Job creators.

Over the past few years, as our country has once again become riven in two (the old Civil War boundaries are becoming relevant again) we've heard much talk from Republicans about the need to bestow upon the wealthy tax cuts. These cuts allow billionaires to pay less tax than their secretaries, their illegal immigrant gardeners and the everyday riff raff who fight our wars.

That seeming anomaly is deemed okay, however, because billionaires are "job creators." In getting and spending they don't lay waste their powers as Wordsworth claimed. Rather they create jobs.

In a world filled with absurdities (like Donald Trump playing a role in the presidential race) the notion of job creation might take the cake.

Some dozens of years ago the average CEO made ten times what the average worker made. Today the average CEO makes on the order of 100 times what his workers make. That means, simply, 90 average jobs lost to pay the CEO.

From an advertising point of view, what are we in our business if not "job creators"? The best of our work creates demand, which demands production, which creates jobs.

We are "bards of commerce." We grease the wheels of capitalism. We are the job creators.

That seems to me, solipsistic as it is, to make sense.

However some quick back-of-the-envelope mathematics tells me that if my wife and I were taxed at the same rate as Mitt and Ann, we would have paid $127,000 less. If we were taxed at the same rate as Barack and Michelle, we would have paid $91,000 less.