Consumers, Investors Share Same Responsibility as Job Creators

Amidst the cacophony of political rhetoric that has assailed our ears over the past months has been the label "job creator." It’s a label used most often, if not exclusively, by Republicans and those to the right of center, originally to describe small business owners beset by too many regulations but more recently applied to those with the means to invest in corporations but threatened with changes in the tax code.

My response to the label and its application was mild offense and anger. My observation of people who have the means to invest in corporations has not been that they do so to create jobs — especially American jobs.  They invest to make money from their investments. They want profits — and the sooner the better.  Investors create money managers and hedge fund managers who do what is necessary to create as great a return as possible for the investor; which means that if a corporation can make a greater profit by using foreign labor, then so be it.  Jobs created, but not here.

My observation has been that businesses fail for lack of customers, not investors.  One can invest billions in a product, but if no one buys the product the company is doomed. On the other hand, the history of business is replete with stories of corporations begun on a shoestring and because they had customers, growing hugely.

I was enjoying my self-righteousness certainty about the mis-application of this label "job creator" until one day it occurred to me that as a consumer I really act no differently than the wealthy investor, I so smugly dissed.

Like the investor, I try to attain the greatest amount of goods/return with the resources at my disposal. And here was the discomforting truth — I am every bit as willing to spend/invest my money in support of foreign labor as any one else.  In other words, if the shirt made in Taiwan was less expensive than the one made in the U.S., I bought the one made abroad without a twinge of conscience.  In fact, I was glad I got a "good buy."

So the lessons for me are these:

First, we are all job creators. We all choose to use our resources in one way or another. Very few of us are so aware, informed and rigorous in our spending/investing that we can justifiably condemn others.  Where, how and for whom we create jobs is our decision.

Second, if we really do care that those around us are supported through employment or their own enterprises, we should shop as locally as possible.  This means visiting farmers’ markets and/or becoming a "locovor."  It means when it comes to a birthday present, thinking about what’s available in town. It means buying local products, Wisconsin products, U.S. products if possible.  And most radically, it means seeing if our mutual funds, our 401(b) or other retirement accounts — if we have such—can be invested in companies closer to home.

I am, in the final analysis, a job creator. And as such have a responsibility to use my resources as wisely and ethically as possible.  Some times good sense costs a few cents.