When I hear Republicans constantly referring to millionaires and billionaires as “job creators,” and therefore people who should not be taxed more in this jobs-poor economy, I find myself a tad mystified. It’s not that I totally disagree with this identification. It’s more like I’m listening to people who just caught the last half of a beginner’s economics lecture, and never came back to hear the first half.
Of course you need capital to get a business off the ground, investments that create jobs. And of course people and institutions with a lot of money have to be induced to part with some of it to support company expansions that create more jobs. But that’s the second half of the introductory economics lecture.
The first part, the starting point, the primary thing needed for job creation is the prospect of customers and sales. If nobody is going to buy what you plan to invest in, why would anyone invest? If there’s an existing business and it doesn’t have sufficient customers and sales or prospects for a lot more them, why would anyone give it money to expand and hire?
If this sounds extraordinarily simplistic, it is. So much so that it’s embarrassing to have to write it. But somehow, Republicans just don’t get it.
They seem to feel that as long as the money is out there in highly concentrated form, the fact that cutting government spending dramatically, which will cost a lot of jobs directly, and pull spending power out of programs that cost more jobs, is a process that will somehow leading to more job creation. Amazing.
So here’s what I’d like to suggest. In the name of honest nomenclature. Republicans shouldn’t drop the job creators rhetoric completely. It’s not totally wrong after all, and they’ve invested a lot of political capital in the phrase. Just make a slight modification.
Millionaires and billionaires should be termed “second tier job creators.” Or maybe “job afterburner creators.” And as a matter of getting themselves up to speed on the subject, before actually attempting serious legislative activities, it might pay to sit in on the first half of that introductory economics lecture.
For the country’s sake.
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