Actually, 'the Rich' Don't 'Create Jobs', We Do

[Donnachaidh]

http://www.truth-out.org/actually-rich-dont-create-jobs-we-do/1305380742

You hear it again and again, variation after variation on a core message: if you tax rich people it kills jobs. You hear about "job-killing tax hikes," or that "taxing the rich hurts jobs," "taxes kill jobs," "taxes take money out of the economy, "if you tax the rich they won't be able to provide jobs." ... on and on it goes. So do we really depend on "the rich" to "create" jobs? Or do jobs get created when they fill a need?

Here is a recent typical example, Obama Touts Job-Killing Tax Plan, written by a "senior fellow at the Cato Institute and chairman of the Institute for Global Economic Growth,"

Some people, in their pursuit of profit, benefit their fellow humans by creating new or better goods and services, and then by employing others. We call such people entrepreneurs and productive workers.

Others are parasites who suck the blood and energy away from the productive. Such people are most often found in government.

More at the link --

[Buzz Clik]

1. A helluva lot of jobs are created by rich people.

I don't understand the premise.

[ThatPoetGuy]

3. No, actually, they aren't. Other than household servants.

Maids, butlers, cooks.

The majority of the 400 wealthiest families in America make their money from finance. That means they essentially run a medium-sized office to earn their $345 million annual earnings.

The backyard inventor creates jobs.

The small business that grows into a large business creates jobs.

When Bill creates a new kind of air conditioner, Bill isn't rich. He's a normal guy. He needs engineers, developers, designers, testers, manufacturers, a production and assembly line, marketers, salespeople, customer service, and so on. He'll create ten or twenty thousand jobs. Not by being rich, but in the process of becoming rich.

"The rich create jobs" malarkey is right-wing spin to say "we should cut taxes for the rich." Which we shouldn't.

Because rich people will try to prevent Bill from getting started. Rich people are making old kinds of air conditioner, so they'll hit Bill with malicious lawsuits, they'll engage in corporate espionage, they'll get professional nastypeople to disparage his product before it comes out, they'll spend a fortune on their own marketing to downplay Bill's new product.

Or maybe a rich person will buy Bill's company, ship the manufacturing to China and the customer service to India.

Either way, tax cuts for the wealthy discourage job growth.

[Buzz Clik]

16. So, Bill Gates is just an ordinary guy?

There are thousands of rich people just like Gates who have created hundreds of thousands of jobs.

[CJCRANE]

20. But Bill Gates started out as an ordinary guy...

he didn't inherit Microsoft.

[Buzz Clik]

23. I guess I didn't get the idea that this was about old money only.

[Starry Messenger]

25. delete, wrong place

[sendero]

26. If Bill Gates..

... hadn't come along a thousand guys who would have done a better job would have.

[CJCRANE]

29. Exactly, he was just a guy with an idea whose time had come...

the point being he wasn't mega-rich when he started his business.

[Buzz Clik]

31. And after Gates obtained wealth, did he stop creating jobs?

[CJCRANE]

32. Obviously not but he didn't need to be rich to *start* creating jobs..

he just needed a good idea and a receptive market.

[Buzz Clik]

33. So, I guess it would be safe to say that both the rich and the not rich can create jobs.

[CJCRANE]

35. Of course you're correct but the argument is slightly wider than that

as others have pointed out in this thread.

The RW meme is that the rich need tax cuts so they can use all that extra money to create jobs. That is patently false as we've seen over the last decade.

It's the middle class that needs spare cash in their pocket, otherwise there's no demand and hence no reason to create jobs that make/sell the products or services.

[sendero]

28. No..

.... his level of ethical behavior is way way below that of the ordinary guy.

[Buzz Clik]

30. Your judgment noted. Care to offer a comment on the subject at hand?

[sendero]

34. I already did.

.... the producer is no more or less integral to the production of jobs than the consumer. It takes two to tango and there is no tangoing going on right now because the consumer is tapped out and scared.

[PassingFair]

4. The fellow down the street who runs his heating and cooling company....

that employs 6 family members, 8 non-family office
and HVAC people and multiple independent contractors
creates a LOT more jobs that my wealthy sister-in-law,
who underpays a full-time nanny for her only child and
keeps a stable-hand for her horses.

Getting the premise now?

