Friday’s unexpectedly low jobs report for April — showing that only 266,000 jobs were created, far less than estimates that ranged up to a million — has added fuel to an ongoing Republican attack on the Biden administration’s large-scale stimulus spending. Even before these latest figures were released, GOP politicians at both the state and federal levels had been arguing that rather than helping pull the economy out of its coronavirus-related slump, stimulus checks and enhanced unemployment benefits have actually driven the economy into an overheated inflationary tizzy, while persuading millions of Americans to stay home rather than look for jobs; the latter, say Republicans, has led to a “worker shortage” in which Americans just plain refuse to work because they make more money getting government checks.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration and other Democrats argue that there’s simply no evidence for either an overheating economy or the phenomenon of millions of people deciding to retire early because they’re receiving an extra $300 week in unemployment benefits. Democrats show no signs of suddenly reversing the spending they’ve authorized, but in several GOP-controlled states, governors and legislators are moving to cut off state disbursements of the federally-funded unemployment benefits; Arkansas, Montana, South Carolina, and Indiana are implementing or considering such a move, based on the premise that unemployment benefits are simply too generous and keeping Americans from taking available jobs.
I may surprise you by saying that the Republican position that generous unemployment benefits could conceivably undermine employment growth contains an element of plausibility. If every American were receiving $10,000 a month, many people would likely make the rational calculation that it makes more sense to stay home than work. But that’s hardly where we are. The idea that an additional $300 a week — payments that, importantly, people know will be going away in the foreseeable future — is keeping most unemployed from looking for jobs or thinking about their economic futures sounds absurd on its face, and indeed, appears to be refuted by the evidence. Crucially, GOP politicos appear to be relying on anecdotes, particularly from the business community, to bolster their case, rather than actual facts. Typical is Senate minority leader Mitch McConnell, who said last week that, “We have flooded the zone with checks that I’m sure everybody loves to get, and also enhanced unemployment. And what I hear from business people, hospitals, educators, everybody across the state all week is, regretfully, it’s actually more lucrative for many Kentuckians and Americans to not work than work.”
Rather than being an abstruse economic argument, this conflict about how best to construct an economic recovery highlights crucial differences of political philosophy between the two parties. Republican opposition to both the latest round of government stimulus checks and decent unemployment benefits traces back to a pair of fundamental beliefs: that ordinary Americans are untrustworthy layabouts who can’t be trusted to do an honest day’s labor if given half a chance, and that the business community both requires and deserves a pool of powerless workers who have no choice but to accept the lowest wages businesses wish to pay.
This contempt for the work ethic of the average American has a long history, and in recent times made memorable appearances in former Speaker Paul Ryan’s talk of the country being divided between “makers” and “takers,” as well as in Mitt Romney’s assertion as the 2012 GOP presidential candidate that nearly 50% of Americans expected the government to pay their way. This slur is in fact the prerequisite to the second fundamental pillar of Republicanism I noted — that business find at its disposal a populace willing to take whatever jobs at whatever low wages business choose to offer. Painting a picture of Americans as fundamentally lazy and dishonest helps justify paying them subpar wages, and promulgating a lie that Americans won’t go back to work if government helps them when they’re out of a job helps maintain a steady supply of desperate Americans forced to accept whatever low-pay work is available.
Not only is there plentiful evidence that the recent unemployment benefits in particular have effectively helped unemployed Americans stay above water in their hour of need, there is also evidence that concerns like a lack of child care — not worker laziness — may be holding back job growth. In support of the latter point, this Washington Post analysis notes that all the job gains in April were among men, not women, suggesting the strong role of child-care issues. But this same Post article makes a larger point: that what we may be witnessing in the unexpectedly low April jobs numbers is a side effect of an enormous re-evaluation of work going on among millions of Americans. This re-evaluation encompasses not just those who’ve determined they need to secure child care before they return to the workplace, but also those who no longer want to work grocery and other retail jobs that, among other things, exposed them to the coronavirus and abusive customers alike. In other words, many Americans may be taking some time to figure out how best to prosper economically than grab the first low-wage job that comes along. And as Paul Waldman notes, “If I’m an unemployed engineer, it’s better for me and the whole economy if I wait and get an engineering job rather than work at Arby’s.”
From this perspective, those additional unemployment benefits are giving some unemployed citizens a little breathing room to figure out what employment will make them not only wealthier, but healthier and happier. This, I would argue, is at the heart of what’s really enraging all those Republicans who are so eager to cut off unemployment benefits. The pro-worker policies enacted by the Biden administration and a Democratic Congress are a direct attack on core Republican principles that see American workers as a population that must be kept desperate and hungry for whatever low-wage work American businesses deign to throw their way. In practical, concrete terms, Republicans must deny the dual possibilities that perhaps unemployed Americans aren’t rushing to take low-paid, exploitative jobs because those jobs are in fact low-paid and exploitative, and that businesses must play their part by raising wages to attractive levels.
In contrast with the deep GOP philosophy that American workers cannot be trusted and that business is entitled to a fearful, eager-to-please labor force, the Democrats are exhibiting a deeper faith in ordinary Americans’ ability to make informed choices for themselves and to respond in good faith to the receipt of unemployment benefits. The GOP views unemployed workers solely as workers; the Democrats view those unemployed workers as citizens of the United States, rather than simply as economic units to be manipulated for maximum gain.
The reflexive way in which Republicans are trying to turn the reality of an economy hobbled by the coronavirus into a story about feckless American workers is an important reminder that for all the talk of how the party has manacled itself to Trump and his “populism,” the GOP’s fundamental identity as a party that favors the power of corporations over working people remains unchanged. But as a means of exposing the hollowness of the Republican Party’s supposed pro-worker stance, it is hard to think of a better example than when the GOP responds to a disappointing jobs report, and an uptick in the unemployment rate, by declaring that now is the time to cut unemployment benefits to all those free-loading, jobless Americans out there. This is no different than the GOP outright blaming unemployed workers for their own lack of jobs.