When it comes to the economy, well, what can I say? I got nothing. I can read, though. Economists say things about economic things that I can read. That includes last week’s jobs report. Here’s what Justin Wolfers, University of Michigan professor of economics, said about it:

These revisions suggest payrolls growth has been quite a bit stronger than we realized throughout 2022 and the economy was really motoring along. This is a final nail in the coffin of all the 2022 recessionistas. When average job growth is this high, we call it a BOOM (His emphasis).

Wolfers tweeted this alongside a huge table of numbers. So many numbers. I don’t know what they mean. Yanno, I’m no economist. But if someone like Justin Wolfers, who knows what he’s talking about, says the economy is booming, well, who am I to say he’s wrong? BOOM.

Non-farm payrolls added a cracking 517,000 jobs in January, well above market expectations of more than 190,000. This is a breathtaking number. That spike in stories about layoffs? It was about a small unrepresentative slice of the economy. Real America is still getting back to work (My italics).

If you’re like me, and you can read about economics, but don’t know much about economics, which makes us normal people, this boom news is, well, news. Why aren’t newspeople talking about it?

Instead it’s recession!

Recession!

RECESSION!

If you’re like me, and you can read about economics, but don’t know much about economics, which makes us normal people, this boom news is, well, news. Why aren’t newspeople talking about it?

Why are they talking about recession when the economy is booming, has been booming and will be booming if the likes of Economics Professor Justin Wolfers are right, and why would they be wrong, is what I’m saying, given that they know what they’re talking about?

I do know something about news.

The owners of the country’s most lucrative media properties have more in common with the beneficiaries of the status quo than they have in common with you and me and everyone we know on account of their being among those who benefit from the status quo. 

They dislike inflation.

It makes their planetary fortunes worth less. It makes the wages that they pay normal people more expensive, which makes their planetary fortunes worth less. Inflation is an economic force, according to the economists who say things about economic things, which I can read, that threatens, if left unaddressed, to turn the status quo upside down.

And that just won’t do.

---

---

So the newspeople, whose salaries are proportional to the levels of entitlement emotionally experienced by the owners of the country’s most lucrative media properties, spend a lot of time talking about prices prices, not wages wages, because it’s better for the beneficiaries of the status quo to maximize the rising cost of eggs ($9 a dozen!) and minimize the rising cost of labor: ie, normal people getting paid more.

If normal people understood that the price of eggs ($9 a dozen!) is going up along with the price of labor, that could mean bad things for the beneficiaries of the status quo, because normal people might see that the government spending that led to the creation of more jobs with better wages is oh-so-worth it, and therefore, maybe, they might doubt what the beneficiaries of the status quo have been saying for years, which is that government spending leads to inflation, which leads to recessions, which leads to normal people losing jobs.

Normal people might start associating government spending with boom times, which is what’s happening now, and demand more of it, instead of what they’ve been doing, which is associating government spending with high inflation, energy shocks, communism and so on. 

And that just won’t do.

---

---

The beneficiaries of the status quo became beneficiaries of the status quo when normal (white) people decided to believe what they said. The decision to believe what they were told effectively ended the period in American history in which the government helped the people. The decision to believe what they were told effectively began the current period in which the “government is the problem.” If normal (white) people change their minds about what the beneficiaries of the status quo have been telling them for four decades, what happens then?

Better not to find out and maximum pain at the pump.

And minimize hourly wages bumped.

It’s not working, though.

The economy keeps adding jobs, increasing the price of labor. So some of the beneficiaries of the status quo have had to spell out what they want with more precision and urgency. The manager of the world’s largest hedge fund, for instance, said recently that to push down prices we must push down labor. According to Bloomberg News, Bob Prince said “more layoffs are needed to tackle inflation.”

No.

Not when the government is on the people’s side.

---