HINT: It’s a trick question.

This is the age-old argument that two kids have when they’re playing baseball and one kid has the bat and the other kid has the ball and now we see it being played out on the national stage in politics with the question: Which is more important, Job Creators or Customers? - Polarized as 1 percent or 99 percent.

Projector or Laptop

Lighting or Power

Supply or Demand

Seed or Tree

Chicken or Egg

Players or Owners… these are all mutually dependent parts of a whole. A couple of terms we might want to add to the list: Republicans or Democrats, Rich or Poor, these too are interdependent.

The public debate about Job Creators or Customers, about which is right or wrong, more or less important, seems designed to destroy rather than to create a healthy economic system and yet like everything else listed above Customers and Job Creators are mutually dependent.

As a small business owner (better defined as a self- employed entrepreneur boot-strapping a business, for which there are 30 million+ in the US) I employ, accountants, lawyers, marketers, printers, sales reps, technicians and website developers .  Granted, we only employ their services on an as-needed basis in any given year, but ask any of them what we are in their eyes and they’ll tell you we’re a customer who just created a job.

Billionaire Nick Hanauer offers a good perspective on what creates a healthy economic ecosystem system and what – not who – really creates jobs. What creates jobs, Hanauer astutely observes, is a healthy economic ecosystem surrounding the company, which starts with the company's customers.

So, back to the two kids – one with a baseball, the other with a bat. They’re both set on proving they hold the power and so rather than play ball they’ll both walk away proud of the fact that without them nothing will happen.