[JohnInIndy]

The part about demand creating jobs seems to be lost on many. I am a small employer. When you cut my taxes, I don't just go out and hire someone. It's not my idea of fun, and it is not a good investment to hire someone you don't need. Right now, I'd probably find somewhere to squirrel my tax savings away in case things get worse.

However, if more people need my business, then I'll hire someone regardless of my taxes.

There comes a point where no matter how many employees you hire you don't make more money. I am at that point now. It's called diminishing returns. With what I'd have to pay for that employee I wouldn't make enough to justify the extra taxes, insurances and paperwork. Remember I have to pay WC for all employees. It doesn't come out of their pay it comes straight off the bottom line. I could even expand further into a lager facility. I can get the work for it easily. Why should I though? Just to employ more people with a ROI that isn't commensurate with the risks?

[jeffkrol]

There comes a point where no matter how many employees you hire you don't make more money. I am at that point now. It's called diminishing returns. With what I'd have to pay for that employee I wouldn't make enough to justify the extra taxes, insurances and paperwork. Remember I have to pay WC for all employees. It doesn't come out of their pay it comes straight off the bottom line. I could even expand further into a larger facility. I can get the work for it easily. Why should I though? Just to employ more people with a ROI that isn't commensurate with the risks?

Sure you could, just take a pay cut... Yea that "dang" insurance thing again... funny how it always nibbles at you....
Sounds like fear is inhibiting your own growth.

I can get the work for it easily. Why should I though?

Yes I understand that one of the worst things SMB can do is expand rapidly... usually results in complete failure at worst, a roll back at best. with luck someone would buy the pieces and you can retire....

[JohnInIndy]

Sure you could, just take a pay cut... Yea that "dang" insurance thing again... funny how it always nibbles at you....
Sounds like fear is inhibiting your own growth.
Yes I understand that one of the worst things SMB can do is expand rapidly... usually results in complete failure at worst, a roll back at best. with luck someone would buy the pieces and you can retire....

Jeff I can shut down today and retire. I keep going because first I still like what I do. I'm here before my first employee shows up and I lock up every night depending on which site I am at. Second I have 10 years left on the patent. Third 150 people would lose their jobs. Fourth 2 landlords in 2 states would have buildings that would be vacant for quite a while.

[shooz]

Milk the breasts of your customers for all you can get then?

[redrockcoulee]

Jeff I can shut down today and retire. I keep going because first I still like what I do. I'm here before my first employee shows up and I lock up every night depending on which site I am at. Second I have 10 years left on the patent. Third 150 people would lose their jobs. Fourth 2 landlords in 2 states would have buildings that would be vacant for quite a while.

Let me see if I have this right, you do not like government regulations or government or union run protection of workers but you use the government (patent office) to protect yourself from competitors? Should it not be the customer who decides if they want to buy your product or a knockoff? Seems like government interferring with the marketplace to me.

Do not get me wrong, I agree with patent and copyright protection. The question I have and not just of you is, why is it that it is the people who benefit the most from government (business, the rich and the powerful) that seem the most intent on taking government help away from the weak and the poor the most? Why is government bad or evil, except for those portions of it that aid the wealthy (or at least the better off)?

Should not the government be there for both the rich and the poor, the employer and the employee and for the healthy and the sick?

[GeneV]

There comes a point where no matter how many employees you hire you don't make more money. I am at that point now. It's called diminishing returns. With what I'd have to pay for that employee I wouldn't make enough to justify the extra taxes, insurances and paperwork. Remember I have to pay WC for all employees. It doesn't come out of their pay it comes straight off the bottom line. I could even expand further into a lager facility. I can get the work for it easily. Why should I though? Just to employ more people with a ROI that isn't commensurate with the risks?

Then giving you a tax cut would not seem to be a very efficient way to alleviate unemployment.

[Oso]

"Some believe that business creates jobs. The reality is that demand creates jobs." posted by Oso
"What I have put in bold in your statement is such a pile of manure.

Business creates demand. Look at the IPhone, the Ipad, No one really needs them. Apple created the demand with all the hype before they were ever put on sale. No one really knew a lot about the first IPod but there were tons of pre orders. Why? Apple hyped them. The goal of business is to make you want something even if you have no idea of what it will or can really do. It happens every day.

By the way, it wasn't just the import tariffs that kept jobs here. The US worker made a product that couldn't be beat. Now with robotics and technology you can put the machines anywhere and get almost the same level of quality. Those workers you do need will gladly work for a few dollars per day." Posted by JohnInIndy



A quick survey of almost any economics textbook will tell you that demand creates jobs. When the demand for a product or service exceeds the supply to provide it, a job is created. This demand, in turn, will create a business. A businessman will provide a means to fulfill the demand, and if the demand is great enough, will hire workers to help.

There have been plenty of businesses that have attempted to provide a product for which there is no demand. See many typewriters around lately? Even with what we “do” here, how strong are sales of film doing these days? Would be a pretty savvy businessman to start a typewriter factory today, right?

There is an incredible demand for cool electronic devices of almost any type. Apple is simply fulfilling an existing demand. This is why your example is disingenuous.


Yes, it was just import tariffs that kept jobs in America. American workers can and still do make a high quality product. But if we allow the top 1% to make the laws and tax policy and continue to bleed dry the American middle class; we will end up with slave labor, again.

Also, I would like to make a necessary distinction, that between small businesses and large corporations that call themselves small businesses. A small business is what most middle and upper-middle class Americans run, the backbone of the American workforce. Hardworking, dedicated and professional.

