Where Have All The Jobs Gone?

A CNNMoney.com article suggests that 7.9 million jobs have been lost in the recession and are gone forever. Americans patiently waiting for an economic recovery should be asking themselves when this madness will stop.

"The recession killed off 7.9 million jobs. It's increasingly likely that many will never come back.

The government jobs report issued Friday shows that businesses have slowed their pace of hiring to a relative trickle.

"The job losses during the Great Recession were so off the chart, that even though we've gained about 600,000 private sector jobs back, we've got nearly 8 million jobs to go," said Lakshman Achuthan, managing director of Economic Cycle Research Institute."

At some point, in order get the economy rolling again, the government has to unshackle business people by reducing taxes and putting a halt to their current pastime of demagoguing business persons (if Congress were half as critical of their own actions as they are of the average business person, they'd be holding subcommittee hearings into their own missteps pretty much every day).

It's simply not acceptable that a national economy that until recently sported an unemployment rate under 5% now features an unemployment rate hovering around 10% (which would be even higher than that if the people who have grown frustrated from searching for a job and have given up were actually counted in that statistic).

A reduction in the corporate tax rate to 20%, changing the tax code to permanently allow the immediate expensing of all business equipment and property acquired, extending the Bush individual tax cuts another 10 years, AND paying for all these changes with a commensurate reduction in federal government spending would have this economy rolling again in no time.

For those wondering what aspects of federal government spending could possibly be cut, the defense budget would be a wonderful place to start, followed by changes to social security system (increasing retirement age, means testing, etc.), eliminating or dramatically scaling-back unnecessary or redundant federal departments (Education, Agriculture, etc.) and surely a lot of other areas.

Continuing to mire in a job-less recession is increasingly looking like a political decision by those who want the government to continue spending money it does not have, while the people who truly can kick-start the economy (yes, business people) and put people back to work are hamstrung by an onerous business environment.

New York Senate Fiddles...

New York City residents in recent years have made a burgeoning business out of offering their apartments for rent on a short-term basis to out-of-towners for the latter to use for a mini-vacation.

However, the New York State Senate is now considering a bill that would outright ban people living in New York City from using Craigslist and similar sites from doing just that.

"This week, writes Budget Travel, "New York state senators vote on a bill that would make it illegal for any homeowner or renter to sublet for less than a month. The new law would be a blanket ban on short-term rentals no matter how ethical the renter is. (It's always been illegal to violate co-op leases and condominium bylaws.)"

Maybe the Senators are looking for a reason to not focus on the state's gigantic, exploding $9 billion plus budget deficit.

The state is quickly sinking into a fiscal hellhole, and instead of coming up with growth-oriented policies (for example - cut the state sales tax, slash the individual tax rate, waive certain rules and regulations for newly-formed businesses, etc.) the best that state lawmakers can do is to make it even more unlikely that a budget-conscious traveler will actually want to visit New York City.

Given the complete reluctance on the part of New York state lawmakers to make difficult choices on how much the government attempts to raise in the form of taxes and how much of that amount it should spend, its challenging fiscal times will continue and only get worse from here.

Is Obama Spending Too Much Time On the Links?

Recent reports and opinions suggest that President Obama has in general been spending far too much time on the golf course since taking office, and in particular since the BP oil spill.

"Taking a page from conservative bloggers, the Republican National Committee has released an ad criticizing President Obama for playing six rounds of golf in the first 58 days of the massive BP oil spill. The ad — asking, "What took so long?" — suggests Obama put off meeting with BP so he could spend time on the course. Is it fair to accuse Obama of putting leisure first, and the disaster second?

Count me among those in the minority who think that the more time that President Obama spends on the golf course, the better!

Who needs him in the White House, dreaming up new taxes and regulations to further paralyze the American economy?

The US needs a figure-head President, not an activist that is constantly looking for ways to waste people's hard-earned money on yet another failed social project.

With his birthday coming up on August 4th, if you really care about the fate of this country, you'll send him some golf gear as a present that will serve to reinforce his love for the game and get him out on the greens even more often!

Dems Offer Up Half-Baked Ideas to End Recession

Politicians from each camp are increasingly throwing around ideas of tax cuts and spending initiatives that will put the economy on the road to recovery.

However, some of the proposals are more dubious than others.

Take President Obama's proposal (please!) for the federal government to provide $50 billion to the states to avoid layoff's of state workers.

"President Obama urged reluctant lawmakers Saturday to quickly approve nearly $50 billion in emergency aid to state and local governments, saying the money is needed to avoid "massive layoffs of teachers, police and firefighters" and to support the still-fragile economic recovery."

His proposal ignores the fact that the only reason the recovery is "still-fragile" is because the federal government continues to manipulate the market through bailouts and guarantees. In addition, the $50 billion he requests is patently ridiculous, as there is no reason that the already overpaid (compared to similarly-skilled private workers) state workers can't accept pay cuts or furloughs as a measure to avoid layoffs.

