Job Creators

By now, you would think I'd be immune to the depredations of logic committed by the Republican Party.  But they constantly surprise.  A few days ago, WOFOS sent me a link.  Please click to get a sense of the true level of pettiness and hypocrisy subscribed to by members of this cabal:

http://www.nevinssmallbusinesspledge.com/

If you're not in the mood to click the link--or if you're afraid of exposing yourself to right-wing cookies--allow me to summarize.  The link takes you to a page where "job creators" can make the following "pledge":

"I will hire a new employee when Mitt Romney is sworn in as President of the United States of America."

You can, of course, pledge to hire as many employees as you like.

I wonder if those who sign this pledge are aware of exactly how hypocritical they sound.  Consider, these right-wingers are proud capitalists of the staunchest sort.  In their Ayn Randian worldview, "producers" create wealth and prosperity by utilizing capital in the most efficient and effective ways--and ONLY in the most effective and efficient ways.  An employer will thus only hire people when he or she needs these people to improve productivity.  By the same token, though, if a new hire will improve productivity, the employer must, according to the fundamental tenets of this philosophy, hire that worker.

Now, if these people are pledging to hire new workers, they must need these new workers--every day without them is thus hurting their businesses' productivity and thus committing an offense to the Great God of the Market.  The alternative explanation is that the "producers" don't truly need more workers but will hire them as some sort of "favor" to. . .   Well, I'm not exactly sure: Romney, perhaps, but since he'd already have been elected, I'm not sure how important that favor is.  But what will these "surplus" workers do, exactly?  Corporate busywork?  Sounds positively Keynesian to me.

Beyond the illogic, though, I can only shake my head at what this pledge blatantly reveals: Republicans will refuse to hire people until Barack Obama is no longer the President--presumably because he is the President--and then blame President Obama for the high unemployment rate.

At long last, have they left no sense of decency?