Originally posted at Writeindependent.org on September 15, 2011
If I hear one more person say that something was a job killer, I think I’m going to shut off my TV for a month.
They say that taxing companies kills jobs. Show me one company who has created jobs because they weren’t taxed, and I’ll show you a company that is expanding because they are selling more product, not because they weren’t taxed.
They say that Obamacare kills jobs. Whose jobs? What jobs, exactly, are getting killed?
They say that the EPA kills jobs. The EPA stands for Environmental Protection Agency. Anybody who has had to follow the regulations of the EPA, who really cares about the environment knows that the EPA is protecting us from companies who would pollute indiscriminately otherwise. Rather than thinking of jobs as being “killed” we should think of jobs being created when we clean up water or transform toxic waste into usable energy.
People need to be educated that jobs are actually created when a company has to follow the EPA guidelines. It is in everyone’s best interest that our soil and waterways are kept free of toxins. Toxins cause cancer, increase incidence of asthma and allergies, produce birth defects, developmental delay, and autism in children. I’m sorry: just because a politician says that “the EPA is a job killer” does not make it so.
I owned and ran a physical therapy clinic for seven years. I know what it’s like to work with insurance companies, workers compensation companies, and to bill Medicare. If the insurance companies and the drug companies hadn’t watered down and jacked up our federal health plan, we might have coverage to voluntarily purchase at our place of employ for a reasonable price, which would cover most medical problems, and would be run as well as Medicare. Ask any senior how well Medicare works, especially when combined with AARP as a secondary. Medicare is a pretty good plan when compared to most HMO’s or managed care plans. I could write a whole book on how lousy insurance companies are.
But insurance companies are very good at making money. And the proof of their power is in their ability to use the media to brainwash people into thinking that a healthcare plan provided as an option to the general public is a path to socialism. Anybody who believes that is uneducated.
The point of a federal health plan was to offer uninsured people some reasonably priced coverage. Somehow, that turned into a scheme to make employers go broke, to make people have to live in fear of death panels, and to make everyone fear that the government is trying to run their lives, or at least their healthcare. When did people start thinking that they had to drop their Blue Cross/Blue Shield/United Healthcare plans and buy a federally mandated plan? That is such a bunch of bullshit. I’m sorry, but it’s the media who got you thinking that way. It’s not true.
Back to job killing. That’s what this was supposed to be about.
If you want to know what’s really killing jobs, all you have to do is look at the trade agreements set up by the WTO. The World Bank, the International Monetary Fund, and the International Trade Organization did more to make Americans lose their jobs than any or all of the things the media wants you to believe are “job killers” in this country. By setting up free and easy trade, it makes sense to manufacture things in the cheapest country possible. Find the lowest wages, and you know where the manufacturing jobs are. Wake up people! The same people who are complaining about “job killing” are the ones who outsource our jobs to China and India, because labor is cheap and un-unionized there. Human rights violations abound in countries where the labor is cheap, and that’s why it’s cheap.
But you had to know that if you wanted the cheapest prices, then you would have to eventually find the cheapest sources for your products. And so, in a way, we have only ourselves to blame for our jobs being outsourced.
It’s karma: we expect our employers to make special arrangements when we’re doing the job: we want fair pay, fair medical benefits, vacation pay, sick pay, etc. and then we want the boss to be able to make an extraordinary amount of money because, with any luck, our son might go to school to become him one day. But when the ax falls, we blame our government because, after all, they negotiated the free trade agreements.
If it makes you mad that government is ruining our lives, though we are all complicit in the arrangements that the top one percent are making on our behalf, then I guess we deserve what we have.
If you want to know another way, you have to stay with me. There is a better way. Keep coming back.