Henry Ford in 1888. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

How many jobs could a job creator create
If a job creator could create jobs?
How many jobs would a job creator create
If a job creator would create jobs?

A job creator will create jobs if and only if he/she can sell the manufactured goods/services for a profit. If there are no buyers who can afford to buy, there is no reason to hire anyone to produce the goods/services, no matter how low the tax rate.

Henry Ford was a famous job creator. Most people have heard how he paid his workers $5 per day so that they could afford to purchase the cars they built and that Ford sold. Most people have not heard the rest of the story. Ford hired most of the skilled workmen in the Detroit area, creating a labor shortage for other employers in the area who could not or would not match his high wages. Once the other employers in the area went out of business, Ford was able to lower the wages he paid, since his employees could not find other jobs in the area. It is employer abuses like that that lead to the formation of unions.

We want job creators to create jobs here in America for American workers. Those jobs must be jobs that pay well enough that American workers can afford to be consumers of American produced goods and services. Jobs are not good jobs if the workers can afford to buy only goods/services produced outside the US.

In her book Nickle and Dimed, Barbara Ehrenreich described working at Wal-Mart. Her wages were so little that she could not afford to shop there even with an employee discount. Those are not the jobs we need job creators to create. If wages were low enough, we could put everyone to work, but what would be the point? If the wages were so low that workers could not feed, clothe or house themselves without government assistance, then those jobs have little value to the workers or to society. Those jobs would represent a government subsidy to the employers, enabling them to pay lower wages.