True to his Bush genes Jeb has just uttered what is not only the table prize of all Bush out-of- touch commentaries but ignores the true problem of our economy---substandard growth caused by the misguided austerity policies of his own Republican party.

His comment was, reportedly, when asked about how to achieve 4% growth---"It means that people need to work longer hours and, through their productivity, gain more income for their families."  Joseph and Mary, the Pope and Lucifer, where do you start?

Work longer hours, who the heck is he kidding? Americans already work longer hours than most any other developed country. How far out of touch do you have to be from the average worker in this country to utter such nonsense?

"....through their productivity. So, the obvious here:

---two hundred years of industry experience notwithstanding--- folks who work longer hours get refreshed, make less mistakes because now there is no hope of getting home for dinner so let's put the petal to the metal. Get R done, wahoo, this is fun. When I was spending down my assets doing woodworking I came to realize that when I got in that frame of mind, I'm the greatest, I had already screwed the project up and the mania was my subconscious trying to get through to me that I was about to screw up again. Longer hours will lead to screwups, loss of productivity, not increased productivity.

The other sly message of "through their productivity" is that people already are unproductive and through more effort can do better. This is the shop owner mentality, "if they would just do their jobs better"---what a damned put down of workers.

Maybe what Jeb meant was to add minutes to every hour, creating a 70 minute hour. Yep, productivity per hour would most likely go up. Or maybe he was trying to sort out in his own mind the concept of labor productivity, output per hour worked. Versus output per more hours worked.

At this stage of our recovery, there actually is pretty full employment. I'm not discounting that there are structural issues and lower participation. But as things stand now, employment is high while productivity has stalled out.

Productivity is generated by more investment to make the jobs that people do more efficient---that is, more output per hour worked. But companies are not going to invest to increase productivity if there is slack demand because of slow growth.

What makes Bush's statement so unforgivable is that the austerity his party has enforced on the American people is contributing in large measure to slow growth.

But even more egregious in Bush's triumphalistic economics is the lack of any reference to pay. Want more money for your family? Work more hours. But more pay per hour? Not so much.

Bush's statement is an insult to American workers and to Economics 101.