Johnson’s campaign amounts to two or three simple ideas—very simple—and none of them true.
The first is that businessmen, not politicians, know how to create jobs. No. Businessmen, God love them, know how to create profits. One of the primary ways businessmen maximize profit is by hiring as few people as they can and paying them as little as possible.
Isthmus columnist Bill Lueders once wrote: “Profit, honestly defined, is the difference between what workers earn and what they get paid.”
That is what’s behind the current wave of employer-extorted contracts allowing the hiring of “casual workers” at drastically reduced pay and no benefits.
During this campaign, we’ve learned how Johnson maximized his own profits by employing prison labor and paying some of his employees so little they receive BadgerCare, taxpayer-funded health insurance for the working poor and unemployed.
The other pillars of Johnson’s campaign are “the economic stimulus failed” and “health care reform is a budget-buster.”
Both statements are false. The stimulus bill prevented a second Great Depression and stopped 3.5 million more people from losing their jobs. The nonpartisan Congressional Budget Office estimated the health care law would save $138 billion the first 10 years and $1.2 trillion the second.
If Johnson succeeded in repealing health care reform, as he wants, he would exorbitantly increase the federal deficit he rails against.