{"id":1736,"date":"2004-05-10T12:25:14","date_gmt":"2004-05-10T17:25:14","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thecarpetbaggerreport.com\/archives\/1736.html"},"modified":"2004-05-10T12:25:14","modified_gmt":"2004-05-10T17:25:14","slug":"applying-the-soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations-to-bushs-employment-numbers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/applying-the-soft-bigotry-of-low-expectations-to-bushs-employment-numbers\/","title":{"rendered":"Applying the ‘soft bigotry of low expectations’ to Bush’s employment numbers"},"content":{"rendered":"

Bush has always been fond of his “soft bigotry of low expectations” line. He uses it in a variety of contexts, but the point is always the same: America shouldn’t take pride in weak success or barely surpassing failure. It’s insulting, he argues, to expect little and applaud when we get it.<\/p>\n

I kept thinking about the phrase when reading about the unemployment figures for April that were released late last week. Bush may have been excited about the results, but I think he’s reveling in the “soft bigotry of low expectations.”<\/p>\n

The U.S. economy added 288,000 new jobs in April. To be sure, I’m thankful for every one of them. But while many described the job growth in sterling terms (ABC News referred to the numbers as “boffo,” whatever that means), let’s not forget that this relatively strong month still fell short of the numbers Bush promised when his third major tax cut for the wealthy became law.<\/p>\n

As the fine folks at the Economic Policy Institute noted<\/a>, Bush promised the nation that his tax policies would produce robust job growth. Fortunately, the White House was pretty specific about it: 306,000 new jobs each month, starting in July 2003, for a total of 5.5 million jobs by the end of 2004.<\/p>\n

So Congress passed his tax cuts plans (all three of them). How have Bush’s promises matched up to America’s reality? Not very well.
\n
\nThe results were supposed to start in July 2003 and remain consistent throughout the year. So far, the economy has actually created as many jobs as Bush promised once — in March 2004. That’s one month out of 10. Even April’s relatively strong numbers — touted by the White House as proof of Bush’s inerrant wisdom — failed to meet the White House’s own projections.<\/p>\n

Don’t get me wrong; I’m genuinely pleased to see some job growth in this country. I don’t root against the unemployed. Gaining 288,000 new jobs is a lot better than, say, losing 288,000 jobs, which was a common occurrence for several months after July 2003.<\/p>\n

That said, if we follow Bush’s advice about expectations and hold him to his own standards, we shouldn’t be satisfied with an economy that is still underperforming. Bush said we’d see 5.5 million new jobs by the end of the year. I have a strong hunch we won’t meet, or even come close to, his goal.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Bush has always been fond of his “soft bigotry of low expectations” line. He uses it in a variety of contexts, but the point is always the same: America shouldn’t take pride in weak success or barely surpassing failure. It’s insulting, he argues, to expect little and applaud when we get it. I kept thinking […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[617],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1736","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-general"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1736"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1736\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1736"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1736"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stevebenen.com\/thecarpetbaggerreport\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1736"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}