We've Met the Doofus. And He is Jeb

IT goes without saying that it's probably not good politics to say your plan to move the country forward is that everyone needs to work longer hours. It approaches 47% level toxicity. Even more damning is that it makes zero sense in policy terms. Indeed, Jeb's 'work harder' prescription provides harrowing look at the level of derp that can be produced when you take a guy who isn't all that bright and push him to the head of the national leadership line without ever having put in an honest day's work or support himself in his life.

Let's look at what Bush said. In order to get to 4% economic growth forever, people need to work longer hours.

As our piece here notes, American workers already log dramatically more hours a week than they did a generation ago. They also work more hours a week than workers in any other industrialized economy. It's sort of a judgment call whether this is a good thing or a bad thing. But unless American workers are part of a different species than people everywhere else in the world there are obviously limits to how many hours people can work every week without severe adverse effects on health, basic perceptions of quality of life and the quality of the work they do. The whole point 'growth' in the economic sense is that it is real and something that can be built upon in compounded terms over time, providing ever expanding levels of prosperity without limit. But there are only 16 hours between 8 hours and 24. Eventually you will simply run out. Whatever other countries are doing better than we are can't be hours worked a week since no one else works as many hours as Americans."

*It's unclear to me whether Bush doesn't even fully understand the policies his advisors are trying to explain to him or whether this is just standard patrician work ethic morality. Whichever it is, the real structural problem in our economy is stagnant wages for more than a generation for most of the population."

http://talkingpointsmemo.com/edblog/weve-met-the-doofus-and-he-is-jeb