I was watching “Morning Joe” on MSNBC and they had a writer on named Thomas Ricks and I was impressed by his immediate pushback to the idea that “NOBODY WANTS TO WORK ANYMORE” – transcription of relevant part of the conversation is below. Thomas Ricks is my new favorite person. And basically fuck Joe Scarborough.
Link to vid: https://youtu.be/FsGk3BTWiV0?t=439
Joe: “We have unemployment at record lows, we've had record job growth over the past year and a half. You've got family restaurants that are only half open because they can't get people uhh to come work for them. You've got umm, you you you've got service industry people, entrepeneurs, uhh small business owners. All, uh, suffering economically because they could hire more people and people are just choosing not to work. So, I, I've just gotta say that I .. I.. ahh, I, uh”
Thomas Ricks, interrupting: “I totally disagree with that. People are choosing not be paid these lousy wages. Um, If you offered them 25 or 35 dollars per hour, people would come out and work. But billionaires are holding on to too much cash in American society. They are not allowing the wealth to be spread and they've I think bought the political system. They now, we, I think we live in oligarchy now that umm is not allowing wealth to spread across society. Umm, if millionaires paid their fair share of taxes, we'd have a very different society.”
Joe: “Well we agree, we agree on that point. But, uh, I disagree with you that a family hardware store in Maine can pay 35 dollars an hour to somebody working in their store. I, I disagree that a family restaurant uh that can't stay open even in in high season uhh in Mai- from Maine to Florida uhh can't pay 35 dollars uhh for for uhh uh for workers to keep their restaurant all the way open. So, umm I'm I'm just saying it's – you, we have record low unemployment so I uh and I agree with you that we are in large part an oligarchy, I talked about it yesterday that billionaires and multinational corporations are getting a free ride. At the same time, uhh our economic, our current economic status as a country I don't think justifies the deep social unrest that we're seeing. I think that may come uhh from from uhh things such as demographic changes in America.”
Thomas Ricks: “Well a good chunk of America, though, is being left behind by this thriving economy. That's a real problem. Uhh, we are not doing a whole lot for the bottom half of the society in economic terms. We could do a lot more, uhh, we really stand out like a sore thumb among industrialized countries, umm, in the way we have a for-profit medical system, in the way we burden university students with debt. Umm, that is not the way the european societies run. My son lives in Barcelona; when he walks out of his door and looks, he doesn't see a single person worried about retirement, worried about healthcare or worried about a college education. Because those are things that the state takes care of for people.”
Joe: “Mehh, well, obviously not our system, uhh, but that's uhh that's something that you and Eddie can debate against me and somebody else on another day.”