From: lessgovt@gmail.com   
      
   Liberals Can’t Comprehend Black Economic Progress   
   It undermines the argument that society is stacked against racial and ethnic   
   minorities.   
   By Jason L. Riley, July 11, 2023, WSJ   
      
   The black American worker has had a pretty good run in recent years, though   
   you might not know it because the political left and its allies in the press   
   prefer to accentuate black struggle. Racial inequality shouldn’t be ignored   
   but neither should    
   black progress.   
      
   Between 1963 and 2012, unemployment averaged 5.1% for whites and 11.1% for   
   blacks. The 2008 financial crisis hit black workers especially hard, with   
   unemployment reaching 16.8% in March 2010. Under President Obama, black   
   unemployment declined but didn’   
   t fall below double-digits until the seventh year of his presidency. When he   
   left office in January 2017, the black jobless rate was 7.5%. Under President   
   Trump it dipped to 5.3% in August 2019, then fell to a record-low 4.7% in   
   April of this year.   
      
   Positive black economic trends undermine the liberal argument that we live in   
   a society stacked against certain racial and ethnic minority groups, so these   
   trends tend to get played down or spun to advance a left-wing agenda. Last   
   week’s jobs report    
   put black unemployment in June at 6%. Bloomberg, Reuters and other news   
   outlets were quick to note that this was the second consecutive month that   
   black unemployment had increased. That’s true—the rate was 5.6% in   
   May—and perhaps a trend is    
   developing. Still, one month of 6% unemployment is hardly cause for panic, and   
   other data on black workers suggest that the labor market remains strong.   
      
   For starters, the black employment rate of 58.9% is only 1.5 percentage-points   
   lower than the white rate of 60.4%, which is a historically narrow racial gap.   
   Second, labor-force participation rates for black workers, which have tended   
   to trail those of    
   white workers, now surpass them slightly. The trend started before the   
   pandemic and has been noticeable for most of the past year. In June 2020,   
   62.2% of working-age blacks were employed or looking for a job, versus 61.9%   
   of whites. Last month the rate    
   was 62.6% for blacks and 62.3% for whites.   
      
   Liberals want to help low-income blacks by increasing the size of the welfare   
   state or with racial favoritism, but the best antidote to poverty is a job.   
   Tight labor markets have produced more employment opportunities, the result of   
   which has been less    
   racial inequality in hiring and wages.   
      
   Fed Chairman Jerome Powell has taken licks from many on the left for raising   
   interest rates so aggressively over the past 15 months to combat inflation.   
   Some predicted that higher rates would cool consumer demand and hiring, and   
   that blacks would be    
   harmed disproportionately because less-educated workers have tended to be the   
   first ones let go when the economy slows down.   
      
   So far that hasn’t happened, but neither has inflation fallen to the Fed’s   
   2% target, so Mr. Powell may decide to hold off for now on a pause. What we do   
   know—and should learn from—is that erring on the side of keeping rates too   
   low for too long    
   did tremendous harm to millions of low-income Americans. Low interest rates   
   played a major role in the credit boom and subsequent financial crisis.   
   Progressives tell us that low interest rates are more socially just, but   
   allowing people to borrow money    
   for down payments on mortgages they couldn’t afford did the recipients no   
   favors.   
      
   An ill-conceived effort to help low-income minorities become homeowners left   
   them with mountains of debt and bad credit scores. By reducing the cost of a   
   mortgage, the Fed increased the cost of real estate, which meant that some   
   people were priced out of    
   buying their first houses and others were stuck with subprime loans they   
   couldn’t repay. Meanwhile, existing homeowners saw the value of their   
   properties balloon. Loose monetary policy wound up widening social inequality.   
      
   “I would go back to the labor market that we had in 2018, ’19, ’20,”   
   Powell said in December. “What that looked like was, wage increases for   
   people at the lowest end of the spectrum were the largest. The gaps between   
   racial groups and gender    
   groups were their smallest in history.”   
      
   Powell’s assessment of what was happening before the pandemic on Trump’s   
   watch is correct. Black and Hispanic poverty rates dipped to record lows, and   
   black wages rose at a faster rate than white wages. The story got little   
   attention in the    
   mainstream media apart from these pages because journalists were more focused   
   on taking down the president.   
      
   What’s more likely to improve black outcomes in the workforce are better   
   black outcomes in the classroom, not a return to irresponsibly low interest   
   rates. Addressing the racial achievement gap, which worsened under Covid,   
   ought to be a priority. Which    
   makes the nation’s teachers unions and their opposition to school choice a   
   far bigger problem than Powell’s Fed.   
      
   https://www.wsj.com/articles/liberals-cant-comprehend-black-econ   
   mic-progress-real-estate-interest-rates-893b647   
      
   --- SoupGate-Win32 v1.05   
    * Origin: you cannot sedate... all the things you hate (1:229/2)