http://www.realclearpolitics.com/articles/2011/12/14/job_creators_fighting_back_112395.html Job Creators Fighting Back By John Stossel Some politicians claim that politicians create jobs. Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid says, "My job is to create jobs." What hubris! Government has no money of its own. All it does is take from some people and give to others. That may create some jobs, but only by leaving less money in the private sector for job creation. Actually, it's worse than that. Since government commandeers scarce resources by force and doesn't have to peddle its so-called services on the market to consenting buyers, there's no feedback mechanism to indicate if those services are worth more to people than what they were forced to go without. The only people who create real, sustainable jobs are in private businesses -- if they're unsubsidized. Some CEOs are upset that people don't appreciate what they do. So they formed a group called the Job Creators Alliance. Brad Anderson, former CEO of Best Buy, joined because he wants to counter the image of businesspeople as evil. When he was young, Anderson himself thought they were evil. But then he "stumbled into a business career" by going to work in a stereo store. "I watched what happens in building a business. (My store,) The Sound of Music, which became Best Buy, was 11 years (old) before I made a dollar of profit." In 36 years, he turned that store into a $50 billion company. Tom Stemberg, founder of Staples, got involved with the Job Creators Alliance because he's annoyed that the government makes a tough job much tougher. He complains that government mostly creates jobs -- that kill jobs. "They're creating $300 million worth of jobs in the new consumer financial protection bureau," Stemberg said, "which I don't think is going to do much for productivity in America. We're creating all kinds of jobs trying to live up to Dodd-Frank ... and those jobs don't create much productivity. Now, Stemberg runs a venture capital business. "I helped create over 100,000 jobs myself," he said. "Pinkberry and City Sports and J. McLaughlin are growing and adding employment." To do that, he had to overcome hurdles placed in the way by government. "All that we get is grief and more hoops to jump through and more forms to fill out and more regulations to comply with," complained Stemberg. "Fastest-growing investment segment in venture capitalism: compliance software," Compliance is the big word in business today. Every business has to have a compliance department. But resources are scarce, so these departments suck away creativity. It's one reason that these successful businesspeople don't think they could do today what they did in the past. Mike Whalen, CEO of Heart of America Group, said he got started with loans from banks that took a chance on an unknown: "It is not an underwriting standard that can be dictated by Dodd-Frank with 55 pages. It's kind of a gut instinct." But John Allison, who built BB&T Corp. into the 12th biggest bank in America, says that "gut instinct" is now illegal. "It would be very difficult to do what we did then today. It was semi-venture capital thing. The government regulations (today) are so tight, including setting credit standards, particularly since the so-called financial crisis and since they ... changed the credit standards in the banking industry, making it very hard for the banks to finance small businesses." These successful businessmen realize that in one way, they profit from the regulatory burden. They can absorb the costs. That gives them an advantage over smaller competitors. "Somebody who wants to compete with us can't because we can afford to hire the guys that can read this stuff and to keep us in compliance with the law. They can't," Anderson said. Politicians rarely understand this. One who learned it too late was Sen. George McGovern. After he left office, he started a small bed-and-breakfast and hit the regulatory wall he helped create. Later, he wrote, "I wish during the years I was in public office I had this firsthand experience about the difficulties businesspeople face. ... We are choking off business opportunity." Wish they learned that before leaving office.
It looks like they don't have all the members on board with gov regulation and spending. TOP ECONOMIC CONCERN:
They seem to have all their members on board with preserving the system of free enterprise, which they seem to feel is in jeopardy (as I do).
I'm getting very tired of the partisan media circlejerk that has infected this country. Righties bleat their propaganda, lefties bleat their propaganda, everyone is outraged over every little perceived slight against their ideology, the smallest statement by some journalist hack or political minion sends both sides into a frenzy of finger pointing and victimization screaming. I wish that it were possible to tune it out, but it's so all encompassing with the social networking and 24/7 media overload blitz that you'd literally have to live in a hole (mentally or physically) to avoid it. If the world is really coming to an end, regardless of what side of the political spectrum the eventual demise originates from, there's not a goddamn thing that myself or anyone else reading this can do about it. All the masturbatory anger and ranting will accomplish exactly dick, except taking precious time and energy from your life that would be better spent simply keeping your head down and carving out what little shreds of happiness you can in your very limited time on this planet.
It's about government spending not creating jobs and private sector spending IS creating jobs. This isn't just an ideological issue, it's one of where the country is really going to go if those ideological policies are actually followed.
I'm puzzled by the thread title. In what way are they 'fighting back'? It sounds like they formed a little club so they could cry on each others shoulders. barfo
Job creators have enjoyed record profits and worker productivity, low interest rates and relatively low taxes. Where are the jobs? Job creators can make jobs where ever they want; China, India, Mexico, etc.... At least with government jobs you know the job is here.
If you consider that government employs about 30 million people in country and U.S. companies outsourced about 2.5 million people in 2011, I'd argue the government is doing a better job of creating jobs than the "job creators".
your link shows 14,775,679 gov't employees. Where did the 80M come from? and I didn't see a line item for military. Is that not counted? That would add another few million (full and part-time)
Yeah, that should be 40 million, my bad. I'm including full, PT and FTE. Federal numbers aren't available for 2010 so I estimated 3 million for that plus 3 million for military.
I don't think you can add full, PT, and FTE. FTE is something akin to the sum of the full time plus (hrs worked per week/40) * part time. So either use FTE, or use fulltime+parttime. barfo
The FTE is just Full time (14M) plus the % of the Part-time (50% or so of the 4M), to equal 16M. You don't add them up. The salaries are easier to see. So there's 16M full-time equivalent employees, or 18M total full- and part-time, for a total of 70B per month, 840B per year or $51k per FTE.
I see. So the number is closer to 25 million. That's still a lot of teachers, police officers, fire fighters, soldiers, etc...
The government can take money from the private sector or it can borrow money or it can generate money to create jobs. The private sector can only do one of those things. Government creation of jobs is temporary and parasitic in nature, IMO. Ed O.
