This page was last updated on October 19, 2012.
So You Want to Create Jobs? Study This…One Graphic, 10,000 Words; Carl Davidson; Progressive Democrats of America – PA 12th CD Chapter; October 16, 2012.
You can learn more about BCR’s leftster management here.
Mr. Davidson posted the subject graphic (“The Truth About Job Creation”) with the following comment: “Jobs are created by enhancing DEMAND, not cutting taxes. Study this for starters…”
Consider this speech excerpt: “The final and best means of strengthening demand among consumers and business is to reduce the burden on private income and the deterrents to private initiative which are imposed by our present tax system — and this administration pledged itself last summer to an across-the-board, top-to-bottom cut in personal and corporate income taxes to be enacted and become effective in 1963.” Who was this right-wing extremist? JFK, speaking to the Economic Club of New York on December 14, 1962. While Mr. Kennedy didn’t get everything right in this speech, he got pretty close in his discussion of tax-rate cuts.
In fine print at the bottom of the graphic you’ll find the source for the graphic’s data is the “Political Economy Research Institute at the University of Massachusetts.” PERI is a leftist “independent unit” of UMass - Amherst whose job appears to be the production of “studies” to support policies championed by leftist organizations like the misnamed Center for American Progress. I don’t know the source of PERI’s funding. The PERI paper serving as the graphic’s data source appears to be “CLEAN ENERGY INVESTMENTS FOR THE U.S. ECONOMY: RESEARCHING THE EFFECTS ON EMPLOYMENT OPPORTUNITIES AND ECONOMIC GROWTH; A DISCUSSION PAPER FOR 3/22/10 CONFERENCE, Surdna Foundation, New York City.”
Even if the graphic’s content were correct (unlikely), so what? The whole premise is based on the belief government following a political agenda knows how to invest/save/spend paychecks more productively than the millions of families who earn them. Would you let your politics guide how you invest your paycheck? Pittsburgh is a poster child for this kind of thinking. Among recent failures were the taxpayer-subsidized Lazarus and Lord & Taylor department stores in downtown. When a business won’t build a department store in downtown Pittsburgh with its own money, most of us would pay attention. Unfortunately that wasn’t the case for government officials spending someone else’s money (our taxes). At the federal level, at least four “green” companies (Solyndra, A123 Systems, Ener1, Abound Solar) subsequently filed for bankruptcy after receiving hundreds of millions of dollars in federal loan guarantees paid for by you and me.
Here’s the bottom line. Increase effective individual freedom and we the people will know what to do.
In Peace, Friendship, Community, Cooperation, and Solidarity. <g>
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