'Increasing demand' is itself a supplier-directed activity; it's one of the primary functions of marketing. It seems baffling to consider this from a political/macroeconomic perspective; how would you increase demand but through marketing activity, without your methods becoming coercive or oppressive?

> If the necessity of demand isn't the elephant in the room, then why isn't there broad political support for higher tax rates on the wealthy?

Because the two concepts have nothing to do with each other, and support for higher taxes on the wealthy - or anyone else - has antecedents in much more basic underlying principles that many do not share, and often strongly oppose in their own right.

> Why isn't there broad political support for economic stimulus packages? Why isn't there broad political support for universal health care, a significant expense for poor and middle-class Americans?

It's because people oppose these ideas in their own right, and see them as being unjustifiable means even if they could achieve their stated ends.

Many people do not want macro-level attempts to manipulate their economic situation at all. Many people do not want to outsource responsibility for their health to external institutions at all. Many people resent that these intimate and personal aspects of their lives are being politicized and turned into public questions in the first place.

> Why isn't there broad political support for lowering taxes on the poor? Why, instead, do I keep hearing such balderdash as, "The poor pay no taxes at all"?

I'm not sure where you've heard that, but I assume that you and whomever you were discussing the matter with had two very different definitions of the term 'poor'.

> What people like this guy -- and me -- are saying is that they don't add value all by themselves.

Nothing ever does. The very concept of value implies that there exists at least two distinct entities: the thing being valued and the being doing the valuing. In commerce, there are at least two valuers and two 'valuees' in every transaction.

This is basic and obvious, and I don't see how it generates any new or significant perspective on any question.

> But, worse still, are all those other people -- those employees -- who didn't have anything to risk in the first place, and are now back to looking for work again.

Since you're intent on analyzing everything from a macro-level perspective, consider that if a certain proportion of all startup ventures are doomed to failure from the outset, and that these ventures provide a certain aggregate number of jobs, then those jobs represent an ongoing pool of jobs that is not supported by market demand.

In other words, some proportion of total jobs is always being subsidized by capital losses, rather than by aggregate demand.

But to your point of this being 'worse', I'd ask "worse than what?" If you choose to support yourself by taking a job working for a third party rather than applying your labor to the direct satisfaction of your needs and desires, then the risk of losing your job is always present, regardless of whether or not the business you work for is sustainable in its own right by market demand. The only way to eliminate this risk is to avoid being dependent on a single external source of income in the first place (which, in my opinion, everyone ought to do to whatever extent they can).

> And, anyway, if the business people do the market research they're supposed to do first, and the demand isn't there, they won't bother starting anyway.

Market research is hardly an exact science. Accurately gauging market demand is extremely difficult, and ventures fail all the time. The core problem of economics is one of epistemology.

> then why haven't they lowered gas prices to increase demand like the magic formula says they will?

What magic formula are you talking about? What problem, exactly, is the profitability of oil companies an indicator of in the first place?