The literary critic William Deresiewicz has a good eye for flimflam. In an article titled "Capitalists and Other Psychopaths," he trains it on the phrase "job creator":

There are ethical corporations, yes, and ethical businesspeople, but ethics in capitalism is purely optional, purely extrinsic. To expect morality in the market is to commit a category error. Capitalist values are antithetical to Christian ones. (How the loudest Christians in our public life can also be the most bellicose proponents of an unbridled free market is a matter for their own consciences.) Capitalist values are also antithetical to democratic ones. Like Christian ethics, the principles of republican government require us to consider the interests of others. Capitalism, which entails the single-minded pursuit of profit, would have us believe that its every man for himself.Theres been a lot of talk lately about job creators, a phrase begotten by Frank Luntz, the right-wing propaganda guru, on the ghost of Ayn Rand. The rich deserve our gratitude as well as everything they have, in other words, and all the rest is envy.First of all, if entrepreneurs are job creators, workers are wealth creators. Entrepreneurs use wealth to create jobs for workers. Workers use labor to create wealth for entrepreneurs the excess productivity, over and above wages and other compensation, that goes to corporate profits. Its neither partys goal to benefit the other, but thats what happens nonetheless.[...]Most important, neither entrepreneurs nor the rich have a monopoly on brains, sweat or risk. There are scientists and artists and scholars who are just as smart as any entrepreneur, only they are interested in different rewards. A single mother holding down a job and putting herself through community college works just as hard as any hedge fund manager. A person who takes out a mortgage or a student loan, or who conceives a child on the strength of a job she knows she could lose at any moment (thanks, perhaps, to one of those job creators) assumes as much risk as someone who starts a business.

Matthew Boudway is senior editor of Commonweal.

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