Clipping blog

Santa Claus, The Tooth Fairy, and Millionaires Who Hire People: Harry Reid’s Mythical Trifecta

Posted: 12 Dec 2011 04:48 PM PST

It’s been a while since Senator Harry Reid (D – Under the Nearest Bridge) flat-out lost his mind, but today, he erupted with a tirade against Republicans and “the rich” that ought to disqualify him from holding a job more complex than dishwasher ever again. Here’s what he said:

The Republicans say the richest of the rich in our country, even those who make millions every year, shouldn't contribute more to get our economy back on track. They call our plan, time after time, a tax on job creators, and I say so-called "job creators." Because I say that, Mr. President, every shred of evidence contradicts this red herring. For example, there have been many outlets, but I'll concentrate on one. National Public Radio went looking for one of these fictitious millionaire job creators. A reporter reached out to the business groups and a tax lobby in the Republican Congress hoping to interview one of these millionaires. Days ticked by with no luck. Many of our job creators are like unicorns, they’re impossible to find and don’t exist. That's because only a tiny fraction of people making more than a million dollars, probably less than one percent, are actually small business owners and only a tiny fraction of that tiny fraction is a traditional job creator.

Well, Senator Reid, let me introduce you to Bill Gates. He’s not exactly a millionaire — Forbes reckoned his net worth at just south of $60 billion — but I figure he’ll do for the purposes of handing your skinny tail to you on a platter. Gates founded a little software company in 1974 called Microsoft that this year employed almost 91,000 people, roughly 55,000 in the United States alone. On average, his company grew by 1,527 employees every year for the past 36 years. Gates was a college dropout when he founded Microsoft, not a rich layabout or a United States Senator.

Is he a unicorn, Senator Reid? Is he a myth?

How about Larry Ellson, who is third on Forbes’ list with an estimated net worth of $33 billion? He founded Oracle in 1977 (with two others) and the company now employs roughly 108,000 people. That means over 34 years his company added 3,176 on average employees each year. Ellison was also a college dropout.

Now, I’ve seen recent photos of Ellison and unless there’s some worldwide media conspiracy afoot, he both exists and is not a unicorn. What say you, Harry Reid?

Now, let’s reach out from the facts just a bit into reasonable conjecture. I know that we’ll probably lose Senator Reid along the way because this part does involve some small amount of thought and a recognition of the way the real world works, but let’s try it anyhow.

Not all of the wealth Gates and Ellison created went to their employees or toward the construction of giant golden money bins. In fact, lots and lots of that money went to suppliers, manufacturers, advertising firms, artists, and all sorts of other people who didn’t work for Microsoft or Oracle but for new companies that started because of what Microsoft and Oracle were doing. The economic activity that Gates and Ellison generated trickled down to others who used that money to start businesses of their own. I have no doubt in the world that several of those people are millionaires today because of the groundbreaking entrepreneurship of Bill Gates and Larry Ellison. And they all employed people. How many? I don’t know that anyone can say, but I’m darned sure that it’s more than Harry Reid’s estimate of “a tiny fraction”.

Now let’s take a look at Reid himself. He’s been in Washington since 1987 and has been a government employee or an elected official his entire working life. His net worth, estimated by GovTrack, was between $3 million and $6.7 million in 2007. How many people did he employ with all those millions he “earned”? Heck, if he hired one other human being who wasn’t paid by the American taxpayer I’d be shocked. This buffoon doesn’t know the first thing about earning a living that wasn’t taken from the pocket of another American by the IRS.

If Harry Reid had a shred of decency, he’d resign right now, but he’s a leader of the Democratic Party, and they’re not exactly known for their intelligence or slavish devotion to reality. The best thing we can do is make sure that his cloud-cuckoo-land worldview says as far out into the fringe as we can push it. I’m sure the Flat Earthers, Masonic conspiracy buffs, and Faked Moon Landing folks won’t mind the company.

UPDATE: Guy Benson took a brickbat to Reid’s inane drivel over at Townhall with more facts — which is another category of things Harry Reid has never met.