Jobs & Economy

Hope is not a strategy, action is!

There are many important issues facing our Country. I believe the most important is jobs. Today we have 25 million Americans unemployed or underemployed. Real wages have not improved and the jobs that have been created are not quality full time positions. Labor participation rate is the lowest in 38 years. At the same time, the cost of basic necessities like food and gas have quadrupled, placing tremendous strain on the poor and middle class. Predictably, the recession hasn't ended for the majority of Americans because Congress and the President have repeated the same mistakes of the 1920s, 30s, and 70s. Their policies have ruined millions of lives, especially the retired and elderly. The only true benefactors of our recent Presidents' (Bush and Obama) plan of printing money have been the banks and the federal government. So it comes as no surprise that their results have placed millions of Americans into misery, and we are losing out on thousands of opportunities. 

I believe there are a several things we can do to help Americans find jobs if we just balanced the needs of business with the needs of society. 

1. Allow corporations the ability to repatriate their offshore earnings without double taxation, and reduce the corporate tax rate to 10%.
2. Reform the tax code, which is approximately 76,000 pages. Why does the government force jobs overseas when a simple reform of the tax code would eliminate businesses' need to move offshore? Allowing companies to use legal cash-rich stock split-offs (Warren Buffet) and inversions hurts the very people government is saying they want to help. These legal provisions take away billions of tax revenue for cities, states, and federal government.
3. Eliminate all corporate subsidies. This eliminates corporate welfare and levels the playing field for all companies: Big and Small.
4. With the added revenue from implementing the above, our economy will grow and therefore provide us the ability to make investments in infrastructure, capital, equipment, and software.
5. Congress must stop unnecessary and controlling regulations on all of society. This is paralyzing companies' ability to plan. Without certainty on rules and regulations, companies will withhold spending and hiring. The end result is continued high unemployment and low labor participation rates.  For every new rule or regulation, the Congressional budget office must perform a tax incidence analysis. If the analysis reveals it adversely affects the poor, the new rule or regulation will not be able to proceed for a vote in Congress or be implemented by Executive order.
6. Eliminate the personal income tax and replace with a tax on consumption and wealth (Buffet Rule).
7. Renew bonus depreciation.