Wednesday, August 3, 2011

A Little Rant About Job Creators!

Washington has been very busy the last few years reinventing the English language with euphemistic code words." Revenue enhancement" has replaced "tax increases", "deficit reduction " has replaced "cutting services", " intelligencia" has replaced " people with a good education" and so on.

The one that has been driving me crazy this summer is that "Job Creators" is being used to describe the super rich and large corporations, many of whom are sitting on huge piles of cash that they have funneled into home offices at Swiss mail drops. Cash holdings by corporations are higher than they have ever been and they are not creating jobs with the money. If we can give them more tax breaks until they are just choking on $1000 bills maybe they will hire a new groom for the stables or someone to clean one of their homes. That seems to be the plan anyway. "Raising YOUR  taxes" is code for " raising taxes on the super rich who finance my campaigns while swiftboating my opponents". Most readers of this blog were never in danger of being included in the group whose taxes may have been affected by closing loopholes and special favors in the tax code.

It's time to get back to telling the truth. This spring I dipped into my life savings and bought a new car, a pug, mill, and a kiln. Guess what, I'm a "Job Creator"! I'll bet you've bought some groceries, had your car repaired,  paid your taxes,  bought fuel, maybe some clay or a set of tires. Guess what? You're a job creator too! Pam, when you bought that pitcher from me in Maysville, you joined us. Welcome to the club everyone.. Has anyone worried about taking money out of your pocket and crashing the economy? Not likely. Not unless you are a Job Creator of the paragraph two variety. The truth is, capital alone does not create any jobs. What creates jobs is demand. Period. If surplus corporate capital created jobs we would all be working .If there is no demand, trying to create jobs is like pushing a rope. There is no viable business model that supplies goods and services to people who can't purchase. If all the burden of getting out of this mess falls on the backs of the real Job Creators consumer spending and home sales will not be able to increase, our economy (and tax revenue) will be unable to grow and we will continue America's economic decline.

We cannot solve our problems by only cutting services to the poor, the school kids, and the elderly. I agree that we have too much debt and that we have to fix the problem.I agree with John Boehner when he says we can't take money out of the hands of Job Creators. I just disagree about who the Job Creators really are.

4 comments:

  1. Since there are more poor if they have less money there will be less demand because they won't have any money to buy anything, what a vicious cycle, the romans did the same thing right up until the fall of their empire, supposed leaders are not always smart or logical thinkers.

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  2. Somehow I missed this post, but this is what I generally rant about every day! NPR has had some good callers this week. Diane asked why aren't people marching on Washington and a call came in saying they aren't in Washington because no one can afford to travel. Yesterday a caller commented that it didn't matter that we were getting cheap goods from China if you don't have a job, it doesn't matter how cheap something is, you still can't buy it if you don't have any money. When are people going to wake up and realize this! Every day I wonder about the education of our leaders. Were they sleeping in class all those years and just had money to get them elected? They sure don't have the common sense needed for running a government!! I could go on....

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  3. Let the church say Amen! It really seems so simple that it's hard to understand how anyone can say that we have to protect those tax cuts for those rich folks. I keep hearing that if the cuts expire it will hurt small businesses. Now, I don't know the original legislation, but why are small businesses lumped into individual taxes. I would think most small business owners have their business income separate from their personal income. If letting the cuts expire will hurt small business why not come up with a piece of legislation that will protect small businesses - still give them some kind of cut but get the huge corporations paying their share and the rich, super-rich sharing the sacrifice. Many times I've heard middle income callers (mostly to Diane Rehm's show) say that they wouldn't mind paying a little bit higher taxes if it was just more fair and the rich had to make some sacrifice like the rest of us. The tax rate is the lowest it's ever been for the highest income earners - in the Eisenhower years it was something like 70% and people still flourished. How did they manage that? How many houses (let alone how many rooms in a house), cars, boats, etc. does one person NEED?
    And when did helping those less fortunate go from being the Christian thing to do, to socialist??
    Don't get me started...........

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