As Washington and Wall Street struggle to figure out how to create and fill more jobs, a key figure in the battle is offering a contrarian view to new policies and payouts: Just get out of the way.

Alfredo Ortiz, the son of immigrants who heads the Job Creators Network, said the answer isn’t a handout but the encouragement of those who are eager to build their American dream.

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A help wanted sign is posted outside of business in Philadelphia, Wednesday, June 22, 2022.

(Matt Rourke/AP)

In his new book, he also pushes aside the explosion of so-called “woke” policies, including California’s push for reparations to slavery ancestors, to focus on traditional entrepreneurship as the answer.

“I’ve lived the challenges and opportunities facing minority entrepreneurs firsthand. My parents came to the U.S. over 50 years ago from Mexico City to pursue the American Dream. They’ve both passed on, but the values they taught me — hard work, grit, and gratitude — helped me become a successful small business owner,” he said in releasing his new book, The Real Race Revolutionaries: How Minority Entrepreneurship Can Overcome America’s Racial and Economic Divides.

His book arrives at a key point in the debate over job creation. While Democrats in Washington are looking to boost programs and funding to offset the racism they see in the jobs market, Ortiz argued that old-fashioned work and sweat equity are the key.

But for that to win out, he said the government has to step aside — not in.

The idea for the book resulted from recent House testimony he and others gave to make his point. In those hearings, Democrats pushed back hard as they stuck to an argument that racism was to blame for economic inequity.

“My testimony, based on years of research and expertise as the leader of one of the nation’s largest small business groups, wasn’t received well by the Democratic members, to put it lightly,” he wrote.

He added: “Minorities are disproportionately entrepreneurial, starting businesses far more often than their white counterparts. Though you won’t read it in the mainstream media or hear about it from progressive politicians who practice identity politics, minority entrepreneurs tend to have average incomes and wealth that exceed those of white Americans. This book therefore makes the case that promoting minority entrepreneurship is the most effective way to overcome racial economic disparities.”

In his introduction of the book from Defiance Press & Publishing, the co-founder of Home Depot, Bernie Marcus, made a similar argument, noting that he overcame antisemitism years ago to strike it big.

“Black and brown Americans often have fewer resources and connections. Many minorities come from bad neighborhoods, broken families, and terrible public schools. Entrepreneurship offers all Americans — no matter their background — a side door to achieving financial independence and the American Dream. It’s still difficult for a minority high school graduate from Newark to excel in corporate America — but entrepreneurship gives them another path. Entrepreneurship rewards goods and services that the market values, independent of the SAT scores, financial resources, or personal pedigrees of the people selling them,” he wrote.

Marcus, who founded the Job Creators Network, said Home Depot probably would have crashed if the regulatory weight that companies face right now were in place when he started his hardware store in Georgia.

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“The biggest victims of bad government policy aren’t the elite; they will always be able to get into good schools and get their foot in the door of corporate America. The people hurt most by big government are minorities, those who often already face disadvantages in becoming economically independent,” he wrote.

And in endorsing the ideas promoted by Ortiz, Marcus added: “This book asks you to treat minority entrepreneurs with the respect they deserve, and to consider how bad public policy prevents them from surviving and thriving. A newfound respect for minority entrepreneurs, who have done so much with so little, can provide the societal foundation needed to ensure the next generation of Home Depots. It can lay the groundwork for even more minority entrepreneurship success stories than I’ve seen in my lifetime.”