Jeb, Just Another Out-of-Touch Bush

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush

Republican presidential candidate Jeb Bush believes he has the answer to growing the U.S. economy. 

On Wednesday, Jeb Bush spoke with the editorial board of the New Hampshire Union Leader and said that, in order to grow our economy, "...We have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows.  It means that people need to work longer hours, and through their productivity, gain more income for their families.  That's the only way we're going to get out of this rut that we're in."

Cenk Uygur, one of the hosts of the on-line political and social commentary program The Young Turks (TYT) used his program time to blast Mr. Jeb's out of touch remark.

"He's incorrect on so many different levels... It's not like we're not working enough.  Half of us are working more than 40 hours."

Statistics show that American workers put in longer hours and take fewer and shorter vacations than workers in any other industrialized country.

Mr. Uygur continued, "This is Jeb Bush, who's been handed everything on a silver platter because of his name, (so he can) spare me about how we need to work harder."

Mr. Uygur pointed out that U.S. productivity has risen steadily for 65 years beginning in 1950; but wages stopped keeping pace around 1980--when Jeb's daddy George H.W. Bush was serving as the country's vice president,

Wages have "flatlined because Republican policy positions, because of the onslaught of money in politics changed so that the people on the top, the CEOs got to take all that money home. They did an unbelievable redistribution of wealth."

He ended by speaking directly to Jeb: "Your family helped with the greatest robbery in history!"

what eye thynk:  One of those stupid things my mind seems to store for no apparent or practical reason is a news report of then-President Bush the First shopping at a grocery store somewhere in the Midwest.

It was during his campaign for a second term in Washington and his campaign staff must have decided that a photo-op of H.W. picking up a few groceries would demonstrate how in touch the president was with every day Americans.  It didn't work out quite as his staff had planned.  Instead, the Bush presidential patriarch made a complete fool of himself by being totally and long-windedly amazed at the electronic scanner at the check-out.

The first UPC reader was used in a grocery store in Troy, Ohio in 1974--twenty years earlier.  A man who had never seen a, by that time, ubiquitous UPC bar code reader was not a man who could claim to do his own shopping--ever. 

Just because:  The first item scanned was a pack of Wrigley's chewing gum. (Why do I remember these things?)

The point of that story is simply to illustrate that Jeb is another out of touch, rich, chip off the Bush block.  Another wealthy right-wing politician who infers that the only thing holding American back is rampant laziness in our poor and middle classes.

You want to talk about working "longer hours," Jeb?  Would sixty hours/week be enough?  Sixty hours/week at the federal minimum wage of $7.25 would result in a yearly income of $22,620.  That is two thousand dollars BELOW the federal poverty level threshold for a family of four.

If you really want to lift American "out of this rut we're in"--a rut created by your big brother, Bush the Second, in case you forgot--here's an idea:  How about, instead of asking the little guy to work more, you ask your wealthy cronies to take less?