By Bill Wilson — As Congress responds to the President’s jobs speech, the employment news continues to be grim with zero new jobs created in August. This Labor Department announcement combined with the White House’s officially having raised their projections for joblessness nationwide to more than 9 percent through election day 2012 make the question of who creates jobs all the more important.
This point was driven home as a California solar energy company, Solyndra, announced that it is shutting down and laying off more than a thousand workers in spite of a heavy federal government bet of a $535 million loan guarantee, while it has been revealed that another Obama green energy initiative in Seattle has generated only 14 jobs while costing taxpayers $20 million.
However, there is one bright, shining light that continues to battle through the fog of federal government economic incompetence and their wasteful green spending spree – the individual entrepreneur.
The individual entrepreneur continues to fight to build a prosperous future by meeting the needs of the marketplace rather than looking for a government handout to build a business. The individual entrepreneur struggles forward trying to provide a service or build a product that will be profitable and achieve the real American dream of providing a better life for himself and for his children.
The Washington Post recently highlighted one individual who exemplifies this spirit.
German Morales is a house painter who has employed as many as five people but due to tough economic times is down to one person who he employs part time. Every day, he wakes up with the hope of finding new clients, doing a great job and getting referrals for his next set of jobs.
Morales doesn’t look to government to provide a contract, grant or any other benefit, he looks to private home and apartment owners, developers and rental housing owners looking to hire someone with the skills he possesses who can help them make a profit on their investment.
He worries that there won’t be enough work to keep his family afloat, while continuing to invest every dollar he owns into making his company a success.
German Morales is the great American entrepreneur. Risking his security for a better life, and when times are tough paying the price through cutbacks and sacrifices.
The genius of the American economic system is that there are not any guarantees. The Declaration of Independence says that Americans have a right to life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness, not a guarantee of happiness.
This is why the German Morales story is so encouraging in the wake of economic news that seems to overwhelm with storm clouds for as far as the eye can see.
Because ultimately, it is the German Morales’ around the nation who are going to lead the way out of our nation’s recession, not Barack Obama and his ‘experts’.
Every city has scores of similar stories of people making their own way, putting their futures on their own backs and risking to make their own American success story. Some will be wildly successful and in ten to twenty years, everyone will know their names. Some will succeed in creating a small business and through their ingenuity, courage and skill will provides employment to five to ten people helping drive their local economy, the anonymous heroes of the American free enterprise system.
And some will fail, but they will have known that they tried, which is the ultimate genius of an economic system that wrings the best out of us through the competitive marketplace, ultimately giving consumers the best possible product for the lowest cost.
German Morales and others like him are the heroes of America’s future, and will be the employers who give the next generation jobs.
As we reflect on this Labor Day just passed, rather than the tired union-boss labor marches, America needs to celebrate those who provide the jobs due to the sweat of their brow and the risk to their fortune. It is time that our nation recognizes the entrepreneur as the true worker’s hero, because without people like German Morales, there are no jobs to go to, and no economic prosperity to celebrate.
Bill Wilson is the President of Americans for Limited Government. You can follow Bill on Twitter at @BillWilsonALG.
