Businesses do *not* create jobs; please make a note of it

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The title of this post is one of the holiest shibboleths in the rhetorical arsenal of free-market capitalists. I never quite swallowed the associated line and sinker, and about 10 or 15 years ago I slowly started to disgorge the hook. With the stock market and worker productivity continually climbing to all-time highs, I said to myself, why do we so often have unacceptably high unemployment? And why are so many of the jobs that are available crapwork in the food and retail sectors that can't really support one householder, let alone a family? And furthermore, how can anyone claim that burgeoning corporations create jobs when every major acquisition or merger results in 10 or 20 percent of their combined workforces losing their jobs?

This recent Bob Herbert column from the Times is worth a careful read, especially, I think, to people who are confused about economics as reported by the corporate media. Herbert reports on comments by Boston economics professor Andrew sum:

The recession officially started in December 2007. From the fourth quarter of 2007 to the fourth quarter of 2009, real aggregate output in the U.S., as measured by the gross domestic product, fell by about 2.5 percent. But employers cut their payrolls by 6 percent.

In many cases, bosses told panicked workers who were still on the job that they had to take pay cuts or cuts in hours, or both. And raises were out of the question. The staggering job losses and stagnant wages are central reasons why any real recovery has been so difficult.

“They threw out far more workers and hours than they lost output,” said Professor Sum. “Here’s what happened: At the end of the fourth quarter in 2008, you see corporate profits begin to really take off, and they grow by the time you get to the first quarter of 2010 by $572 billion. And over that same time period, wage and salary payments go down by $122 billion.” 

What that means, Herbert says, is this: "Many of those workers were cashiered for no reason other than outright greed by corporate managers." And I'll append Herbert by stating my opinion that small businesses (which officially includes companies employing up to 500 people) are every bit as dirty as transnational corporations. Many do it even in good times by keeping the majority of employees working 30 hours or less, so they aren't entitled to full benefits; and also by basically putting them on call instead of giving them a reliable schedule. Those practices are especially egregious in big box stores and restaurants, based on my conversations with people who work there.

"What a surprising development!" we who have jobs may say to ourselves, going straight for the humorous irony angle. But doesn't this information nevertheless make you wonder why this disconnect between worker productivity and full employment isn't reported nationally at least on a weekly basis by the "liberal media"?

The sure knowledge that businesses do not create jobs --- when it transmutes beyond the point between irony and dawning outrage --- leaves a question in its place to answer. If businesses don't create jobs, then what do they create? Answer: profits for executives, period. It has been moving in that direction for decades, and now we're there. Shit: businesses barely even make anything any more --- they sub that out to the Chinese and the Indians (who of course are rapidly learning to sub the making of stuff out to the Fourth World).

Roaring 20s President Calvin Coolidge is often erroneously quoted as having vacuously said "The business of America is business." Even if had said that, as dumb as it is, it might still be thought to convey a generic fact about American corporate and individual industry. Today, not even Silent Cal's alleged dumb remark can hold water. Because today, the business of American is multi-level marketing schemes. Just like Amway. (Don't call them "pyramid schemes" because you might hurt their feelings.)

Incidentally, here's what calvin-coolidge.org tells us that the 30th president really did say:

The quote is really: "After all, the chief business of the American people is business." However, Coolidge goes on to say that, "Of course the accumulation of wealth cannot be justified as the chief end of existence."

And what are we to make of this statement by Herbert Hoover's predecessor:

We make no concealment of the fact that we want wealth, but there are many other things that we want very much more. We want peace and honor, and that charity which is so strong an element of all civilization. The chief ideal of the American people is idealism. I cannot repeat too often that America is a nation of idealists. That is the only motive to which they ever give any strong and lasting reaction.

The guy sounds like a fucking Obamunist to me! I say we dig him up and lynch him! Thank you for your attention to this matter.