support for business

I know politicians need sound bites, but I still have a problem with easily parroted maxims that don't bear any real exxamination. I heard newly re-elected London Mayor Boris Johns on talk of "support for business" and it kind of sounds good. It's got the word support in it, which is a warm word, like growth.

But business is an abstract thing. It has no physical referent. We have to go through / past it to find such a referent. Businesses provide jobs and deliver goods and some services.  The goods and services will at least in part be worthwhile things. The jobs, in the main, will be a means to get the money to procure the goods and services one needs.

So if someone speaks of support for people, they are closer to a physical referent; we can quickly see how that support might entail people having adequate nutrition and water, protection from the environment, and access to education, amongst their human needs.

If people want to support business because it will lead to the fulfilment of human needs that's fine, but why be indirect? When people say specifically that they want to support business, it naturally arouses suspicion that they don't in fact want to see that human needs are fulfilled. And if you press them on it they fling out labels - socialism, communism.

What is it that they in fact want to see happen by the supportuing of business? We suspect it is the enrichment of their friends and them at the expense of others who have to work in those businesses to stave off the day when they can no longer pay the increasing amount of money they owe.