Thats just acting, beanflying. Posturing, Acting, look up "overcompensating".
The people who run this country are greedy. They don't want to invest money in educating people because under their ideology it makes no sense to employ them. So they have to pretend they are trying to preserve low paying jobs. This is happening all around the world in every country. The leaders actually couldn't care less.
They don't want the responsibility at this point in history of the expectations put on them that they will act in our best interests because they want to act in their best interests which are very different than ours.
They are pretending in a really evil and cynical way that anybody who can read and write and show up to work can get a good job but they know its bullshit, or course. That hasn't been true since the 70s. The same thing with health insurance.
In many cases they are doing this because they simply don't care about most people. Its not personal, they just don't care. They would like the growing numbers of poor people to just go away, and 'become somebody else's problem'. as they put it.
They are profoundly clueless people who sometimes almost always literally had everything handed to them on a silver platter. They don't know why voters expect so much since we're not the ones paying their campaign expenses. Most are just indifferent, however the worst of them are really evil, mean spirited people. Who would prefer to give the good jobs to others, elsewhere.
They resent the middle class perhaps because narcissists generally dislike "needing" people for any reason, so they tend to try to devalue the worth of people with practical skills. They are fighting an old war between management and labor.
Which is really short sighted.
I wouldn't be surprised if many other countries leadership right now were similar. It seems the world is going through hard times as far as leadership goes.