As we prepare to go to the polls today – and I hope you are all going to vote or have already – let’s take a moment to ponder that most elusive of Republican myths:  the Job Creator.

Conservatives have long chanted the mantra that businesses create jobs. The trouble is that “creation” implies that jobs are the objective.  They are not.  To be clear, jobs occur in businesses, but businesses don’t create jobs.  When it is beneficial to them and demanded by the market, businesses supply the minimum number of jobs they have to, which is quite a different thing.  

If anyone in the private sector were in the business of creating jobs, they would not have laid people off during this recession – or any previous recession, for that matter.  If they were in the business of creating jobs, they would have held on to their employees and hired more.  If they were in the business of creating jobs, they would have foregone their profits and their executive bonuses to keep creating jobs.

They didn’t do any of that.  They reduced their labor forces, closed plants and offices and rewarded the executives who made those cuts.  Why?  Because they are in the business of making money.  Not that there’s anything wrong with that.  They are supposed to make money.  That’s pure Capitalism, the system we love.

But business is not about job creation.  You cannot be a “job creator” unless you are creating jobs.  If you aren’t, you have no right to the title.  It’s a theory.  And in theory we could all be job creators.  Someday.  If we feel like it.

The important thing to remember is that business is inherently about profit and self-interest.  If it weren’t, we wouldn’t be squashed onto airplanes fighting over seat reclining privileges, our food wouldn’t be jammed with artificial everything to make it cheaper and prettier and our major banking institutions wouldn’t have conspired to tank the world economy.  If businesses were about creating jobs, they wouldn’t threaten to automate or outsource even more during every discussion of tax increases.  Some businesses may have a conscience – thank you Ben and Jerry – until there’s a management change, when that conscience could all disappear.

I don’t want to vilify entrepreneurs or free enterprise.  I know many of us have benefited from the market – not as much as the business owners, but still.  I do want to strip off the false veneer of benevolence so many of our politicians – mostly on the right – have given them.  Entrepreneurship is great.  Free Enterprise is great.  Great things can come from them.  Sometimes those great things even include jobs – which is even better.  But face it, the only things business and benevolence have in common are a “B” and an “E.”  There is hardly an entrepreneur alive who won’t make as much money as he can without the headaches of hiring, paying and managing people – in this country, at least.

The next time you hear a politician refer to “job creators,” remember what Hillary Clinton said in that terrible “gaffe” she made last week:  “Don’t let anybody tell you it’s corporations and businesses that create jobs.”  She knows what she’s talking about.