Monday, December 7, 2009

The First Objective of Business

I am about to state something very controversial to the left. The first objective of a business is to stay in business. People do not risk everything they have, often times, to create entities to employ others. They only hire others when they have so much business the only way to continue getting and keeping new business is with additional bodies and brains. It is that simple. To believe anything else, is to engage in utopian thinking.

The left has zero understanding of this. Perfectly illustrated by Barack Obama's own words last week. Obama seemingly never having actually held a job, let alone run a business and has never left the left wing bubble of academia, rabble rousing and the political class.

OBAMA: Despite the progress we've made, many businesses are still skittish about hiring. Some are still digging themselves out of the losses they incurred over the past year. Many have figured out how to squeeze more productivity out of fewer workers. And that cost-cutting has become embedded in their operations and in their culture. That may result in good profits, but it's not translating into hiring and so that's the question that we have to ask ourselves today: How do we get businesses to start hiring again?

Let me also call in the words of pied piper of the deranged left, Michael Moore, to get a more thorough understanding of the mindset.

"F##k all these small businesses — f##k ‘em all! Bring in the chains. The small businesspeople are the rednecks that run the town and suppress the people. F##k ‘em all. That's how I feel."~Micheal Moore

Where do you even start with this stuff? The chief reason the left is able to get away with this is that our young people are absolutely clueless and have been brainwashed for most of their young lives to see the government as the source of all good things and private industry as the harbinger of all of life's ills. But it is one thing when it is a 21 year old college student who wants to throw a brick through the Starbuck's window. It is quite another when it is the leader of what is left of the free world saying hopelessly ignorant and irresponsible things such as:

Many have figured out how to squeeze more productivity out of fewer workers.

Obama is so completely and hopelessly ignorant of the real world he actually thinks that a businessman adjusting his operations in order to meet changing economic conditions is some kind of trick of exploitation and greed. He actually believes this stuff. What is next? Hiring quotas? Taxes on lay offs and not meeting quotas? 32 hour work weeks?

People are not hiring because of his administration. They have zero faith that things are going to improve. Some are even closing the doors in anticipation of how bad things are going to get.

These are common sense laws of supply and demand. Calling it the "new" economy, "green" jobs" or whatever collectivist code word is in vogue does nothing to change it. Supply and demand.

Say, I am a businessman, and once I reach a certain level of profit, I can and need to hire help. Employee and I make more money, and we soon reach enough profitability to hire employee #2. In comes Government with taxes, fees and regulations I must comply with. Profit level decreases. Government returns and taxes me even more. Now, I must lose an employee. Government is threatening me with more taxes by promising the country free stuff. I do not replace employee #1 and I think about losing employee #2.

The effects ripple. I am no longer as productive. The guy down the road where I buy product X to make my product Y is getting less orders from me and people in my similar situation. And there are many of us. He makes adjustments and has to reduce his workforce. Like dominoes we all fall.

It's simple, basic and irrefutable common sense. There are no alternatives. They've all been tried. You can relabel collectivism, repackage it, re-brand it, and villainize free market principles and business all day long but at the end of the day collectivism still fails everywhere it is implemented.

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