Politicians and the word “jobs” are clearly BFFs. There’s not really another kind of person that runs around skipping and holding the hand of this word like politicians do. If there were some kind of game show where we had to listen to someone talk for thirty seconds and then guess what they do for a living, anyone who let the word “jobs” drop more than three times while they were talking would see us jamming our hand down on the buzzer for a sure thing. I’m gonna say politician Bob. Show me politician.
We all just kind of accept that this lip service, BFF relationship is a part of the political profession. But any other set of BFFs that are this attached at the hip will usually put us on the scent of some underlying secret. Why does uncle Stan own matching jet skis with his best friend who lives in the guest house? They were in the navy together. You wouldn’t understand. But then of course you would understand, they’d just prefer that you don’t, and that’s what the BFF song and dance is really asking you for. So why are we seeing this same song and dance with politicians and the word “jobs”? Are they really BFFs with jobs, or is there some underlying relationship between politics and employment that we’re being discreetly asked to not understand?
You mean I can have two fifteen minute breaks? What’s demeaning about saying that out loud? OMG, where do I sign?
The question becomes a little more pointed when we ask exactly who this song and dance is for. Are the unemployed really that huge of a voting block? Why should a bunch of people who already haul their sorry asses to work every day be impressed by the idea that there are going to be lots more jobs floating around them? After all, they’ve got one, and while having a job is usually better than not having one, it’s probably safe to say that whatever job they’ve got is not exactly the answer to their prayers.
Here we can start to feel a few more questions opening up. Politicians love jobs, and they use the word “jobs” to compete for our affection like each usage is its own hot dog in some weird professional eating contest. But they never really talk about what kinds of jobs we’re going to have. The question: “Jobs doing what?” is a legitimate question. If someone is going to open up a factory where people pull the heads off babies all day, and you’re trying to figure out how to see a glass that’s half full there, then the word “jobs” is going to be your best friend. Start dropping it wherever you can. Suddenly there’s a pro and anti employment debate, where there would have been a pulling the heads off of things debate.
Also, people who already have some crappy job have every reason to be suspicious of the automatic applause signal the political use of the word “jobs” has become. If jobs are so politically great that the simple mention of them is an applause grab, then why isn’t there any entourage of employment subjects trying to come along for the ride? The idea that we might make it more legally difficult to fire people for example, never seems to come up, despite the fact that compared to other similarly developed countries, the United States is bizarrely unconcerned with how easy it is to throw someone’s entire way of earning a living out the window. In fact, once we start looking past the thoughtless celebration of the word “jobs” to the way most workers in most developed countries are treated, American workers start to look a lot like the homeschooled kid who just found out that there are more than three channels on tv.
As one recent 2021 study from a prominent human resources firm put it: “The U.S. ranks last among industrialized countries relative to employee benefits like healthcare, paid leave, vacation days, unemployment and retirement.” We take it for granted that jobs are good, with the understanding that jobs are one kind of thing that can simply be created or destroyed. By accepting the political posture of a bunch of cheerleaders on team Jobs, we accept that what a job actually is, is something that’s permanently closed, which in this country, means we accept that our livelihoods are permanently a bunch of kleenex that can be tossed out by our employers whenever they’d like.
So like the many gay uncles we’re not supposed to ask questions about, the BFF relationship between politicians and jobs suggests that politicians are in bed with our employers in a way that cares a lot more about keeping us quiet than it does with what voters actually think is the best course for the society they compose. By using it as an applause signal, they close the possibility that we’ll be asking any questions about things like what we work to produce, or what our rights as workers should be as a matter of law.
Hey, I’m a busy man. Do you want a job or not?
Whenever anyone starts to ask questions like these, the “free market” response appears instantly. More jobs are good, because if your employer knows you can simply walk across the street and get another job, then you’ll have a much better bargaining position for things like your wages and benefits. The most obvious response here is that if more jobs were actually so great at doing that, then we probably wouldn’t be last in everything; or at the very least, that making employers less trigger happy when it comes to termination is going to strengthen the bargaining position of the average person well before it does anything to weaken it. But independently of the effects that these kinds of questions have on the supply and demand dynamics of finding a job, the point is that by simply ejaculating the word “jobs” at every possible opportunity, we make sure that this discussion never really happens. After all, anything that questions what a job is, slows down the job creation discussion, and shouldn’t all of you be getting back to work? The effect is to skip us all right past the idea that a job isn’t just a bunch of stuff that somebody else tells you to do. It’s an extension of our concept of citizenship, and it can be changed to give people more power in what we all seem to agree is our problematically undemocratic democracy. But we’re all too busy clapping to have that conversation. Trying to have it slows down the appearance of the word “jobs” and all of the sudden it’s our fault that everyone is fired.
In this way, the use of “jobs” as a political applause signal is a way of abbreviating the political conversation. Politicians don’t do it because they have some set of free market principles that their political opponents don’t have. They do it so that there is no opposing the almightiness of our employers. Jobs are holy, nevermind what you do, and how your employer says you have to do it. The totally closed applause demand is a roundabout way of saying: “If you have a job, thank your lucky stars and shut up.” It’s something that’s heard by the employed a lot more than the unemployed, and the off putting sound of it is the thing that people can’t quite spell out when they’re asked why they don’t vote. Vote for what? Jobs? I got a job already, pal. It ain’t doing me any favors. Call me back when they’re campaigning on “careers” or dare I say, “meaningful lives.”
Say “jobs” again mother fucker I dare you!
The point here is that if you’re reading this and you don’t see anything worth voting for, you are not an idiot. I personally think you should still vote, but there’s a big difference between being part of a conversation and being part of a studio audience, and there’s no small amount of difficulty involved in feeling like you’re in a studio audience and then casting your vote to change the conversation anyway. The patronizing abbreviation of using the word “jobs” as an applause signal is turning American workers into a bunch of creepy, malnourished home schooled kids in the eyes of a developed world where reasonable workers in productive economies consider their right to a piece of the pie to be a no brainer. We need to stop responding to it like trained seals, at the ballot box and everywhere else.
If we’re picking one word demands, let’s do “democracy” first and then move down the list.
Princess Fantastic 