Do corporations create jobs like God creates the universe? This has got to be the most asinine idea ever, and it is the foundation of the platform of the Republican Party in the American elections of 2012. They talk as though they really believe that corporations, or businesses, or entrepreneurs "create jobs." They teach this jackass nonsense to the world, and the world sucks it in. That's why the people are called "suckers."

No corporation or corporate manager or executive ever created a job. No inventor or entrepreneur ever created a job. No business owner ever created a job. No matter how many people they hired to do the work that was needed in order to provide their products or services, they did not create any jobs. All jobs are created by a need or a public demand for a product or service that is a basic need or a non-essential desire or "luxury." This is "Economics 01," to understand that tribal societies, or ancient clans or families met their needs for water, food and clothing and shelter by sharing the necessary labor. We call that "hunting and gathering" or "the dawn of agriculture." In all cases, human hands made the tools that were used to obtain what was needed: clubs, arrows, tools for starting a fire, vessels, tools for digging, collecting, cutting, storing, sewing, weaving, killing, eating. Then, inventing. Wheels, wagons, weapons, bows, swords, guns, machines for agriculture, manufacturing, warfare. But all the time, throughout human history, the inventor and the entrepreneur, the trader and investor, are people who benefit from their ability to organize the labor that must be done in order to produce a product or a service that the people truly need or desire.

Public demand and only public demand creates all jobs. Nothing is done to earn a profit unless a profit can be earned. Let's contemplate that principle with suitable intensity:

Nothing is done to earn a profit unless a profit can be earned.

That politicians and even public morons who think they are "economists" proclaim that investors will "create jobs" is a tragic commentary on the gullibility of the human mind. This is total garbage. It is destructive of human society, of clear thinking, of meaningful understanding of how a human economy operates. All economic activity grows out of human desires and human needs. The inventor does not invent a harvester only because he, or she, wants to make a profit, but because all inventors are driven by a desire to find a better way to do something that must be done - or that people want done.

We once harvested grains by the labor of individual men swinging a scythe. Most people know what a scythe is, because it is depicted as the tool carried by the "Grim Reaper" of death who symbolically "cuts people down" like the blades of grain in a field of wheat. There is a well-known Christian hymn called "Bringing in the Sheaves" which evokes the act of cutting the grain with a scythe and stacking it in "sheaves." Scythes were made even in the 19th century in the Town of Saxtons River, Vermont, where I lived for several years at the end of the 20th century. A man invented a "harvester," a machine drawn by a horse that cut and laid down the stalks of grain much faster than a single man swinging a scythe. I once swung a scythe. It feels heavy at first and one has to practice how to swing it efficiently, smoothly. The scythe works best when extremely sharp, and farmers or laborers who worked with a scythe to perform serious harvesting would carry a stone with them to assure that they could sharpen the blade whenever necessary. The scythe is swung with a perfectly repeated rhythm, very much like the pendulum of a clock, in order to minimize the strain on the muscles of the arm and hand. One can hear the blade "sing" softly as it slices through the stalks. If it sings loudly, one is probably not swinging the scythe properly; it is going to make the reaper too tired too soon. But all this hard, slow labor was changed with the invention of the harvester, which was soon improved and then powered by an internal combustion engine instead of a horse. This is and was only one of hundreds of thousands of inventions and developments that came to us through the "industrial revolution," through the machine age, when human labor was -- and still is -- constantly replaced by the mechanical advantages of machines and the central advantage of power provided by the fossil fuel for metal engines rather than the slow and limited fuel of food that drives the "engine" of a flesh-and-blood human body, or the body of a loyal but tired horse.

Current society is in deep denial, denial so deep the people and the economists are lost at the bottom of a drilled oil well. They cannot see anything because they are blinded by the continuous deceptions and self-deceptions of people who invent ridiculous ideas in order to protect their privileges and incomes. Machines replace human labor. This was felt as a threat and as an offense against society during the 1700s, when the "industrial revolution" was young and had barely begun to change the patterns of human communities. The workers put their shoes or "sabot" (in French) in the gears of a mill in protest of the fact that machines put people out of work. This action invented the English word "sabotage." Fewer laborers are needed when a machine is employed to do the work. Not only are fewer laborers needed, but the laborers who are needed do not need to be artisans or crafters who take pride in their work and the years of training that gave them their skills. Only "unskilled" workers are needed to operate factory machines and they can be paid less than those who have mastered an art or a craft. This is what has been going on since the beginning of the 18th century (1700s). People in business, in manufacturing or commercial or financial services, have been constantly paying engineers or inventors to design machines that perform the required operations faster, using less human labor, employing energy from falling water or steam or coal or oil or electric power, so that the work can be done faster and with less human labor. Because of this process, which we call proudly "the industrial revolution," most business men and investors really believe that the most important thing that must occur in society is to place limits on the cost of human labor, or even better, eliminate the cost of human labor. That is why "conservatives" and "Republicans" and other lunatics persistently engage in efforts to influence government in ways that will reduce the cost of human labor or eliminate the need for human labor.

Think about this again. Focus your mind on this inescapable reality:

Once you SEE and understand this central principle of our beloved "industrial revolution" you will see that the concept that businesses "create jobs" is totally ridiculous. The opposite is true. Businesses persistently devote their time, money and inventive genius -- and political influence -- toward the purpose of eliminating jobs! It is totally natural for businesses to do this in our "capitalist" economy, which is actually an "anti-social" economy, because one will frequently hear that the primary obligation of a business corporation is to make the maximum profit for the corporate shareholders. If that is the primary obligation of the corporation, then the primary obligation of the business corporation is, as it has always been, to eliminate jobs in order to reduce costs.

Consider, for example, my muddle-headed gullible jackass voter, the fact that the earliest business corporations were "plantations," and those who invested in these plantations sought immediately, after only a brief initial experience (in Jamestown, Virginia) to have the heaviest and dirtiest and hardest labor -- and also the most essential labor -- performed by slaves! That's right my self-destructive nitwit neighbor, business corporations used to and still would if they could have their human labor performed by slaves, so that the cost of labor would be almost nothing.

Visit any factory or watch How It's Made or Modern Marvels on your television. Machines produce the products we need and want, from hot dogs to toasters and beer and baseballs and shorts and cake mix, bridges and ships and oil drills, just about everything, so fast that the film has to be adjusted to slow motion in order for us to see how the machines make what people used to make with their own hands -- very slowly -- three hundred years ago.

And then, lastly, so that you can graduate from jackass fool voter to a master of Economics 01, public demand for a product or service means nothing, and accomplishes nothing, unless the public -- or the people -- have money, also called "discretionary income" that is available to spend on a new or unnecessary product or service. To state this scientific reality in a slightly different way: our economy is not driven by businesses who "create jobs," because jobs are created by public demand for a product or service, BUT, the economy is actually driven forward only if the people have the extra money to spend on the product or service that they want. If people have only enough money to pay for rent, food and clothing, then housing, food and clothing is all that they buy. Everything else: cars, boats, toys, tools, electronics, and on and on, everything that is made that is not food, shelter or clothing, sits on the shelves and all businesses go out of business. The economy does not only belong to you; you are the economy!

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