George W. Bush this morning, at a speech to a conference at the New-York Historical Society:
"If you raise taxes on these so-called rich, you're really raising taxes on the job creators," he said at the conference, which was sponsored by the Bush Institute, which he opened after leaving office. "And if the goal is to create private sector growth, you have to recognize that the best way is to leave capital in the treasuries of the job creators."
Paul Ryan this morning, on MSNBC's Morning Joe:
"Let’s define rich," [Joe] Scarborough suggested. "So, what's the cutoff? Is it $500,000?"
"I don't even want to get into what the cutoff is because I don't think we should get into this definition," Ryan said. "But I'm not going to give you what I think is a rich person and what I think is not a rich person because you have to look at the fact that these are job creators."
And look where the granny starver is approaching the podium even as I type:
Romney/Ryan (which is the ticket no matter who's Romney's #2) = third Bush term -- at a minimum.
God, I hate this meme more than any other recent Republican meme. What jobs do rich people create, and how? They seem to be suggesting that it has to do with both investing and luxury spending, but then they also talk about it as though rich individuals hire people directly. Unless we're talking about the creation of jobs as butlers and valets, I don't think a single thing about calling rich people "job creators" holds up.
ReplyDeleteMoreover, it's pretty easily refuted by simple stats. Compare employment figures and corporate profits over the last 11 years. Are the corps really planning to create gobs o'jobs with the record profits they've been racking up, but only if Mitty gets inaugurated? Is that the explanation?
ReplyDeleteWhat a load. Give em hell, O.
The important distinction is that a wealthy individual CAN be a job creator, if they invest in startups or run a business that has a real workforce, but the vast majority are NOT. Unless, as flipyrwhig notes above, you are talking about household staff.
ReplyDeleteCalling the mega-wealthy 'job creators' is like calling mafia enforcers 'insurance adjusters'.
ReplyDelete