Rhetoric aside, since when do businesses care about job creation?

Romney in September, in a speech
detailing a 59-point job creation proposal.
(AP photo)

COMMENTARY | January 11, 2012

 Henry Banta points out that corporate leaders’ goal is to make a profit, and that ‘any sane businessman wants to employ as few people as he can.’ If jobs get in the way of profits, the jobs go – as Mitt Romney well knows.



By Henry Banta
henrybanta@aol.com

We’ve been hearing a lot from Governor Romney about how his experience as a businessman makes him an expert on job creation. While there has been some challenge to his claim of actually having created jobs, the basic notion that business experience gives a special insight into the creation of jobs deserves a lot more attention from the press than it has gotten. In particular, how do the policies promoted by the business community actually relate to the creation of jobs?

Start with a simple fact: The role of businessmen in our economy is not job creation. Businesses and their leaders are not rewarded for the number of people they employ. They are in business to make a profit. They have no incentive to create jobs per se. Capitalist markets reward profit, not employment. Indeed any sane businessman wants to employ as few people as he can. If jobs get in the way of profits, jobs go. (This is one aspect of the matter that Romney should remember well.)  READ MORE

Henry M. Banta is a partner in the Washington, DC, law firm of Lobel, Novins & Lamont.
E-mail: henrybanta@aol.com