The GOP loves to use the phrase "job creators" to describe businesses, especially small businesses. They claim that small businesses are hurt by excessive government regulation. I say that the greatest danger that small businesses face is a lack of government regulations to protect them from predatory corporate competitors! For a real eye-opener, visit my Listen Here! page. Add Comment In commenting on Mitt Romney's selection of Paul Ryan as his VP, John Boehner said that Romney and Ryan will “get the federal government out of the way of small business job creators.” I want to take exception to that on several levels. First of all, the greatest hazard that small businesses face these days is competition from giant corporate “job creators” or, to be more accurate, job exporters. Those giant corporate job exporters have been coddled by government for years. When I say government, I'm including the electeds of both parties, but especially the Republican party. The small business “job creators”, the people who actually do create jobs are another matter. For the most part, our electeds, especially Republicans, treat small business people exactly the same way they treat ordinary working people, they ignore them. Big corporations who have high-powered lobbyists are another matter, they get almost anything they want. Do they want to offshore our jobs? No problem! Do they want deregulation that gives them an unfair advantage in competing with small business? No problem! Does small business need regulatory protection from unfair corporate competition? Problem! Which brings me to this question: If the post Reagan implementation of Republican style “free” market economics for all these years hasn't helped small business, but has actually hurt small business by subjecting it to unfettered competition from mega corporations (can you say big box stores?), how will more of the same help? I think that the Republicans should come up with a new catch phrase, “job creators” has worn out its welcome! Many people say that Wall Streeters make their profits using “OPM, other people's money!” I like to say corporations and the top 1% make their money using OPS, other people's sweat! Many of the so called “job creators”, the people who the conservatives love to lionize as self-made geniuses that built empires based upon the popularity of this gizmo or that gadget made a large portion of their money off the hard labor of people working in what amounts to mega sweatshops in China. So called “patriotic” conservatives never question the obvious fact that the corporate job offshoring policies of those “heroes of industry” are decidedly unpatriotic acts that undermine American workers, American families, America's manufacturing infrastructure and the American economy! When one of those “innovators” decides to manufacture the next big thing overseas, especially one that will sell for a premium price, he is saying that squeezing out every single penny of profit is more important that the future of his country and the well being of his fellow citizens. That decision is an act of greed that borders on being anti-social and un-American. Our fighting men and women risk their lives to defend our country, but the arrogant “self-made” corporate slugs can't see their way clear to building their products here and insuring that when our veterans return they, like the rest of us will have jobs and a future. Though fortunes have always been made off the sweat of working people, innovators of the past like Henry Ford knew that their customer base had to be gainfully employed with well paying jobs to be able to afford their products. Today's breed of self-absorbed entrepreneurs who engage in scorched earth profiteering haven't learned that lesson. |


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