I figuratively grind my teeth every time I hear someone pat themselves on the back because they "created" jobs. The Gingrich/McConnell/Boehner-led Republicans luuuvv to parade this trope and phalanxes of fellow travelers, especially op-ed writers and other policy dilettantes march in lockstep to this tune.

Yesterday I referenced Malcolm Gladwell's fine reporting in Blink: The Power of Thinking Without Thinking. My visceral reaction when I hear the "creating jobs" trope is like unto an alarm jangling in my amygdala and orbitofrontal cortex¹.

I live in Indiana's 9th Congressional District, a "blue dog" Democratic area (translation: anti-progressives who vote Red while otherwise pretending to be Democrats; a play on the phrase "Yellow Dog Democrat"). In each of the last four congressional elections, the GOP has put up Mike Sodrel (he served one term), the epitome of the fabled "self-made" man. Sodrel likes to tell how he grew up in public housing here, but through pluck and hard work built a thriving transportation company. Democrats call him "Millionaire Mike."

  
_{^{Without irony, one Sodrel company
is called Free Enterprise System, Inc.}}

Without critiquing the man's rise to fortune or the truth of how he obtained it, I'll simply focus on one aspect of his campaign story.

Sodrel, with a straight face, tells us in campaign commercials and public appearances how he and his company "support" 600 families, how he "created" 600 jobs in Southern Indiana.

Now, I do not want to besmirch the man or the company here. But the ideology, the idee fixe at work here, that Mr. Sodrel supports 600 families with his company strikes such a discordant note with me that I psychicly recoil in disgust.

As fodder for a debate, as the seed for a polemic, this serves as sufficient. Yet, I don't care to expend 3,000 more words hashing out the pros and cons on this repulsive idea. I do not need to gather 360º of data. One thin slice of information is all I need to make the decision that this is wrong.

In another life, I'm known as the guy to come to if you want hours of persuasive argumentation over such matters. But here, I'm willing to simply declare anathema. It's a dangerous idea, but it has become firmly entrenched to such a point that no one debates the point any more. Much as many other right-wing tropes go unchallenged, this one draws no scrutiny from the working press or even the editorial boards of the corporate media.

I suppose that this idea, much like the belief that the government can't run a health-care system (The VA and Medicare do a pretty fine job of it), has become so much a part of a particular belief system that it can no longer be argued. One either embraces the idea or rejects it, and there's no middle ground.

I seem to recall that a number of American families claimed to be supporting hundreds of people through their agricultural enterprises in the South. We fought a war over that idea once. Now we merely turn to the news channel that supports our beliefs and say "next!"

I always wanted to ask Mr. Sodrel if it wasn't much truer that 600 families support him, but each time I've been in his presence it would have been boorish to broach the subject.

I suspect a few readers will be willing, however, to take a position here, so I'll leave the comments on. I'm curious to find out whose stomach hurts when they hear how Citi or Goldman Sachs or KKR or Halliburton are creating jobs and supporting families.

¹Read more on decision-making in this article about a study at the California Institute of Technology and the University of Iowa, led by Prof. Colin Camerer.