[Buzz Clik]

17. That wasn't the premise. The premise is that rich people do not create jobs, which is incorrect.

[CJCRANE]

21. If the middle class doesn't have disposable income to buy stuff

and services then there's no incentive to create jobs.

If the middle class has disposable income then anyone can create jobs.

[Buzz Clik]

22. No denying that. We're arguing different points.

[Aerows]

6. Which kind of jobs would those be?

Question: Do you live in the same neighborhood as the people you are creating jobs for, or do you live somewhere entirely different?

That is what differentiates job creators and slave owners/feudalism.

[Buzz Clik]

18. Nonsense.

I have a friend who owns a construction firm. He employs about 500 people. He is filthy rich and lives in a very upscale neighborhood. He pays all his employees quite well, but none of them could afford his house. Is he a slave owner? Are his employees serfs or indentured servants?

[PassingFair]

38. Are they all illegal Mexican workers?

You tell ME.

I've seen lots of serfs in Texas, working in the sun
at 2:00 in the afternoon.

[Buzz Clik]

42. I doubt that any are illegals.

It's an engineering firm, and many of the workers are degreed engineers plus a well-trained support staff.

However, I'm betting that all of them work in the sun in 2:00 in the afternoon.

[socialist_n_TN]

36. No, rich people do NOT create jobs............

In a market system like capitalism, DEMAND creates jobs.

How many rich capitalists, whether "self made" (also an oxymoron in most cases) or with inherited wealth (the vast majority) give people jobs out of the goodness of their hearts? NONE!

Again, in a market system DEMAND CREATES JOBS.

[B Calm]

37. DEMAND (consumers/customers) creates jobs!

[HereSince1628]

2. Demand creates opportunity to sell products, the rich invest in products to sell and make a profit

the productive capacity required to manufacture and market a product may or may not involve making a job in the home country of the rich. To the free-market cowboy capitalist, where something is made is not nearly as important as the cost of manufacturing and bringing to market.

One of the problems with classic "trickle-down" thinking required to believe that the rich create jobs, is that the trickling down isn't differentiated from the 'leaking-out and then trickling down' realities of global manufacturing.

Americans demand blue jeans in huge numbers. This should demand investment and job creation, and it actually does, but there are no longer any major brand blue jeans made in the US.

All investors make decisions based on maximizing profit on investment. A job creates productivity but also production costs, including labor cost. The productivity to cost ratio is maximized with cheap labor done in places where there are tax breaks and minimal or no environmental or safety precautions.

In my life I can remember major shifts in manufacturing first jobs going South, then jobs going to Mexico, and then jobs going to Asia and the sweat shop islands. In Cowboy capitalism, there are no fences on the economic range and money wanders all over chasing asymmetries that reduce costs and maximize profits for the investors.

The US Constitution gave Congress the power to create tariffs for a reason...they are necessary to controlling the 'leaking out.' If the leaking out is unregulated the barrel of money invested domestically goes dry and precludes the development and maintenance of domestic production, which ultimately results in crashing domestic production, collapsing domestic economies, deteriorating infrastructures and Detroit-sized ghost towns.

[Roadie70]

5. What you said...

:toast:

[WillyT]

7. HUGE K & R !!!

:kick:

[DCBob]

8. I have never understood that argument.. the RW keeps using it and somehow get away with it.

It makes no logical sense. Rich folks tend to hoard their wealth which is one reason they are wealthy in the first place and when they do spend they tend to spend it on high-end items that are often made overseas.. think Gucci, Mercedes, French wine, etc. If you want to stimulate the domestic economy.. give it to poor people.. they will spend it in a flash and mostly on local stuff.

[drpepper67]

40. A person with a family of 4

Making $20k a year probably mows his own grass, changes his own oil, washes his own clothes, doesn't own a pool, walks his own dog, doesn't have a nanny, ect.

Someone with a family of 4 who makes $250K a year probably doesn't mow his own grass. He pays someone to do it.

Someone with a family of 4 who makes $250K a year probably doesn't change the oil in his car, he pays someone to do it.

Someone with a family of 4 who makes $250K a year probably doesn't wash his own clothes, he sends them out to a laundry service.

Someone with a family of 4 who makes $250K a year probably doesn't clean his own pool. He pays someone else to clean it.

You can see where this is going.

Someone making $20K a year probably doesn't add to someone else's employment.

