Consumers drive an economy

Consumers drive an economy

A letter last Sunday re- marked on partial quote of President Obama’s, “if you got a business, you didn’t build it.” I was reminded of an article I recently read in which a business owner commented that he never considers himself to be a job creator, the real job creators are the American consumers — they were the ones who built his business up.

How true that is considering that 70 percent of the American economy is driven by the American consumer. It doesn’t matter how many tax cuts or how much deregulation you do, if a business does not have demand for its product or services, it is not going to prosper and grow and be able to hire employees.

Our economy is a combination between private and public sectors. The private sector has added 4 million new jobs. Bank failures, housing crisis,consumers paying off credit card debt, loss of 600,000 government jobs are all keeping unemployment high.

No president including Reagan, Clinton, nor Romney could have brought jobs back any faster. Romney would have let the auto industry go bankrupt. Reagan after lowering taxes, raised them and also increased spending. Clinton raised taxes and increased spending on infrastructure, police, firemen, schools, and also had the advantage of the high tech bubble. All of the above would have been unacceptable to today’s Republican Congress.

Interest rates are low, corporations are sitting on lots of cash, the auto industry is back, housing is showing some improvement, so it’s going to be up to the American consumers, the real job creators to keep this recovery going.

Becky Neal, New Castle, Pa.