The REAL Job Creators (A Bastille Day Message)

Like Mike Myers from the Halloween movies, the Bush tax cuts on the wealthy -largely responsible for our current deficit- still live to strike again despite the attempts to kill them.  Yet again, we hear from the GOP that our nation dare not raise taxes on the "job creators," which is their term for the super-rich.

This phrase is one of the perfidious Orwellian slogans preferred by the Right, almost as nefarious as "right to work."  In case you haven't heard, the wealthiest one percent of American society has seen its after-tax income increase by almost three hundred percent.  Despite the economic pain being felt by most of the population, corporate profits are soaring.  It seems that the "job creators" are doing better than ever, but they still haven't waved their magic wands and created more jobs.

The reason is simple: they make money by NOT creating jobs.  Without a strong labor movement corporations are free to make workers toil harder for less money.  They ship the jobs overseas to make more loot and pocket the difference as profit.  Giving them even more money and expecting jobs to magically appear is just about as feasible as turning lead into gold.  You would think that the experience of the last thirty years in this country would have taught our politicians this, but there's no use reasoning with ideological fanatics.  In their minds taxes on the wealthy are evil, and their plutocratic benefactors bribe them with millions in campaign donations to keep it that way.

There are real job creators in this nation, and they are regular folks like you and me.  If the average member of the middle class is doing well, they can spend money on goods and services, reducing supply and driving up demand.  The corporate overlords hoarding their dough have an incentive to hire more workers if it looks like they can move more product.

When a middle class person can afford to buy a new car, they are a job creator.  When they purchase a new home, they are a job creator.  When they can go shopping more often and spend a little more money, they are a job creator.  When they can afford to take a vacation, they are a job creator.

And not only that, government can actually create jobs more efficiently than corporations.  One thing dragging down the economy is the spate of layoffs of teachers, cops, and firefighters around the nation as state and local governments cut jobs.  The scrapping of public works projects has cuts of thousands of the "private sector" jobs that conservatives are so obsessed with "creating."  To take the money that could be used to keep these jobs or even expand them, and instead hand it over to barons of capital to throw onto their growing piles of idle lucre isn't just immoral, it's downright moronic.

On this Bastille Day, let us remember the motto of the French Revolution: "Liberty, Equality, Fraternity."  For too long we have neglected equality, and no true democracy that does so can long survive.