Conservatives evidently view the four-plus-year-long unemployment crisis as a Shock Doctrine opportunity to cut taxes some more for the wealthy and slash government jobs and programs.
Conservatives also oppose unemployment insurance, minimum wage laws, labor unions, and investments in job creation.
In short, they are the party of cheap labor, happy with high unemployment rates that represent millions of desperate people who will take any job at any pay to avoid ending on the street.
American conservative leaders never admit that basic fact, but one Conservative leader in Britain is not so discreet.
David Young, an economic adviser to the Cameron government, has briefed the Cabinet on a report that argues that "recession is a good time to exploit cheap labor," according to The Observer's headline.
Young apparently did not use the word "exploit," but he clearly believes that recessions are good for many business owners:
Factors of production such as premises and labor can be cheaper and higher quality, meaning that return on investment can be greater.
More, below.
Young is a life peer, Baron Young of Graffham, thanks to his work for the cheap-labor-loving Margaret Thatcher.
The British double-dip recession, aided and abetted by Conservative austerity policies, has indeed led to a dramatic decrease in average hourly earnings -- 8.5 percent since 2009.
And British unemployment ticked up in last month's report to 7.9 percent.
Outside of metropolitan London, there has been no job growth at all since 2008:
Analysis of official jobs figures carried out for the Observer by the TUC (Trades Union Congress, roughly their AFL-CIO) also shows that 267,000 net new jobs have been created in London since the start of the recession in 2008; yet almost every other part of the country has fewer jobs now than before the crash.
The TUC general secretary lambasted Young's silver-lining-for-employers thesis:
The 2.5 million people still out of work will wonder what planet Lord Young is living on when he claims recessions bring economic gains.
Not only is the government failing to deal with the living standards crisis, their advisers are reveling in the jobs and wage squeeze that is putting people's finances under strain.
This is not the first time under Cameron that Young has expressed class warfare sentiments.
Back in 2010, he had to quit his advisory post "after he was overwhelmed by condemnation of his claim that voters had never had it so good during the 'so-called recession' due to low interest rates" and that opposition to austerity "came from 'people who think they have a right for the state to support them.'"
A year later, he was "quietly reappointed," and is the "only aide with his own office in Downing Street" -- a sure sign of his influence on Cameron.
Cheap labor conservatives have created economic stagnation and a nearly triple-dip recession in the UK.
Cheap labor conservatives in this country (based largely in former slave states) would do the same on a national level, if they controlled more than the House of Representatives and the Supreme Court.
But they will wrap their cheap labor polices in the flag and the Bible, rather than stating, as Young does, their real goal -- increasing the wealth of business owners at the expense of workers.