Demand

I find it difficult to believe sometimes that businessmen are conservatives.  I presume that today a good number of businessmen have taken economics classes in college.  They should understand that low income jobs actually are a detriment to business.
What drives an economy?  Very simply, it is demand.  In order for people to make stuff and sell stuff, someone has to want to buy it and be able to buy it.
The general theory lowering taxes on the wealthy seems to be that if we give the wealthy more wealth, they will create more jobs.  That is absolute hogwash.  No reputable businessman every created a job just because he had extra money.  He creates jobs because he has unmet demand, and he can make more money buy hiring another person.  The job pays for itself if there is more demand and his business model is good.
Conservatives like to say that government jobs are not of value in the economy.  Where do they get this drivel?  Its just government bashing.  Government jobs give to the economy just like other jobs do.  The people who do them buy stuff, creating demand.  Given that we have not invested greatly in infrastructure for many years, we could do worse than creating jobs to build roads, repair bridges, etc.  Those jobs would create jobs also for suppliers, etc.  Its all demand that drives the economy.
Where does the money come from?  Corporate welfare would be a good place to start.  Its many times more money that welfare for individuals.  Also, stopping fighting foreign wars would be a good place to start.
President Obama has not been perfect, but he has done overall a good job of getting the economy going again, despite the best efforts of the Republicans to thwart any good coming from his presidency.  If you want to see what austerity and tax cutting does to an economy, look at the disaster in Kansas where Governor Brownback has devastated that state.

About Me

I am retiring in about 3 weeks.  At that point I can express my political opinions freely without worrying about the effect on my job.
I plan to do so.
I am going to be 62 at the end of January.  I was born in Chicago, Illinois in 1953,  My father was a divinity student, studying to be a minister.
He was a fighter pilot in World War II, flying P-51s out of Wormingford, a base in East Anglia.  He thought the war was something that had to be fought, but also thought we should strive to find other ways to run the world.
His first church was in Norris, Tennessee.  We moved there in 1955.  He go involved in the integration movement in the south.  This was unpopular in rural Tennessee at the time, and with my mother's health problems and the threats to the family he moved to Gunnison, Colorado in 1959.
He remained a liberal, preaching frequently against the VietNam war and in support of social justice.
I am married to the love of my life, Zori.  She has shown me many things I did not know about social justice even with my liberal background.
Soon I will start writing on this blog about various political and social issues.
More to come...