No, the rich aren't "job creators"

Posted on: Tue, 02/25/2014 - 10:53 By: Tom Swiss

Jobs are created when consumers are prosperous enough to purchase goods and services, not when rich assholes who gamed the system gamble their ill-gotten loot.

Challenging the myth of the job creator (baltimoresun.com)

A lot of his money came from being an early investor in Amazon. But MR. Hanauer does not think this makes him a job creator. "Amazon didn't create any jobs," Hanauer said in a recent Seattle Times interview. "Amazon probably destroyed a million jobs in our economy."

The way Mr. Hanauer sees it, leaders in our capitalist democracy need to account for the employment-killing side of the modern market where new technologies and efficiencies have eliminated old jobs and not created nearly enough new ones to replace them. In a controversial TED talk in 2012, Mr. Hanauer castigated policymakers who subscribe to the false faith that rich people and businesses will provide all the jobs we need, if only they do not have to pay much in taxes.