Net Neutrality opponents would have us believe that an open Internet is bad for business. Funny then, that folks from the business and tech sectors have been penning editorials in recent weeks to make the case that Net Neutrality is actually pro-business and pro-job growth.

We’ve long argued that Net Neutrality will boost innovation and economic growth and spark job creation, and now others are echoing the point.

The Open Internet Coalition's Markham Erickson writes for TechNewsWorld, "Keep the traffic moving over broadband networks for all content providers, and in turn [it] will promote investment, jobs and consumer choice in this critical marketplace."

Indeed, a Kauffman Foundation report this week finds that young businesses – which depend on an open Internet for their growth -- are key to job creation in the United States.

And we’re in desperate need of job creation; the U.S. unemployment rate hit 10.2 percent in October, the highest level in 26 years.

The president of the Kauffman Foundation, Carl Schramm, co-wrote an op-ed in this week’s Wall Street Journal about the report, and cited young, successful online businesses that have generated high revenue and new jobs:

Diapers.com, founded in 2004, offers free next-day shipping of diapers. Today the company has 89 employees, and last year it notched $89.4 million in revenue. And let's not forget online giant eBay, which during its first five years of existence, 1995-1999, hired an average of 128 new people per year.

And last week in the Wall Street Journal, the CEO and chair of the Internet company Mozilla wrote an editorial about how an open wireless network will unlock innovation, particularly for young companies:

Our company, Mozilla, which produces the Firefox Web browser, is but one example of the innovation and participation made possible by an open Internet. As a small, unknown start-up we were able to coordinate the actions of people worldwide to build Firefox with access to Internet facilities on the same terms as well-funded entities.

Free Press Research Director S. Derek Turner also explained how Net Neutrality’s impact on the economy is the key to job growth:

The online innovators and startups are the companies that rely most on the certainty an open Internet provides. These companies, and future startups, will provide job growth critical to the U.S. economy. Without Net Neutrality, we will have less job growth in these promising young businesses, while Internet service providers continue their trend of layoffs, higher prices and diminishing investment levels in their networks.

A strong pro-business argument was also made this week by an economics professor in the pages of the Financial Times. The pro-business argument has thus far come mostly from the tech sector – from companies that have paid close attention to the issue and understand the cultural, technological and financial necessity of keeping the Internet open.

In the Financial Times, Nicholas Economides of the NYU Stern School of Business writes that the "amazing success" of the Internet "has been based on its openness, ubiquity, and non-discrimination."

"So, when the global communications network grows by leaps and bounds and spurs tremendous innovation," Economides asks, "why change its traditional rules?"

What’s more, the folks developing smart grid technology will depend on the open Internet to help improve energy generation and efficiency.

"The reliability of software that uses the smart grid and the Internet is dependent on net neutrality to ensure Internet Service Providers (ISP) deliver bidirectional data as quickly as possible," writes Nick Nigro at CleanTechies.com.

"If the Internet did not operate on a level playing field… then the growth of distributed generation and other electricity control options could stagnate."

Even AT&T’s CTO seems not to have gotten the memo from the company’s Washington lobbyists. Speaking at a broadband conference, John Donovan said, "Outside applications need to be on an equal footing with our own applications," an apparent reversal of AT&T’s policy of favoring its own applications over others.

Whether you're the chief executive at Google or an old-school economics professor, it’s clear that network discrimination "will be devastating for innovation and choice." Net Neutrality is the backbone of a pro-business, market-friendly economy. As our unemployment numbers skyrocket, we’re going to need an open Internet to put people back to work. It shouldn’t take an MBA to figure that out.