“Job Creators,” are held up as near god-like paragons, revered, nearly worshipped by pundits on the right, and far too many on the left, as well. We are told they deserve all this praise, this worship -- and tax breaks as well -- because they keep us all employed. “Give” us all jobs. Without the holy “Job Creators” we would all be job-less and penniless.
This is a lie.
This toxic conservative “Job Creator” meme is as obviously false on nearly every level as it is true on only the most basic level.
Do “Job Creators” create jobs? No. Absolutely not.
I’ll explain the truth below the little orange tangle of conservative lies.
Yes, business owners hire employees and pay them. This is the basic-level reality of the “Job Creator” meme. But, do they do this because they are “creating jobs?” “Giving” something to the rest of us? Is that their motivation?
Hogwash. Of course not.
Business owners hire people to do work that needs to be done so they can turn a profit.
This cannot be said often enough: Business owners hire people to do work that needs to be done so they, the business owners, can turn a profit.
Without the workers, business owners would be job-less and penniless.
When a worker performs their job, the business owner sells the fruit of that labor onward to their customer at a markup that covers not only the worker’s pay, but the owner’s company overhead and a tidy income for the business owner. That is how business works: Every worker generates value but is paid only a fraction of that value in return. The balance goes to the business owner.
But the profit “Job Creators” make off the work of their employees is not enough for today’s conservative “thinkers.” No, we are told, employers must not only make their profits, they must also receive inordinate tax breaks in order to “incentivize” them to create jobs.
Not only must the rest of us accept a lower standard of living as our wages are slashed to create more profits at the top, we must also cough up more taxes to make up for the shortfall created by special tax rates for the “Job Creators.” (Note that 50% of all tax “incentives” go to the top 20% of all taxpayers).
The core falsehood of the “Job Creator” meme is the idea that Job creators create jobs as a favor to the rest of us, as a “gift.” As if their entire income did not depend on hiring people and generating their profits out of other people’s work. As if rich people just have money that appears out of their glorious asses and they are doing us all a favor by hiring us. They are beneficent gods, bestowing unearned and undeserved jobs on we mere mortals out of their own holy noblesse oblige. That the rich don’t need us. We need them.
There is a nasty little screed in today’s New York Times by Amity Shlaes, that purports to call-out the new Gatsby movie on it’s lack of economic veracity (yes, because Baz Luhrman has always been such a stickler for accuracy). In it she slathers on a heavy dose of conservative lies and false history. In the twenties, we are told, middle class wages and quality of life improved. People stopped working a six day week and received -- and this is such an egregious, damnable lie it makes my blood boil -- “the arrival of a gift that still means a lot to us: Saturday.”
People in the twenties were not GIVEN the “gift” of a Saturday. They bought it with their lives, their blood and their toil and earned it through their own hard work to create and foster strong American unions which brought American workers the benefits of being more equitably paid for their labor and rewarded with a well-earned and deserved day of rest. The benefits earned by those unions reset the landscape of workers’ rights and spread throughout the working world bringing shorter working hours and better wages for ALL workers. American wages went up and working hours went down not via some “gift” from the “Job Creators,” but because those things were fought for and earned.
There is an instructive scene in the John Wayne movie, McClintock!, in which Wayne, playing the rich, eponymous rancher, hires a young ranch hand. “Thanks for giving me a job, Mr. McClintock,” simpers the new hire. Wayne glares at him like a worthless bug, “You gonna do an honest day’s work for me?” growls Wayne. “Yes Sir!” cries the ranch hand, cowering under his master’s glare. “Then I ain’t GIVING you NOTHING!” roars John Wayne.
Even the über capitalist, über conservative John Wayne understood that the employer-employee relationship is mutually beneficial and the benefits go BOTH ways (more to the employer, of course). Today’s conservatives, even farther to the right than John Wayne (Wayne would be considered a pansy liberal by today’s standards) believe that jobs come through the holy beneficence of the “Job Creators” who, somehow give up something by hiring people. They believe the employer-employee relationship is a gift to the employee and the employer gets nothing in return. “Job Creators” are GIVING people jobs, they need to get SOMETHING in return: i.e. tax cuts.
Just another toxic conservative lie designed to destroy America and turn us into a third world totalitarian dictatorship.
“If capitalism is fair, then Unionism must be. If men have a right to capitalize their ideas and the resources of their country, then that implies the right of men to capitalize their labor.” - Frank Lloyd Wright
“It is to the real advantage of every producer, every manufacturer and every merchant to cooperate in the improvement of working conditions, because the best customer of American industry is the well-paid worker.” - Franklin D. Roosevelt
“There are two types of republicans, the rich and the stupid. The rich ones strive to keep the stupid ones stupid and the stupid ones strive to keep the rich ones rich.” - frankzappatista, Daily Kos