[Vision2020] The real job creators

Sat Jul 14 17:02:15 PDT 2012

This is especially true today.

For us ordinary folk interest on savings is very low under 1% and in some
cases under 1/2%.

Rich folks are worse off.  Many banks are charging the depositor a fee for
accounts over $500,000 and not paying any interest.

What's left for rich folks that want to make money?

Find a viable investment in a product and/or service providing business.

w.

On Sat, Jul 14, 2012 at 3:56 PM, Ralph Nielsen <nielsen at uidaho.edu> wrote:

> Nick Hanauer, another venture capitalist, tells us who the real job
> creators are.
>
> *It is astounding how significantly one idea can shape a society and its
> policies. Consider this one.
>
> If taxes on the rich go up, job creation will go down.
>
> This idea is an article of faith for Republicans and seldom challenged by
> Democrats and has shaped much of today's economic landscape.
>
> But sometimes the ideas that we know to be true are dead wrong. For
> thousands of years people were sure that earth was at the center of the
> universe. It's not, and an astronomer who still believed that it was, would
> do some lousy astronomy.
>
> In the same way, a policy maker who believed that the rich and businesses
> are "job creators" and therefore should not be taxed, would make equally
> bad policy.
>
> I have started or helped start, dozens of businesses and initially hired
> lots of people. But if no one could have afforded to buy what we had to
> sell, my businesses would all have failed and all those jobs would have
> evaporated.
>
> That's why I can say with confidence that rich people don't create jobs,
> nor do businesses, large or small. What does lead to more employment is a
> "circle of life" like feedback loop between customers and businesses. And
> only consumers can set in motion this virtuous cycle of increasing demand
> and hiring. In this sense, an ordinary middle-class consumer is far more of
> a job creator than a capitalist like me.
>
> So when businesspeople take credit for creating jobs, it's a little like
> squirrels taking credit for creating evolution. In fact, it's the other way
> around.
>
> Anyone who's ever run a business knows that hiring more people is a
> capitalist's course of last resort, something we do only when increasing
> customer demand requires it. In this sense, calling ourselves job creators
> isn't just inaccurate, it's disingenuous.
>
> That's why our current policies are so upside down. When you have a tax
> system in which most of the exemptions and the lowest rates benefit the
> richest, all in the name of job creation, all that happens is that the rich
> get richer.
>
> Since 1980, the share of income for the richest Americans has more than
> tripled while effective tax rates have declined by close to 50%.
>
> If it were true that lower tax rates and more wealth for the wealthy would
> lead to more job creation, then today we would be drowning in jobs. And yet
> unemployment and under-employment is at record highs.
>
> Another reason this idea is so wrong-headed is that there can never be
> enough super-rich Americans to power a great economy. The annual earnings
> of people like me are hundreds, if not thousands, of times greater than
> those of the median American, but we don't buy hundreds or thousands of
> times more stuff. My family owns three cars, not 3,000. I buy a few pairs
> of pants and a few shirts a year, just like most American men. Like
> everyone else, we go out to eat with friends and family only occasionally.
>
> I can't buy enough of anything to make up for the fact that millions of
> unemployed and underemployed Americans can't buy any new clothes or cars or
> enjoy any meals out. Or to make up for the decreasing consumption of the
> vast majority of American families that are barely squeaking by, buried by
> spiraling costs and trapped by stagnant or declining wages.
>
> Here's an incredible fact. If the typical American family still got today
> the same share of income they earned in 1980, they would earn about 25%
> more and have an astounding $13,000 more a year. Where would the economy be
> if that were the case?
>
> Significant privileges have come to capitalists like me for being
> perceived as "job creators" at the center of the economic universe, and the
> language and metaphors we use to defend the fairness of the current social
> and economic arrangements is telling. For instance, it is a small step from
> "job creator" to "The Creator". We did not accidentally choose this
> language. It is only honest to admit that calling oneself a "job creator"
> is both an assertion about how economics works and the a claim on status
> and privileges.
>
> The extraordinary differential between a 15% tax rate on capital gains,
> dividends, and carried interest for capitalists, and the 35% top marginal
> rate on work for ordinary Americans is a privilege that is hard to justify
> without just a touch of deification.
>
> We've had it backward for the last 30 years. Rich businesspeople like me
> don't create jobs. Rather they are a consequence of an eco-systemic
> feedback loop animated by middle-class consumers, and when they thrive,
> businesses grow and hire, and owners profit. That's why taxing the rich to
> pay for investments that benefit all is a great deal for both the middle
> class and the rich.
>
> So here's an idea worth spreading.
>
> In a capitalist economy, the true job creators are consumers, the middle
> class. And taxing the rich to make investments that grow the middle class,
> is the single smartest thing we can do for the middle class, the poor and
> the rich.
>
> Thank You.*
>  http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31848.htm
>
> Must Watch 6 Minute Video: Middle Class CONSUMERS are the ‘Job Creators’<http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article31848.htm>
>
>
>
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