"Job Creators" is just new code for "trickle down" economics

[NAO]

and every time they say it, and every time we say it, it reinforces the ideology that jobs and income proceed forth from the wealthy.

The expression "job creators" uses the word "creator" as in "endowed by their creator with inalienable rights", essentially deifying the 1%.

I'm not saying the phrase was literally coined with this exact intention (although it may have been by Frank Luntz or his ilk) but the functional effect is that every time the phrase is used it reinforces the idea that the 1% create jobs out of their surplus wealth and the whole supply side meme.

[baldguy]

1. "Trickle down" economics is when wealthy parasites piss on us & telling us it's raining.

It's just as much of a lie as saying that "job creators" are are those same wealthy parasites who have too much money to spend in several lifetimes, but still want their tax loopholes & tax cuts at the expense of everyone else. The REAL "job creators" are the middle-class & poor workers who are actual consumers.

[Sherman A1]

2. Precisely

[on point]

7. That's why the real name is tinkle down!

[saras]

3. Yep. Job creators are consumers with money to spend. Without businesses, they'll create craftspeople

[dkf]

4. Try starting and running a business with no capital or access to capital and tell us how it goes.

[Viva]

5. Wealth extractors vs. Job creators.

Or tax policy encourages people to extract money from companies instead of starting and growing them. The top tax rate is at least double the corporate rate, that is an incentive.

When top tax rates where over 90%, the government was basically enforcing a maximium wage. Re-enforcing that, at least temporarily, would be helpful.

Unless you are purchasing stock during an IPO, you are not investing in the company. They do not get the money. Most stock purchasing is buying shares from other investors. Giving a tax incentive (cap gains tax) to this type of income is perhaps one of the stupidest ideas ever. All income should be treated equally.

When I hear Mitt Romney refer to himself as a job creator I just scream. He has been sitting on a huge amount of money for sometime. How many businesses could he start tomorrow if he wanted to. He hire thousands by himself if he wanted. He continues to extract working capital for businesses through Bain capital. These businesses could all reinvest that capital back into their operations.

I don't see how this problem is fixed until the entire tax code is scrapped and a new one is written. If the government wants to incentivize things, they should be forced to send out checks. As it stands right now, you have to know to ask to get the incentive. This is why those who can afford tax advisers, get all these bene's.

[starroute]

6. There definitely is a religious intention behind it

It started with conservative Catholics advocating a doctrine of "wealth creation" as participating in the work of God. Here's something I posted at DU back in 2009:

http://old.mediatransparency.org/story.php?storyID=48

The Economic Religion of Michael Novak: Wealth Creation vs. the Gospel, as in Using Catholicism to Prop up Neoconservatism

In what in the preface he calls a theology of the corporation, Novak combatively takes on those who want to "humanize" the corporation, that "tiny minority of publicly owned firms" which "produce more than half of America's economic output." We read this supposed theology and ethics of corporate governance from cover to cover. It was impossible to find even the slightest echo of the Gospel or of the great teachings of the Popes of the last century in the book. . . .

In Novak's chapter on "Appeasement," his business ethics becomes clear. While it may be wrong for a CEO to be concerned about environment and children, it is explicitly "wrong today for executives to conceive of their job narrowly, merely in its business aspects, without paying attention to its political setting, and even more so, to its setting in the world of ideas." Above all, executives must never give in to pressure and respond in "appeasement" as the sad CEO did, who actually agreed to broaden "stock-option participation to unite the investment interests of workers with those of the corporation, open up paths of decentralized entrepreneurship for employee."

Novak's presentation of the "The Corporation as it Ought to Be" might have been a textbook on economics written by Machiavelli. He goes to great lengths to explain why there should have been no checks and balances on the power of a CEO. Power is what he most needs to do his job and power he must have: "Executives must be allowed to execute…They must be propelled to step forward to create wealth." . . .

In order to popularize this economics, Catholic neoconservatives advocated it in the name of John Paul II, even though their inspiration came instead from Adam Smith. They began to speak of wealth creation as a participation in the work of the Creator, as a participation in the eternal life of God.

[JHB]

8. Hey, don't you know tides rise from the top down?

Those yachts need plenty of water under them.

No, I don't think there's more... What do you mean "all boats"? Who cares? My awesome yacht's got water under it, let them get their own water! Damn socialists, wanting tidal handouts!

[JHB]

9. They are "Job Pillagers"...

...who think there is a Divine Right of Maximized Profit.

Never forget that "efficiency" (as defined by Wall Street) is about shooting money upward, not circulating it. There is a direct conflict between the needs of the economy and the needs of any particular business.

[DCBob]

10. The Rethugs love to hide behind that term to protect their wealthy constituents.

In reality their "surplus wealth" probably generates more jobs overseas since the 1% loves high priced imported products.

[L. Coyote]

11. "Trickle down" is just code for "Republicans can afford more booze now"

Not to mention the new yachts to drink it on!

[polichick]

12. Yet, middle class GOP voters fall for it every time.

[Populist_Prole]

13. As if supply creates its own demand

The best job creator is a customer spending their money that they've earned being gainfully employed.

Conservatives I argue with at work hotly deny this though. But then again, to hear them tell it, everybody in the working class is overpaid and that this costs them more for goods and services. Of course they think they don't get paid enough. Stupid and narrow, the lot of them.