Yes We Can! Long Island 2012It’s NOT the 3 Rs. There’s no such thing as ‘job creators’ other than in the minds of Romneyites, Randians and Roves.
Republicans will remain persistent in their attempt to convince us that they are the JOB CREATORS. Romney builds much of his campaign on having been a job creator. He is so very, very wrong. What he creates is untruths, deceptions, fabrications, lies. In fact, ‘job creator’ is a term likely contrived by those people who need to convince others to think of them as job creators. Repeat the term frequently enough and it becomes part of the national vernacular. Like ‘trickle-down’.
Demand creates jobs. People provide jobs.
When there is demand for goods and services, people in charge of hiring provide jobs to meet demand. Simply put, when people (lots of people, the middle class for instance) have disposable income, they spend money. The result will be, at some point, a shortage of particular goods and/or services that people want, people need, people are willing to spend money for. This, in turn, leads to an increase in production. Which results in a need to increase employment. So need and demand are very much intertwined. Employment comes not from people with resources–who may wake up with a thought of who they might hire for the fun of it–but from ordinary folks who, in the words of George Carlin, need stuff.
It’s the time-tested law of supply and demand. Nothing any more complex than that. High school economics is sufficient. College Economics 101 is not necessary. Everyone would understand this basic principle better if not misled to think that they owe their very existence to job creators. Yet that is the sum and substance of the Republican campaign as presented to Americans by an empty suit and his like.
Potential job providers are not the initiators of the process. Rather, entrepreneurs recognize opportunity to make money when demand presents itself. When people have the moolah to buy, they do so. They may do it from savings, from earned income, with a credit card, a mortgage, a secured loan, whatever. But people acquire stuff. That’s what people do. Just ask Sam Walton.
This creates, initially, a cycle of earn-spend-earn-spend–the ovum of increased demand awaiting fertilization. The cycle evolves to earn-spend-create demand-earn-spend-create demand. This is where the economic sperm enters the picture. Ultimately, the egg and sperm come together boys and girls, and a living, thriving economic cycle settles in: earn-spend-create demand-provide jobs-earn-spend-create demand-provide jobs-earn-spend create demand-provide jobs.
Entrepreneurs among us deserve great credit for providing jobs. But they don’t create them. They are facilitators who profit from a strong economic cycle inspired by demand. Sometimes, everyday people pay other everyday people to perform functions we cannot or do not want to do ourselves–taking care of dementia patients, caring for lawns, piloting a plane, whatever. Disposable income is requisite, not the job creator–a false god if there ever was one.
A productive economic cycle grows until the Republicans return to power–through tomfoolery, voter suppression, corruption of a Court, or just plain lying their Atwater/Rovian asses off. Unfortunately, the cycle after time becomes truncated to the point that demand diminishes, job opportunities shrink, providers seek shelter, and the economy finds itself in another downward spiral awaiting its repair by progressives.
No need for the old macro-micro economics debate. That is, in itself a job provider, for academics and analysts. It’s as simple as that. Where there’s demand, there’s employment.
Period.
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