Henry Blodget | Dec. 12, 2011, 10:38 AM | 187,589 | 444
Image: 60 Minutes
America's real job-creators...who can't afford to create any jobs.
In the war of rhetoric that has developed in Washington as both sides blame each other for our economic mess, one argument has been repeated so often that many people now regard it as fact:
Rich people create the jobs.
Specifically, entrepreneurs and investors, when incented by low taxes, build companies and create millions of jobs.
And these entrepreneurs and investors, therefore, the argument goes, can solve our nation's huge unemployment problem — if only we cut taxes and regulations so they can be incented to build more companies and create more jobs.
In other words, by even considering raising taxes on "the 1%," we are considering destroying the very mechanism that makes our economy the strongest and biggest in the world: The incentive for entrepreneurs nd investors to build companies in the hope of getting rich and, in the process, creating millions of jobs.
Now, there have long been many problems with this argument starting with
- Taxes on rich people (capital gains and income) are, relative to history, low, so raising them would only begin to bring them back in line with prior prosperous periods, and
- Dozens of rich entrepreneurs have already gone on record confirming that a modest hike in capital gains and income taxes would not have the slightest impact on their desire to create companies and jobs, given that tax rates are historically low.
So this argument, which many people regard as fact, is already flawed.
But now a super-rich and super-successful American has explained the most important reason the theory is absurd, while calling for higher taxes on himself and people like him.
Image: National Taxpayers Union
THE TRUTH ABOUT TAX RATES: Click to see how low today's really are.
The most important reason the theory that "rich people create the jobs" is absurd, argues Nick Hanauer, the founder of online advertising company aQuantive, which Microsoft bought for $6.4 billion, is that rich people do not create jobs, even if they found and build companies that eventually employ thousands of people.
What creates the jobs, Hanauer astutely observes, is a healthy economic ecosystem surrounding the company, which starts with the company's customers.
The company's customers buy the company's products, which, in turn, creates the need for the employees to produce, sell, and service those products. If those customers go broke, the demand for the company's products will collapse. And the jobs will disappear, regardless of what the entrepreneur does.
Now, of course entrepreneurs are an important part of the company-creation process. And so are investors, who risk capital in the hope of earning returns. But, ultimately, whether a new company continues growing and creates self-sustaining jobs is a function of customers' ability and willingness to pay for the company's products, not the entrepreneur or the investor capital. Suggesting that "rich entrepreneurs and investors" create the jobs, therefore, Hanauer observes, is like suggesting that squirrels create evolution.
(Or, to put it even more simply, it's like saying that a seed creates a tree. The seed does not create the tree. The seed starts the tree. But what creates the tree is the combination of the DNA in the seed and the soil, sunshine, water, atmosphere, nutrients, and other factors that nurture it. Plant the seed in an inhospitable environment, and it won't create anything. It will die.)
So, then, if what creates the jobs in our economy is, in part, "customers," who are these customers? And what can government policy do to make sure these customers have more money to spend to create demand and, thus, jobs?
The customers of most companies, Hanauer points out, are ultimately the gigantic middle class — the hundreds of millions of Americans who currently take home a much smaller share of the national income than they did 30 years ago, before tax policy aimed at helping rich people get richer created an extreme of income and wealth inequality not seen since the 1920s.
She'd like to create jobs. But she can't afford to anymore. Click to see how extreme inequality has gotten.
The middle class has been pummeled, in part, by tax policies that reward "the 1%" at the expense of everyone else.
(It has also been pummeled by globalization and technology improvements, which are largely outside of any one country's control.)
But, wait, aren't the huge pots of gold taken home by "the 1%" supposed to "trickle down" to the middle class and thus benefit everyone? Isn't that the way it's supposed to work?
Yes, that's the way it's supposed to work.
Unfortunately, that's not the way it actually works.
And Hanauer explains why.
Hanauer takes home more than $10 million a year of income. On this income, he says, he pays an 11% tax rate. (Presumably, most of the income is dividends and long-term capital gains, which carry a tax rate of 15%. And then he probably has some tax shelters that knock the rate down the rest of the way).
With the more than $9 million a year Hanauer keeps, he buys lots of stuff. But, importantly, he doesn't buy as much stuff as would be bought if that $9 million were instead earned by 9,000 Americans each taking home an extra $1,000 a year.
Why not?
Because, despite Hanauer's impressive lifestyle — his family owns a plane — most of the $9+ million just goes straight into the bank (where it either sits and earns interest or gets invested in companies that ultimately need strong demand to sell products and create jobs). For a specific example, Hanauer points out that his family owns 3 cars, not the 3,000 that might be bought if his $9+ million were taken home by a few thousand families.
If that $9+ million had gone to 9,000 families instead of Hanauer, it would almost certainly have been pumped right back into the economy via consumption (i.e., demand). And, in so doing, it would have created more jobs.
Hanauer estimates that, if most American families were taking home the same share of the national income that they were taking home 30 years ago, every family would have another $10,000 of disposable income to spend.
That, Hanauer points out, would have a huge impact on demand — and, thereby job creation.
It's time we stopped mouthing the fiction that "rich people create the jobs."
Rich people don't create the jobs.
Our economy creates jobs.
We're all in this together. And until we return to more reasonable tax policies that help the 99% instead of just the 1%, our economy is going to go nowhere.