Someone making $250K a year probably helps keep many people employed.

You can argue with the numbers if you'd like, the idea's the same.

[patrice]

9. K&R!

[gtar100]

10. If taxing the rich kills jobs, why did we have a stronger economy, lower unemployment

rates, and a stronger middle class when they paid higher taxes?

What we need to recognize is that the rich do not want low unemployment *or* a middle class. It's not that they just don't care as long as they have what they want, they actually *WANT* high unemployment so they can take advantage of low wages.

It's certainly telling that they don't just come out and say it but instead use *our* concerns as the basis for their arguments: "job-killing"; "benefit their fellow humans"... look for it in every argument against liberal policies. They call government workers (those who actually work in service to our country and the world) parasites when in actuality they themselves fit the definition of "parasite"

Parasite: something that exists by taking from or depending on another

When we make less than a living wage from our labor, or are unable to find work at all, that difference goes to the rich. They are taking from us and are depending on our labor for their own benefit.

Think of it this way - if the people who lived off of investment income alone just disappeared one day, we would do just fine without their "contribution". But take away the workers and they have nothing but dirt to eat.

[lumberjack_jeff]

11. When I buy a car, I create a job. GM is merely the legal construct to facilitate that transaction.

I'm the buyer, I commission the construction of the car.

[starroute]

12. Higher taxes encourage companies to expand

Basically, money that is reinvested in a business isn't taxed -- because it counts as an expense. Money that is paid out to owners, CEOs, or shareholders is taxed.

So the higher the marginal tax rate -- on either these individuals or the business itself -- the more incentive to plow the money back into additional growth.

[moondust]

14. Delete

[MatthewStLouis]

13. The only people helped by tax cuts for the rich are GOP politicians and the rich!

This is why they push their trickle down theory so hard. That and it has a ring of truth. Let those rich people have all their money and they'll be hiring people like crazy (like during the great job boom of the last 10 years--ha ha ha!). The thing is, the super rich may be able to hire a few people. The well-to-do will probably invest in companies that are outsourcing jobs to China. And the small business people and entrepreneurs, won't have any more money than they did in the first place, since they already get tax breaks.

The job creators are the small business people and the big corporations. Small business people will directly benefit from tax cuts for the middle class/working class. Now the big corporations may hire in the US or overseas, depending upon their needs. So what we really need to do is give them an incentive to hire American. People also need incentives to buy American.

So the choice is simple: protect American businesses and workers with tariffs and stronger labor laws or thumb our noses at American workers, ignore working conditions in other countries, watch as companies ship more jobs overseas, minimum wages are lowered and America slowly descends towards a new feudal society. Take a look at wages in China. That's what your children will be making.

I apologize for rambling.

[Overseas]

15. K&R!

Such a pity that facts no longer matter.

Campaign funding trumps facts.

[liberal N proud]

19. K&R

[BR_Parkway]

24. "jobs create rich people.." when you consider that most people don't

get rich on their own but through the efforts of those they employ (outside of celebrities and the like) it's only fair to say that jobs create rich people.

If I have 10 employees that make me a profit of $10 each per day after all the other expenses, then 100 employees are going to make me $1000 daily instead of $100 - provided that some of the are engaged in selling my product so that there is constant demand.

[sendero]

27. Exactly..

... but the brainwashed moron masses have been fed this line of bullshit for so long they can't see past it.

The idea that Atlas comes along and creates everything out of thin air is so much mythological nonsense it boggles the mind.

The rich create jobs when there are markets to exploit, when they can turn some capital into more capital. Since Americans are pretty much tapped out right now, no amount of pandering to the rich is going to make them "create jobs", they will "create jobs" when they can make money by creating jobs and not before.

[fascisthunter]

39. the demand for products or services creates jobs

and the people working those jobs makes it possible to meet that demand. The folks claiming they create jobs are deluded.

[firehorse]

41. How many jobs has Paris Hilton created?

Yes the rich create a few jobs, but lets put this in perspective. If the rich could go back to a system where employees were slaves and worked for free they would. And to take it a step further, if they could find a way to grow their wealth even further without being dependent on people at all they would.

I'll believe the rich are interested in creating jobs when they show an interest in the working and middle class. If they did things like make their employees share holders, I'll believe the right wing propaganda.