Posted on 11/30/2013 11:16:07 AM PST by SeekAndFind
As America struggles with high unemployment and record inequality, everyone is offering competing solutions to the problem. In this war of words (and classes), one thing has been repeated so often that many people now regard it as fact.
"Rich people create the jobs."
Specifically, by starting and directing America's companies, entrepreneurs and rich investors create the jobs that sustain everyone else.
This statement is usually invoked to justify cutting taxes on entrepreneurs and investors. If only we reduce those taxes and regulations, the story goes, entrepreneurs and investors can be incented to build more companies and create more jobs.
This argument ignores the fact that taxes on entrepreneurs and investors are already historically low, even after this year's modest increases. And it ignores the assertions of many investors and entrepreneurs (like me) that they would work just as hard to build companies even if taxes were higher.
But, more importantly, this argument perpetuates a myth that some well-off Americans use to justify today's record inequality — the idea that rich people create the jobs.
Entrepreneurs and investors like me actually don't create the jobs -- not sustainable ones, anyway. Yes, we can create jobs temporarily, by starting companies and funding losses for a while. And, yes, we are a necessary part of the economy's job-creation engine. But to suggest that we alone are responsible for the jobs that sustain the other 300 million Americans is the height of self-importance and delusion.
So, if rich people do not create the jobs, what does?
A healthy economic ecosystem — one in which most participants (especially the middle class) have plenty of money to spend.
(Excerpt) Read more at businessinsider.com ...
Drivel.
Cut regulation and government; and job creation will soar.
Income inequalities will also narrow; more people on the lower end will be able to rise.
what a doofus. This twit is a red diaper doper baby….born with the spoon up his lester so far it addled his brains. Rich people like him don’t create jobs because they live off of the wealth their parents created… you know like the Kennedys
The sum total of which makes the profit margin smaller, thus inhibiting growth.
IMO
At best, a sophomoric view of economics. At worst, pure delusion.
Careful. Does this violate Henry’s permanent ban from the securities industry?
A decided undercurrent of self-loathing...
The homeless guy down the street is creating jobs all the time!
One thing for sure is poor people create ZERO jobs.
Blodget is an idiot. Does he think welfare recipients create jobs?
Yes.
Anytime one is reading anything in which a particular "ecosystem" or "community" or "lifestyle" or type of "activism" is pitted against another--then one can immediately move on to reading something else.
Of course he does. These leftists think unemployment checks boost the economy.
Early LifeBasically, this guy had one career-making call back in 1998 that he parlayed into a Wall Street career that lasted two or three years. The firm he worked for blew itself up five or six years later.Blodget was born and raised on Manhattan's Upper East Side, the son of a commercial banker. He attended Phillips Exeter Academy and received a Bachelor of Arts degree in History from Yale University. After college, he taught English in Japan, then moved to San Francisco to try to be a writer while supporting himself by giving tennis lessons. He was also a freelance journalist and a proofreader for Harper's Magazine.
In 1994, Blodget joined the corporate finance training program at Prudential Securities, and, two years later, moved to Oppenheimer & Co. in equity research. He became famous in October 1998, when he predicted that Amazon.com, an Internet stock which had been a public company for a year then trading at $240 and which many on Wall Street were bearish on, would hit what many considered an outrageously bullish one-year price target of $400. Three weeks later Amazon zoomed past it gaining 128%.
This call received significant media attention, and, two months later, he accepted a position at Merrill Lynch, where he earned as much as $12 million a year. In those days he became a media celebrity and frequently appeared on CNBC and other similiar shows. In early 2000, days before the dot-com bubble burst, Blodget personally invested $700,000 in tech stocks, only to lose most of it in the years that followed. In 2001, he accepted a buyout offer from Merrill Lynch and left the firm.
Fraud allegation and settlement
In 2002, then New York State Attorney General Eliot Spitzer published Merrill Lynch e-mails in which Blodget gave assessments about stocks which allegedly conflicted with what was publicly published. In 2003, he was charged with civil securities fraud by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission. He agreed to a permanent ban from the securities industry and paid a $2 million fine plus a $2 million disgorgement.
He then got caught talking out of both sides of his mouth and got banned from the securities industry for life.
Entrepreneurs create jobs, bureaucrats generally don’t. Investors may create jobs, tax increases don’t. Enterprising poor people can create jobs starting with themselves, regulators can and frequently do stop jobs and may destroy them. Rich people have the capital to be investors and may support entrepreneurs and may hire poor people to do the jobs that they don’t want to do themselves. Government, regulations and increased taxation have a strong tendency to reduce all of the above if not kept in check!
Which side of this divide does our current government fall on?
Sorry Henry... you’re a dumba$$.
Well, they create government jobs. The more people on welfare, the more bureaucrats are needed to administer the programs.
... and Henry Blogett’s paycheck is signed by a penniless vagabond?
What we have seen is this country is a collapse of small business wealth, and a narrowing of investment wealth. What we see from the government is a complete waste of wealth, wealth that is needed elsewhere. Take the billions wasted on green energy failures, or the money wasted on Obama’s Democratcare. Can anyone argue that the money the government is wasting couldn’t go to better use in the hands of investors or small business entrepreneurs? How about the money going to Iran? Couldn’t that be better spent in our private sector? It isn’t just a question of how much taxes hurt investors, but a matter of what big government is doing with the money. Big government hurts everyone.
In his world, companies magically appear. His argument begins with companies that just magically appear. Sorry....he gets an F on this.
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