,
the stock market explode, consumer confidence go up, inflation very, very controlled.
Even then, they weren't willing to accept it. And as I've said before,
many of these things only have a little bit to do with the president anyway. But once you're
married to these talking points, you have to stick with them. And that's exactly what we are seeing