Attention Mr. Obama: Jobs Will Not Stimulate the Economy!

Yes, Mr. President, you are right! We have a lot of work to be done in the United States, such as roads and bridges to repair and build. There's infrastructure to be replaced. We must eliminate crumbling school buildings like the J.V. Martin Junior High School in Dillon, South Carolina, and replace it with a new, state-of-the-art educational facility befitting the potential of its students. We confront a virtually endless list of what needs to be done. So why has this economy shed more than five million jobs recently?

Simply stated, jobs do not provide the economies of scale our economy needs to be globally competitive. Additionally, jobs do not provide the leverage everyone needs to get more done, and finally, jobs do not provide the residual revenue families need to provide substainable wealth.

We can state this truism another way: Jobs compete with quality of life, rather than complement it.

After more than 100 years of jobs, we have learned that the concept provides a control tool that gives certain people access to economies of scale, leverage and residual revenue, while continually blocking others from those same advantages. Don't get me wrong! I've worked jobs continually since 1968. In fact, I got my initial job as a hotel janitor on Dec. 22, 1968, just two weeks after being released from prison after serving all but about 22 months of the 1960s incarcerated. I was a high school dropout with a long crime and prison record when I returned to Durham, NC where I had been born about 26 years earlier.

During the past 40 years, I have been a professional journalist, free-lance writer, non-profit program director, radio station manager, television public affairs programs producer/host, a special projects instructor in several community colleges, and even an adjunct college professor. All those were jobs. However, in 1979, I launched my initial homebased business, long before this trend became one of the fastest growing segments of the economy. Yes, I made numerous mistakes, especially during the initial 10 years or so of that process because I was learning "on the fly" so to speak.

But learn I did! Consider several lessons.

Lesson #1--When a person applies for a job, the individual must pass the T.E.S.T. of the marketplace. The person must prove the he or she has the talent, the experience, the skills and the time to perform the job. Often, however, the decision turns on hidden, unexplained criteria such as age, race, gender, etc. Even when the employer says "yes," the unfairness of the employer/employee relationship continues. For example, Daily you invest your talents, experiences and skills into the job, and in most instances the employer pays you based upon time alone. That's unfair.

Lesson #2--The so-called "pay period," the days I work and do not get paid, allows the employer to invest my money, earn interest and other benefits, without even the decency to share some of those benefits with me. How do they eplain this anomaly? The company insists that the money is still theirs until they give it to me. My perspective, however, says that when I invest talents, experiences, skills and time daily to do the job, my return on investment should be daily, too. Oh, how silly of me! They don't consider me an investor in their business, but an employee of it. The word "employee" comes, as you know, from the root word: "employ," and a synonym is "used." That's unfair!

Lesson #3--Most of the terminology of jobs demonstrates rank duplicity. For example, employers refer to "guaranteed" salaries, but, particularly in "at-will" states, these same employers have the right to fire you for just cause, unjust cause, or no cause at all. Employees, those being used, have been hoodwinked to "see" paid vacations, for example, as a benefit. Tell me how does it benefit me to show an employer for two weeks how well the company can do without me? That's unfair!

Lesson #4--The concept "fair wages for a fair days" work represents one of the most balant self-destructive concepts in our economy today. Truthfully, employers pay employees just enough to keep them returning to work, and employee, often work just hard enough to avoid being fired, if possible. That's unfair!

I could continue, but enough about the problem. Let's discuss solutions!

I believe the best way to stimulate our economy is to provide everyone who desires it a path out of the J.O.B. scenario, (The aconym stands for "just over broke"), into entrepreneurship, and particularly into the exciting realm of home based businesses.

According to Success Magazine: "More than one in eight U.S. households includes a home-based business . . . 'At any given time, 15 percent of the US population is involved in running their own businesses,' said Carl Schramm, president of the Kauffman Foundation. 'These entrepreurs, people who now create more than one half of the new jobs in America, are defining the new economy, not just here, but around the world.' he said. 'We could call the current era the age of entrepreneurial capitalism . . ." As economist Paul Zane Pilzer puts it in his book The Next Millionaires, "We're in the midst of a boom in home-based businesses, and it shows no sign of slowing."

For additional information about the viability of the home based business industry, please visit my website listed in the "Resources" box that accompanies this article.

So Mr. President, why not pull together a blue ribbon committee of successful home-based business owners, particularly those who are involved with the Network Marketing distribution channel, and charge them to provide you with a detailed report on the power of home based businesses to speed economic stimulus in our economy. After you have digested this report, charge this same committee to produce a strategy by which all of the national infrastructure work, and the other "jobs" to be created can be supplemented by a bridge into home-based business ownership.

With all the information available, you should have the initial report within 90 days after assigning the committee, and the strategy before the end of this year. This year is the 40th anniversary of the famous, but little known, decision by the Federal Trade Commission that positioned the Amway business model as a legitimate economic concept, and not an illegal pyramid scheme. It's more than fitting that on this 40th anniversary, as these segments of our economy, e.g. home based businesses, network marketing and e-commerce merge into the tripartite financial juggernaut they can become. This year is also the 390th anniversary of slavery, according to Lerone Bennett's calculations in his book-Before the Mayflower. How fitting it would be during this anniversary if the nation's first African American president led the charge to present to all Americans the true "level playing field," the sphere of opportunity where competition, confusion, corruption and and character-less behavior can be replaced with commitment, cooperation, communication and contributive behavior that benefits everyone.

Think about it!