Then there are the large corporations that for tax purposes, are considered small businesses, those like IBM, Exxon mobil, etc. This is the code talk for Republican politicians. When they speak of small businesses, you hear “yourself”, but they mean “them”. Don’t be fooled. Listen carefully to the actual words they speak. This is why we use language, because words carry meaning and intent.

Businesses don’t create jobs; they actually try to stop them from being created. As has been pointed out, if there isn’t enough demand, there is no need for workers. Why hire someone if it won’t make a profit for the business? It would be like opening up a typewriter store…

What businesses need, is more customers! But customers need money to spend, and since we are all broke, we can’t buy anything, so we don’t become customers for your product. Demand falls, and thereby, here comes more unemployment, which means less money in the market, which further stifles demand and so on and so on…

Another reality is that tax breaks for rich people doesn’t create much demand. There aren’t a lot of rich folks, so all those boats they want really don’t add up to many jobs.

If you really want to stimulate the economy, you have to create enough demand, and the only thing that will do that is more money in the hands of the poor and middle class. They spend almost all of their money on goods and services. Increase the minimum wage by a couple bucks and there will be lots of stimulus. Just like Mr. Ford said, “Make the best product, at the lowest cost, while paying the highest wages possible." See, he understood that if he wanted to sell a lot of cars, so he could make a lot of money, he needed to pay his workers enough to be able to buy one!

[redrockcoulee]

Oso

it is true that demand creates jobs. But it is also true that business is often the best one for creating products to fulfill that demand and to use advertisement to tell people that there is a product that they should be wanting. And government to supply for the demand for what business cannot or will not like protection for patents, fire fighting etc. And workers are needed to work for both government and business to make the products/services that those are providing as businessmen themselves can only make so much product a day on their own. Then workers go out and purchase those goods and services creating more demand.

What type of economy currently exist with only businessmen/businesswomen? How successful would it be? The only real reason to be having a discussion on who or what is needed for the economy is that it has been a wedge issue created by those who want a bigger piece of the pie rather than a piece of a bigger pie.

When I was growing up my parents ran a relatively unsuccessful small business. Many others in the small town were relatively better off and some were much worse off. I sometimes wished that we could have the trips that the better off families had but never once wished for them to lose that ability so they would be more like us. And never looked down on the poorer people, kids growing up in a house without running water for example, but may have felt sorry for them.

By the way Oso there have been camera manufacturers that have started up in the last decade making strictly film cameras. Large format wooden field cameras but there is a demand for them not being totally met by the second hand market nor the existing manufacturers. These new companies would not exist if there were no demand for the cameras NOr would they exist if there was neither the businessman who took the chance starting and operating the company nor workers for him to employ. Or the infrastructure to ship the product from his place of business to where the customer lives.

[Oso]

You seem to be making my points for me! I do try not to get into the fine details of economics, because that is where the spin starts and we digress into pointless points of pointlessness and useless aruging. As you say, there still exists a demand for film cameras, and that demand is being filled by daring businesspersons...but what about the typewriters???

[GeneV]

To a point, business can stimulate demand with advertising. I never thought I "needed" a BlackBerry until I had one. Friends feel the same way about the more advanced smartphones, and they are probably right. Nevertheless, if purchasers don't have jobs or money, it doesn't matter how much one feels one needs a product other than a life necessity.

[redrockcoulee]

You seem to be making my points for me! I do try not to get into the fine details of economics, because that is where the spin starts and we digress into pointless points of pointlessness and useless aruging. As you say, there still exists a demand for film cameras, and that demand is being filled by daring businesspersons...but what about the typewriters???

No, you made your points very well yourself

[Oso]

thank you for saying that. Being new to this community, i would just like to say what a refreshing change it is to be able to have a civil discussion, about anything let alone politics and unions! For too long, we have allowed those that peddle fear to control are lives and actions, making us afraid of each other because of our differences. Their overreach is that it is our differences that make us strong, we just need more people to wake up to that fact.
and thanks again for welcoming me to your forum.

[Nesster]

To a point, business can stimulate demand with advertising. I never thought I "needed" a BlackBerry until I had one. Friends feel the same way about the more advanced smartphones, and they are probably right. Nevertheless, if purchasers don't have jobs or money, it doesn't matter how much one feels one needs a product other than a life necessity.

However, this conservative take on progress doesn't give enough credit to the inevitable move of luxury curiosity to mainstream discretionary item to commodity: e.g. the automobile, the calculator, the digital camera, the mobile telephone and the wired telephone before that... I could see the old folk in Babylonia complaining about these newfangled tablets with writing on them...

Marketing itself is a business, and Americans have pioneered it and still are tops in the world at it. Planned obsolescense of course is a marketer's and manufacturer's wet dream.

The issue is that so many have (or hope to have) their hands in our pockets while at the same time the trend for the last 30 or so years has been to put less money in those pockets. AKA wage stagnation, AKA income redistribution to the wealthy, AKA offshoring of jobs.

The supply side/Repbulican analysis is that you can't get blood from a rock when it comes to business and government - ie. taxes to pay for programs and redistribution... but this ignores that at some point you can't get blood from a rock when it comes to the consumer/taxpayer/citizen either. Taxation and the burden of society has been moved to the middle class at the same time the middle class has been (relatively) robbed to fund big business and the wealthy, and to support an increasingly unsupportable health care complex.