Happiness is a very pretty thing to feel, but very dry to talk about.
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Jeremy Bentham
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Axis in Africa
On May 12, 1943, Axis forces in North Africa surrendered.
“Now Hiring” signs are up everywhere, especially on the windows of restaurants and other retail businesses.
But those signs aren’t disappearing.
Lots of jobs are left open.
No takers.
Week after week.
The job recovery that President Joseph Robinette Biden Jr. says he has placed his fabled “laser-like focus” upon, has been disappointing, to use the words of Washington Post columnist Catherine Rampell.
Oops, make that “extremely disappointing.”
“Economists and analysts had been expecting around a million jobs to be added on net in April,” Rampell wrote last week, “given the rising share of vaccinated Americans and relaxation of restrictions on business. Instead, employers created a measly 266,000 positions, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported Friday. Job growth for March was revised downward, too.”
This didn’t come out of nowhere, as another Washington Post columnist made clear a few weeks ago. “Many employers, especially restaurants and small retail businesses, are having a hard time finding workers,” explained Henry Olsen. “This is likely the result of trends in covid-19 vaccinations and the generous unemployment benefits that were expanded due to the pandemic.”
Normally when talking about employment and unemployment, we are tempted to put on our economist caps and talk about supply and demand, marginal productivity, monetary policy, etc. But most commentators seem to be honing in on the ultra-obvious: pay people to stay home, they tend to stay home.
Indeed, thinking of the generous unemployment benefits which the U.S. Congress has bestowed upon the country as “stimulus,” we should realize that paying people to stay at home is like hiring them for the cushiest job imaginable. No worker shortage, as many suggest, but malinvestment in the wrong “jobs.”
And thus the opposite of “stimulus.”
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Herbert Spencer
The tyranny of Mrs. Grundy is worse than any other tyranny we suffer under.
Herbert Spencer, “On Manners and Fashion,” The Westminster Review (April 1854), as reprinted in Essays: Scientific, Political and Speculative, Vol. III (D. Appleton, 1891).
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Union, disunion
On May 11, 1858, Minnesota was admitted as the 32nd U.S. State.
Nine years later, to the day, the Grand Duchy of Luxembourg’s independence and neutrality were affirmed in the Second Treaty of London.
Journalist Tom Lemons may be jailed up to twenty years for investigating the Dawn Center, a shelter for victims of domestic violence in Hernando County, Florida.
Lemons talked to former employees and to women who sought help there. He learned about theft of donations, filthy conditions, and a chronically lawless atmosphere.
Now he is on trial for what he says are trumped-up charges designed to stop him from telling the tale. Lemons details his tribulations in his book Victim Shopping 101: The truth doesn’t always set you free.
The alleged cover-up may not be limited to the county sheriff’s office and county politicians. The Florida legislature has passed a law making it illegal to identify women’s shelters.
According to a recent press release by State Senator Ileana Garcia, “Senate Bill 70 makes it a first degree misdemeanor, or a felony upon a second or subsequent conviction [to maliciously disclose] any descriptive information or image that may identify the location of a certified domestic violence center.”
So . . . arrest the Internet?
As Lemons tells PJ Media’s Megan Fox, the shelter “promotes their services and fundraising events all the time on social media.” The point of the law, he believes, is only to stop him from distributing his documentary about the shelter, Behind the Gate, which the statute would outlaw.
Lemons’ April 28 interview is on YouTube.
Fox urges Florida Governor Ron DeSantis to do something to counter this travesty of justice. Vetoing SB 70 would be a start.
This is Common Sense. I’m Paul Jacob.
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Ortega y Gasset
An idea is a putting truth in checkmate. Whoever wishes to have ideas must first prepare himself to desire truth and to accept the rules of the game imposed by it. It is no use speaking of ideas when there is no acceptance of a higher authority to regulate them, a series of standards to which it is possible to appeal in a discussion.
José Ortega y Gasset, The Revolt of the Masses (1929), Chap. VIII: “The Masses Intervene In Everything, And Why Their Intervention Is Solely By Violence.”
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Victoria Woodhull
On May 10, 1872, Victoria Woodhull became the first woman nominated for President of the United States.
In a landmark Supreme Court decision on May 10, 1893, the tomato was ruled a vegetable, not a fruit.
Paul Jacob’s ongoing coverage of our fantasy-thriller, American politics:
This Week in Common Sense, May 9, 2021.
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John Brown
On May 9, 1800, abolitionist revolutionary (and, technically, insurrectionist, perhaps even terrorist) John Brown was born.
In 1883 on this date, Spanish philosopher José Ortega y Gasset was born.