Letter: Make 98 percent the priority so economy grows

To the Editor:

During the past year we all too frequently heard the admonition that "the job creators are the corporations, Wall Street and the upper 2 percent of our society." This is a fiction foisted on 98 percent of us to enable more favorable tax treatment for that select group.

The truth of the matter is that the 98 percent are the true job creators. Factories, banks and businesses do not directly create the jobs.

Jobs are created in our economy when you and I go to stores, car dealerships and other places where goods are sold, put our money on the counter and take the product home. Those stores then contact their suppliers and order more goods to replace the ones sold, who then contact the factories where they are made, who then make more and in the process, hire people, like you and I. They are at the "end of the line" and are only responding to the market. They would not be hiring if we were not buying.

We buy when we have secure, meaningful jobs and so it is the middle class who create jobs and who need the support and encouragement of the economy to keep on buying. Simply stated, we are a consumer economy.

Truth be told, the 2 percent have sat on their cash investments amounting to trillions of dollars accumulated during one of their best decades, while the job market languished.

When the middle class and poor become a priority, our economy will be restored to its previous health, experienced during the Clinton presidencies and now quite certain to return.

Richard W. Johnson

Wacouta

Tags: opinion, letters