"No!" he says, followed by a little chuckle, "We're the job creators." David Koch holds two of his gnarly fingers up on each hand to put air quotes around 'job creators', and then all in attendance give a big laugh.
I was listening to some republicans this morning going on, and on, about the job creators and how we should not raise the taxes on those who make a lot of money. Their reasoning was that the taxes would take away from their ability to hire workers, to create jobs. They said that if we don't make the Bush tax cuts permanent, the uncertainty would keep small businesses from creating all those new jobs. That is bullshit. I owned a small, very small, business for three years. In that time I never once made a hiring decision based upon what I paid in taxes. It never even crossed my mind. I made each and every hiring decision based upon how much help I needed, how busy we were, upon how damn hard it was for me to do things without some help.
Let me make it a bit more simple for those who still don't get it. If a man and woman make fifty thousand dollars per year, have two children, and they get a three percent tax break or $1500 less that they have to pay in taxes, they will spend every penny of that money. If a rich man makes 100 million dollars per year, but only spends ten million per year to keep up his lifestyle, and he gets a three percent tax cut, giving him an extra three million dollars, he will still spend only ten million dollars that year. Not one job will be created by the rich man, but many will be created by the money the middle class family spends.
Now if you really want to help foster small businesses, and help start new ones, give us universal health care. The scariest thing about starting a small business, and leaving your cushy corporate job, is the fear of not having health insurance.
I agree with you 100%. Couldn't have stated it better. Thank you.
ReplyDeleteI literally guffawed out loud (gol) at your intro!! So true. Ed and I never base our hiring decisions on our taxes. It is based solely on need for help which is based on how busy we are which is based on how good the economy is which is (partly) based on how well the middle class families are doing...
ReplyDeleteI think if you are Republican you should pay double the tax of everyone else.
ReplyDeleteYou must have had a very tiny business, then, because most mid-sized 'small' businesses (who actually generate long term jobs with benefits for their employees as opposed to short-term, unlivable-minimum-wage jobs like I assume your business created) absolutely make their hiring decisions based on taxes and liability. If there's uncertainty in the market, jobs go uncreated.
ReplyDeleteYou're not as hot as Rachel Maddow.
ReplyDeleteanonymous, I think you are very wrong and are just parroting what you hear on Fox News.
ReplyDeleteYou are so right Alan and Anonymous is obviously one of the brainwashed repubs. Since no one that I know who reads your blog makes 100 million, I can only assume that Anon. is on the side of "the rich get richer and the poor (or middle-class)can go to hell". Of course the wealthy should pay more in taxes! They have made their wealth on the backs of the poorly paid laborers and tax loopholes their "bought" congressmen have made for them! I never understand people who are middle-class and struggling going along with the republican ideology.
ReplyDeletePeggy, they use fear.
ReplyDeleteThe job creators have had great tax break since the early Bush years, so where are those jobs?
ReplyDeleteThey so called "job creators" take their capital gains and profits and invest in foreign banks and companies farming their production overseas where wages are not enough for people to barely live. (....not from the same anonymous as above, obviously)