It's on purpose - today's edition

Economist Peter Morici looks at the jobs numbers released Friday and sees stagnation:

Although official GDP estimates indicate the economy expanded in the second quarter at a torrid pace—4.2. percent—much of that was inventory build, as consumer spending continued to drag along at a nonplus pace and capital investment, especially in manufacturing, remains subpar.

Third quarter growth is likely in the range of 2 percent, and the Obama Administration spin doctors will have a tough time selling these jobs data as anything but bad news.

Simply, the administration’s big spending stimulus policies and the Fed’s obsession with pumping money into a moribund New York financial industry have failed.

Also, now Americans are seeing the real cost of ObamaCare health care subsidies. Employer mandates are not much good to working families if no one in the family is working.

The official jobless rate is down to 6.1 percent but real unemployment is closer to 18 percent, because so many prime aged adults are sitting out the party. For example, one in six adult males between the ages of 25 and 54 has no job, and may have simply quit looking thanks to “compassionate” government policies that reward able bodied men and women to sit at home and watch ESPN NFL reruns or "The View".

Since 2000, Congress has beefed up the earned income tax credit, and expanded programs providing direct benefits to low and middle income workers, including ObamaCare and Medicaid, food stamps, and rent and mortgage assistance.

Those buy votes but do little to encourage work.

Benefits phase down as family incomes rise, and often tax additional income as much as 50 percent. Consequently, government benefits penalize work and encourage one partner in two adult households to be idle.

Also, those programs offer incentives for single people to work only part-time and contribute to skills shortage.

With millions of young college graduates unable to land a professional job and start a career, the president has implemented irresponsible federal student loan policies. And unscrupulous university presidents exploit young people by peddling graduate programs that promise rewarding careers but only deliver a lifetime of debt.

Your statist overlords of various stripes - the Most Equal Comrade's regime, a legislature primarily preoccupied with perpetual reelection, which, since progressivism began to work its rot has meant keeping the gravy train - government "credits" and "services" - flowing smoothly, and the administrative class in the higher-edcation world - have no use for the individual with irregular edges and unique dreams.  They need cattle-masses whose vision of a good life fits neatly within carefully prescribed parameters.  The upshot is post-America, a once-great engine of prosperity and advancement and a beacon to anyone anywhere hoping for a bit of freedom, and now in a state of decline and peril.

 Morici makes reference to the ways able-bodies cattle-masses "entertain" themselves in post-America.  Sure, it's crappy entertainment. But just like the other forms of thin gruel that the overlords ladle out to them, it's adequate stimulation for their ever-more-dulled cattle-sense of aesthetics.