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Myth: The Businessman
Calling Myth Romney a "businessman" is like calling "flip this house" shows part of the homebuilding industry. It's merely about leveraging the real work of other people.

The oft-cited Staples outcome, merely reflects the shift of those who formerly sold office equipment and supplies out of home-grown storefronts, who are either displaced entirely or forced to seek work at lower wages, sometimes at the same Staples and other megastore competitors like Wmart that have eviscerated downtowns across America.

Go ahead; find the downtown Staples; you cannot, because they're all just beyond the city or county line next to the interstate where they can avoid property taxes for local maintenance and improvement.

Jonathan Tasini, writing in the LA Times:

Even if he's telling the truth by some measures, the fact is that private equity buyouts often enrich those who arrange them by sharp cost-cutting, including dismantling pay and benefits for most of the workers who remain or new hires who join the more "efficient" enterprise. It's simple math: To service the huge debt taken on in virtually every buyout, workers take cuts. And the new jobs aren't necessarily a path to the American dream.

Take Staples, which Romney trumpets as one of his successes. The company certainly pays some of its employees well: Staples Chairman and Chief Executive Ronald L. Sargent received a total pay package of more than $15 million in 2010. But jobs in retail — one of the fastest-growing job sectors in recent decades — tend to pay poorly, and Staples jobs don't seem to be an exception to that rule.


It's easy to see how this helps the finance industry, hard to see how it benefits local employment. Paradoxically, a vote for the "businessman" is not a vote for business.

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