This week on CounterSpin: A report showing that fewer jobs were added in April than expected has some business owners and media minions shaking heads and pointing fingers about how people "don't want to work!" Listeners will have heard the trope, providing a scarcely needed opening for shopworn right-wing assertions about how government assistance to keep folks' head above water robs people (some people, mind you, it's always only some people) of their work ethic.
At this point, the fact that data don't support a connection between unemployment benefits and difficulty in hiring is beside the point. That work "ethic" equals the willingness to work in whatever conditions at whatever wage is an unchallenged, mostly unspoken pillar of corporate reporting. Trouble for them is, millions of people are hearkening to the idea—expressed in a popular meme—that if as an employer you "offer" wages less than unemployment, you are less a job creator than a poverty exploiter. And they're less and less willing to accept the line that an insistence on a livable life will wreck what we're told is "the" economy.
Do elite media have space for people who don't want to risk their lives for less money than they need to live? It's a big conversation, but we'll start by talking about breaking through false but hardy narratives with Michael Hiltzik, business columnist and blogger for the Los Angeles Times and author of, most recently,Iron Empires: Robber Barons, Railroads and the Making of Modern America.
Plus Janine Jackson takes a quick look back at recent press coverage of Israel/Palestine, Venezuela and voter suppression.
