Largest National Debt Increase In U.S. History Occurred During Donald Trump's First Term

'I Did The Math, Sean': James Carville Hits Hannity With Searing Fact Check On Live TV

The national debt — under Trump’s first term in office — grew by $7.8 trillion, the largest four-year increase in history, The Washington Post found last year.

Coronavirus Is Not A Great Leveler

The Economic Impact Mythology Of Convention Centers

Milwaukee's Boondoggle Twofer
How Can Convention Centers Be So Dumb?
The Convention Center Shell Game
Convention Center Follies
It's A Race To The Bottom
Is It Time To Stop Building Convention Centers?
Case For Bigger Convention Hall Has Familiar Ring
The Realities Of Convention Centers As Economic Development Strategy
Debunking The Conventional Wisdom About Conventions
The Dubious Economics Of Convention Centers
Do We Really Need To Keep Building Convention Centers?
A Critical Review Of Convention Center Feasibility Studies
The Skeptical Study No One Ever Talks About
Convention Centers
Economic Impact Studies: Instruments For Political Shenanigans?

Christopher Columbus Was A Murderous Moron

The So-Called "Skills Gap" Is Complete Bullshit

Another "skills gap" crusader:

LaSalle Network CEO Says There's a Huge 'Skills Gap'

Such a good little soldier for the privileged.

Too bad reality doesn't comport with that tripe.

The Myth of the Skills Gap

The problem is, when we look closely at the data, this story doesn’t match the facts. What’s more, this view of the nation’s economic challenges distracts us from more productive ways of thinking about skills and economic growth while promoting unproductive hand-wringing and a blinkered focus on only the supply side of the labor market—that is, the workers.

A Recession-Era Economic Myth Goes Up In Smoke

Throughout the slow recovery, journalists from major papers made a cottage industry of finding CEOs complaining that their hiring searches were coming up empty. Conservative commentators chalked up high unemployment to a so-called “skills gap”: companies needed more qualified workers, they insisted, than were currently on offer. 

But something wasn’t right. If companies really needed qualified workers, why weren’t they raising wages to attract them? Or why weren’t they lowering their qualification standards or offering training to less experienced new hires? If companies really did have jobs that desperately required filling, they would have been working harder to fill them.

Don’t Blame A ‘Skills Gap’ For Lack Of Hiring In Manufacturing

This “skills mismatch” theory is a favorite of corporate executives and the think tanks they fund. But it is based on scant evidence. Individual companies may be struggling to fill specific jobs, but the data shows little sign of an industrywide shortage of skilled workers. In fact, it’s not clear that companies are really trying hard to fill many of these jobs at all.

Talk of a skills gap in the labor market is 'an incredible cop out'

But is there really a skills shortage? If so, why have median wages been stuck in a rut for so long? Why aren’t companies investing more in training and labor-saving equipment? Why aren’t they asking workers to work longer hours? It doesn’t add up, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research, a liberal think tank in Washington.

The persistent myth of the “skills gap”

Nobel Prize-winning economist Paul Krugman calls the skills gap a “zombie idea” that won’t go away despite being routinely debunked. The reason has less to do with ignorance than with power. After decades of rising inequality and an eroding labour share of income, the skills gap mythology downloads blame onto workers and costs onto government. Jim Stanford, writing in the pages of Academic Matters, puts it well: “According to this worldview, the biggest challenge facing our labour market is adjusting the attitudes, capabilities and mobility of jobless workers…The problem is with the unemployed.” The skills gap takes the onus off employers to pay decent wages and train workers, blaming labour market failings on workers instead.

For Further Reading:

The Mythological Skills Gap

The Zombie Skills Gap Meme That Won't Die

It's About Job Shortage, Not Skills Crisis
It's Not Structural Unemployment
Manufacturing
Structural Unemployment: The Data Doesn't Match
Varieties of Unemployment

Skills Shortage Sham

More Skills Gap Crap

Is There Really a Skills Gap?

The Skills Gap Is a Myth

Cowboys

"Getting pretty tired of these guys walking around in cowboy hats and cowboy boots. You ever see these jack-offs? Can’t we kill some of these motherfuckers? Walking around in a fucking cowboy hat. Grown men. It’s not even Halloween for christ-sakes. I say “hey Tex grow up and get yourself a wardrobe consistent with the century you’re living in”. Why do certain men feel the need to dress up as mythic figures? You don’t see anyone walking around in a pirate costume do you? When was the last guy you ran into who had on a viking outfit? Make-believe cowboys… the closest they ever got to a cow, is when they stopped to take a piss at an Arby’s." George Carlin