Or how about Congressman James Clyburn's (D-SC) recent call for the Republicans to stop demanding "tax cuts, tax cuts, tax cuts".

"House Majority Whip James Clyburn (D-S.C.) charged Sunday that Republicans need to stop talking about cutting taxes and "look to the future with a little more compassion and bipartisanship."

Clyburn and House Republican Conference Chairman Mike Pence (Ind.) were asked on CNN's "State of the Union" about the three-page letter President Barack Obama sent to congressional leaders Saturday, saying that the extension of tax cuts and spending programs was critically needed to keep the economy from sliding "backwards."

Pence said that the administration was "groping for some economic policy" and called for "immediate, across-the-board tax relief."

Clearly Clyburn's call for "compassion" and "bipartisanship" is political-speak for "continued overspending on irrelevant and unnecessary federal programs" and "robbing from future generations in order to make political pay-off's today". His call to further the failed policies of the past prove that anything he says regarding the economy (or anything else for that matter) can be safely ignored.

On the other hand, although Republicans have shown a remarkable lack of backbone in allowing unchecked federal spending over the past 40 years, Pence's suggestion that tax cuts be the springboard for economic recovery is partly on target. If he coupled that with a call for a 30% cut in federal spending (that could easily be accomplished on a number of programs), then we'd really be on the verge of a significant, long-lasting economic recovery.

Senator Kerry: Tea Partiers are Hypocrites

In a nonesensical statement by a man who has made a career out of the same, Senator John Kerry (D-MA) recently remarked that Americans that are angry at Washington are being hypocritical.

"But he said that the D.C.-directed attacks are hypocritical, since many of those attacking Washington spending presumably want to keep their Social Security and Medicare and want Washington to play a big role in the Gulf Oil cleanup. "There's a huge contradiction on a daily basis," he said."

So because Tea Partiers believe that politicians in Washington are overspending in a multitude of areas, it's hypocritical for some of them to support any type of spending that is undertaken from Washington?

I think the essential issue here is that Mr. Kerry does not understand the Tea Party, does not understand why it has sprung into existence and does not understand the issues that its supporters believe are important.

Many Tea Partiers (myself included) would support making Social Security and Medicare contributions voluntary and not mandatory (of course, that would mean we were not able to receive those benefits either, to the extent we did not "contribute"). Any many Tea Partiers believe that regulators in Washington or at the state level in Louisiana should oversee the clean-up efforts being undertaken by BP (which at least has access to cutting edge technology, and is not bogged down in red tape like government bureaucrats would be) but not play a "big role" (which in his definition presumably means taking over the clean-up process).

The fact is, Senator Kerry and the Democrats ignore and mock the Tea Party at their own peril, and risk a devastating defeat in November.

As for why the Tea Party has just now come to life, it was one thing for the overspending to be approved by previous Administrations (i.e., Reagan, Bush 2) that were pro-growth and kept taxes somewhat low, which created the hope that once we got spending under control we could grow our way out of the mess. It's quite another for the Obama Administration to overspend, have no pro-growth policies and talk of massive tax hikes (e.g., repeal of Bush tax cuts, European-style VAT, etc.) as a means to fulfill their statist agenda.

Healthcare Reform = Tax Cut?

President Obama and Senator Dick Durbin (D-Illinois) this week stated that the recently-passed healthcare legislation represents the biggest healthcare tax cut in history.

"And when this exchange is up and running, millions of people will get tax breaks to help them afford coverage, which represents the largest middle-class tax cut for health care in history"

It is absurd to call legislation that entails significant tax increases and new excise taxes on items ranging from medical products to tanning services a "tax break".

On the other hand, what does one expect from the political operatives in DC, other than full-court, full-time spin?

Wyden-Gregg Bill in Senate is Promising

Senators Ron Wyden (D-OR) and Judd Gregg (R-NH) have introduced a bill that promises to simplify the tax code and eliminate certain preferences. At first glance, the bill looks promising.

"For far too long, our tax system has been overly complicated, burdensome and unfair to taxpayers and to small businesses that are the economic engines of our nation," Mr. Gregg said in a statement."

Amen to that.

Following are a few of the highlights of the bill:

1. The bill would see a single corporate income tax rate of 24% established (a substantial cut from the current 35%)
2. Allow small businesses with sales of up to $1 million to expense 100% of their equipment and inventory costs each year.
3. Triple the standard deduction.
4. The initial 35% of capital gains income would be exempt from tax.
5. Reduce the number of tax brackets for individuals from six to three (15% , 25% and 35%).
6. Best of all, the bill would eliminate the alternative minimum tax. .

So far, so good. It's not clear what the offsets are for some of the tax cuts, so we'll reserve judgment until that becomes more clear.