Another piece by my friend R.L. Schaefer:
Might be good to review Econ -101. Productive jobs can not be created by government. Government can only transfer funds from the private sector to the public sector – with a large percentage of the wealth lost in the process through government graft and inefficiency.
Thinking of jobs as being “created” is the first mistake. Tomatoes in a garden don’t simply appear – they grow only after a proper environment is prepared for them.
America has spent decades destroying manufacturing jobs through “out sourcing”, regulation, unionizing and taxation. We have become a nation of paper shufflers that imports most of its basic needs; energy, food and raw materials.
For 40 years our schools have emphasized “white collar” jobs – “blue collar” jobs were referred to contemptuously by school counselors and administrators as, “dead end”, “unfulfilling”, “unskilled” and “going nowhere” jobs. A high school counselor referred to my father’s job as a machinist as a, “meaningless job – a road to nowhere.”
Corporate greed, government regulation/taxation, and educational/vocational bigotry has transformed us, in just 40 years, from the industrial giant of the world to a country that can’t provide the basic necessities of life for its people or even control its borders.
It won’t be easy to put this train wreck back on the track, but if there is any hope of salvaging at least a remnant of our former greatness it must include some combination of the following steps.
1. Eliminate the Capital Gains Tax for investment in companies that create jobs based on a preset formula. And, reduce the Capital Gains Tax across the board.
2. Reduce corporate income taxes based on a “jobs” formula, and raise taxes on crazy bonuses and salaries. Pick a number – 2 million????
They’ll just have to soldier along keeping only 25% over 2 million…..
poor babies. Maybe use the money to pay their employees more instead of paying a luxury tax on it.
3. Massive tax incentives for companies who bring “out sourced” foreign jobs back home.
4. Tax penalties for corporations based on the number of jobs “out sourced” to foreign counties.
5. Put the “hard green” dogma/agenda in the trash bin. Dogmatic regulations make competition difficult, and result in higher costs and lower employment.
6. Forget National Health Care. Merely subsidize a percentage of the premiums for low income families, remove the insurance industry’s exclusion of persons with “preexisting conditions”, and government pays a portion of those claims. Hog tie the trial lawyers, and allow a free market interstate insurance market. There’s no need to dismantle the whole machine and raise everyone’s taxes to fix a few glitches.
7. Start drilling off shore – especially California, and Alaska (remember, offshore drilling actually reduces natural seepage from undersea fissures). Tweak shale oil and clean coal technology. Stop tearing down damns because of fish and frog worries, and fast track nuclear plants. Low cost energy is a must for production. The Algore-rithms for Global Warming are faulty. Drive a stake through the boogeyman called “climate change” and move on. If we are wrong so what?
The earth has been a lot warmer in the past and there more species and biomass then – life flourishes in the tropics – not so much on frozen tundra.
8. Stop the ethanol fiasco – families need less expensive food – not more expensive gas.
9. Cut government red tape to the bone from the city to the federal level. Building projects need to be fast-tracked and not tied in regulatory knots over a thousand issues with Environmentalist theology.
Government needs to “relearn” common sense and judgment. Stop micromanaging and creating roadblocks over insignificant issues. We’re in an economic war – Get a move on!
10. Close that southern border! Deport those who are here less than 5 years. Fine the heck out of companies who hire illegals. After 300 years it’s time Mexico handled their own economic and political issues.
11. Schools need to stamp out intellectual, educational and vocational snobbery. To paraphrase Booker T. Washington, “No nation can prosper until it learns that there is as much dignity in tilling a field as in writing a poem.”
Now, get to work.