'Forget the Minimum-Wage Job Losses: It's Government Cuts That'll GetYou Mad'

Heidi Moore:

Forget the minimum-wage job losses: it's government cuts that'll get you mad, by Heidi Moore: ...Which is worse: 500,000 Americans out of work, or 2m?... 500,000 is an estimate of the number of jobs the country might lose if the minimum wage gets raised to $10.10 an hour, according to a controversial analysis released Tuesday by the Congressional Budget Office. ...

What about those 2m jobs? That’s how much the economy will lose by 2019 because of federal budget cuts, as estimated by the Center for American Progress. And, well, I hate to break it to you, but Congress already voted on those last year, and it didn’t spur one fired shot.

Budget cuts, also known as austerity, are the most damaging economic decision Congress has made since the financial crisis. Former Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke warned lawmakers several times that austerity measures would hurt the economy, but they largely ignored his warnings. Jobs lost to government budget cuts are part of the reason why the economy still looks so weak...

The cost of austerity doesn’t stop at 2m jobs, either. There could be as many as 7 million jobs that are never even created because of Washington budget cuts, according to the Economic Policy Institute. Those 7 million jobs would be the difference between the unhappy economy we have now ... and an actual recovery.
So, here’s the not-so-simple question: if everyone’s so angry about losing 500,000 jobs while paying the average worker more per hour, where’s the unstoppable outrage about the 2m jobs that already seem lost to austerity? ...