Jeb Bush: People Need to Work Longer Hours

To hit his desired economic growth rate, Bush told the Manchester Union Leader, “we have to be a lot more productive, workforce participation has to rise from its all-time modern lows”.

The problem is that those six words are not placed in any form of context and, after the outrage began, Bush made a perfectly reasonable clarification that he was talking about getting people who want to work more than just part-time back into full-time employment. A 2014 Gallup poll claims the average work week for many Americans who work full-time is more like 47 hours (not 40), and 21 percent report they work between 50 to 59 hours per week.

Democrats immediately attacked, arguing that Bush was callously calling for more to be squeezed out of hard-working Americans.

Americans are working plenty hard.

Based in Los Angeles, Right to Rise will handle a huge part of the costly work of running for president, including buying TV, online and radio commercials, conducting polling and even doing some organizing tasks such as voter outreach in early primary states. First off, U.S. “worker productivity”, used in the traditional economic sense doesn’t necessarily correspond to more income for workers, as Clinton pointed out.

Perceptions of Bush as a fundraising juggernaut have helped to shape the field from the start, as his campaign’s unspoken pitch is that he’s the only candidate who will be able to compete with Democratic-frontrunner Hillary Clinton’s deep pockets. The $103 million haul was from more than 9,900 donors, with about 9,400 donors giving $25,000 or less. Worldwide studies show Americans take less vacations, work longer days and retire later in life on average than people from any other first-world country.

By law, it can’t take direction from Bush’s Miami-based campaign, and the two operations have limits on how they can communicate.

Speaking to a campaign event in New Hampshire, Bush said Wednesday that his support for allowing people in the country illegally to stay in the United States does not suggest leniency toward those who have committed crimes. Many them would like to work more – and earn more. “The move to a greater part-time workforce was not the intent of any administration”.

Sanders replied to Bush’s comments in a statement, “Unfortunately”, Sanders said, “Gov. Bush does not seem to understand what is happening in our economy today”. Mixed in with talk about an ambitious goal of 4% U.S. economic growth was a bit of advice that left the Republican presidential candidate scrambling to explain himself. An aide told the AP that Bush’s intent was to highlight how many Americans have been working less than they want to due to President Obama’s policies. “What we need now is an economy that provides decent wages and income for the middle class, not demands that people work even longer hours than they currently do”.