Republicans today hold an outrageous respect for the people they deem “job creators.” By job creators, they mean the executives and leaders of companies that hire people, pay taxes on salaries, and generate wealth. Republicans see them as the key to recovering our economy and finding prosperity for the future. They go so far as to say that any obstacle placed in front of a job creator is necessarily bad.

That's the life!

The true obstacle to improving not just the economy but the state of the nation too, are Republicans who unquestioningly believe that these top capitalists will solve everyone’s problems. They falsely equate capitalism with growth and ignore corporate social responsibility. It is dangerous thinking, and it is cemented into the GOP.

The notion that corporations will do what is best for the people is laughable. Corporations are bound to their boards and shareholders, who care entirely about profits and absolutely nothing about the number of people on a jobroll. Managers are rewarded for cutting costs to improve profits; no one gets a reward for employing the most people. Therefore, these job creators are incentivitzed to innovate and do the same amount of work with fewer people. Unemployment rises.

The pursuit of profits raises the uncomfortable question of how much profit is enough? Large companies that pull down billions in profit each quarter seem like they could be hiring more people to help out with the nation’s weak economy. Companies that make smaller profits are chastised for keeping too many employees on the payroll. Shareholders demand downsizing to increase their dividends. Unemployment rises.

The only real way to get companies to hire is to increase the potential size of their markets. If a company believes that there is potential, they will bring on more people to tap it. In order to improve the domestic market, more people need to be employed. The cycle is obviously vicious.

Furthermore, corporations have a nasty reputation for hiding information, lying to consumers, destroying the environment, and scamming people out of money. Republicans today argue against regulation to prevent these abuses — an obstacle to growth, they say — yet these are abuses that would never occur if Republican idealism was true in the first place. The facts: Republicans are dominated by job creators, who are brainwashing their constituencies into believing that they are really working for the people. Unfortunately, too many conservatives are actually buying their greasy sales pitch.