The rich don’t create jobs

Anymore than Roman Cesar made roads, or Pope Julius II painted the Sistine Chapel. The right wing talking points defending the Bush Tax cuts center around not taxing the job creators, meaning the rich, which got me thinking, without filthy rich people, without a huge class divide, would everyone be unemployed? What about countries with a higher tax rate on the wealthy, like Norway, which has much higher taxes for the wealthy, yet only 3.3% unemployment?

The fact is the wealthy do not create jobs, they just control them. What I mean by that is that in a capitalist system demand is measured in wealth (rather than human needs which I think would be a better system), which means the more wealth you have, the more your demands matter, the more production is going to fit your demands. This is why the government needs to subsidies housing for the poor, but not the rich, because in the supply and demand market, the poor’s demand” for a place to live doesn’t matter, because they don’t have the money, the market won’t meet their needs, whereas the demands for an extra beach house in Malibu for the rich will always be met by the Markets. In any society there is going to be work that needs to be done, the question is for whose benefit. When you have a huge class divide, where the vast majority of the economy is controlled by a small class of rich people, then what you have is a small amount of rich people deciding what work is going to get done and who gets to have a job, and all of that is based on what it can do for their pocket books. Are the wealthy not giving people jobs because they don’t have enough money? Considering the rich are richer than ever in history I don’t think any one can make that argument. They aren’t giving people jobs because they can make more money by not giving people jobs, giving them more money is not going to change that, all its going to do is empower them and take away from other options that might give people jobs.

How would not giving people jobs make the rich more money? First of all, many consider it more profitable to invest money in derivatives, and other capital market schemes that don’t add to production at all, don’t give people jobs at all and are really just making money from risk. Second of all high unemployment helps the rich, if your company is growing, and you have 5 guys hired, before you hire a 6th guy your going to work the 5 guys as much as you can, you’ll make the 5 guys work harder before your going to hire the 6th guy, why? Because you can, they aren’t going to complain because there’s a 6th guy willing to take your job. 10% unemployment is a dream for the business class, because with 10% unemployment the threat of loosing your job will take away any bargaining power from employees, meaning employers can drive up productivity while keeping wages stagnant.

There are many things you can do to make jobs, one thing, what I wrote about before in another post, put workers representatives in the board room, I explained in the past post how that would make jobs. Another thing, a 4 day week, a 6 hour workday, without loss of pay, that way the rich will have to hire more people, productivity won’t keep going up in comparison to wages, just creating more and more wealth for the rich without seeing any of the extra wealth. Or you can give that money to the poor through tax refunds, unemployment benefits, supporting unions, social security, because the poor are going to spend that money, thus driving up production, they aren’t going to use that money in crazy dividend markets or just keep it, chances are they are going to move the market more toward their demands rather than just the demands of the rich.

Another thing you can do is build a strong public sector. The right wing always point to public sector jobs as not counting, why? If it’s productive and aids in the wellbeing of the country it counts, in my opinion more public hospitals more teachers, count much much more than more stock brokers. I say socialize the big industries, socialize the banks, and run them for the benefit of the nation rather than the benefit of the rich. Instead of having the big industries continue to outsource, socialize them, keep the jobs in America, and put it under democratic control rather than control by the rich. Have the banks lend out to small businesses, rather than make crazy bets for themselves while freezing credit.

The problem in America is that the rich control the economy, giving them more control isn’t going to magically make them worry about the unemployed, it’s not going to make employing more profitable for them, and the solution is to take that control away from them and give it to the people.