Coronavirus quarantines seemed to have some people questioning who are the job creators. If consumers and workers are staying home, and not frequenting businesses, and the economy is hurting, it must be the consumer’s/worker’s demand for products that is the source of value and wealth creation.
If one would just make one more step in this logical chain of thinking, and ask the question, well where did these consumers and workers get the ability to demand in the first place, the answer to how value and wealth are created would be abundantly clear.
The consumer’s/worker’s demand comes from their own job, the value they produced at their own job, the product or service they created while working. If they never worked in the first place, they would have nothing with which to demand things in the first place. This is not a chicken or the egg scenario, the fact that you have to produce something of value first, before you can trade it for something else is the law of cause and effect.
In this view, they are producing value and wealth, and are indeed job creators. However, the value they are producing, the economic value of their work is already being paid out to them. The economic value of their work is set by the voluntary consent of those who are willing to trade with them.
