The Obama Administration and its defenders have been on a six-year crusade to defame American business, and deny its function in American society as the primary creator of employment for the rest of us. The president himself has made stupid remarks like "You didn't build that", while the next Democrat expected to run for the presidency, Hillary Clinton, made pretty much the same absurd statement -- "Don't let anybody tell you that it's corporations and businesses that create jobs", which is an all-time head-scratcher.
I do know that for all of my life, I would never have had a single job, had not an
entrepreneur taken the chance and made an investment that provided
growth (and not always success) for them and a job for people like me.
That includes the different people who threw together a landscape company, a bowling alley and a woodworking shop that provided me employment between college semesters. It includes, in no particular order, people like the late Bob LaRose, the vision behind the company ATI and others later; Jesse Surles, the founder of the CPA firm for which I was the head of MIS in the 1980s; and the Malhotras, who created VMD, employing over 100 people last I looked.
It also includes some visionaries of the distant past, the founders of the Singer Company, Northrop Aviation, the Burroughs Corp., Grumman Aviation and others whose risks of decades past created immense firms providing employment for hundreds of thousands of Americans. At the other end of the size scale, it includes my wife and me, who started two companies in the past 35 years which provided over a dozen jobs.
These people -- even the two of us -- represent the scale and scope of American business, taking risks that clicked and risks that failed. By taking those risks to create value in products and services and growing demand for them, entrepreneurs have opened hundreds of millions of jobs for hundreds of millions of Americans -- even those not here legally.
So why is the Administration, aided by its associated Hillarys, blocking
them? Why do they take the extraordinary step of denying what the rest of us can see, that the American economy is built on entrepreneurship and leadership, and its success relies upon the capacity of risk-takers to create markets and hire the talent needed to bring them to fruition.
They do so because, friends, they're socialists, and they want it all without working for it. To concede a fraction of an inch to the success of the economy of the USA, they have to step away from their notion that all capital innately belongs to the Government; that all rights ultimately default to the Government; and that all good derives only from the Government. It takes, as Mrs. Clinton tries to insist, "a village", and that village is that benevolent one in Washington. That's the one that has me paying for dental insurance for children I don't have.
As I look back on my professional life and the odd variety of firms which have paid me a salary for services rendered, I see that, in every case, the position traced its creation back to an individual willing to take the risk and apply the vision needed to create a company capable of engaging employees. The USA looks up to these people; I look up to them for their success and appreciate what their efforts produced.
I also appreciate that the Government, at least prior to this administration, facilitated an environment in which they could create and grow, by doing what Government is supposed to do. It defended our shores to protect our existence and out livelihood. It oversaw interstate commerce to ensure a fair playing field. It developed and defended the medium of currency within which we operate.
But the Government didn't build the economy, and it creates employment only at a cost to the rest of us.
It is the entrepreneur whose creations produce economic growth, and whose risk-taking and investment and perseverance I salute today.
Yes -- you did build that and, yes, you did create jobs. For that, I thank you.
Copyright 2015 by Robert Sutton
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