A Dose of Reality
There is no question: we have lost much with the currently soaring unemployment rates. The math is out there for everyone to see on unemployment, underemployment, poverty, and I suspect most of us feel it in our lives. What we are not seeing is the truth coming out in the media.
President Obama has put forth the American Jobs Act which is an attempt to create jobs by increasing demand for goods by giving people more money, and to work on the infrastructure in America by directly spending money 0n needed public investments.
The Republican plan is to cut taxes on what they call "Job Creators", namely the super-wealthy and multi-national corporations. By giving them more money, they hope to allow those companies to spend that money on employees rather than taxes.
The simple fact here is the if the Republican Economic theory was correct, the current economy - where the taxes are about the lowest they have ever been - would have record employment rather than record unemployment.
Red line is unemployment, Blue Line is Top Marginal Tax Rate (*10)
Now, I don't know much about statistics, but someone who does has told me these are significantly inversely correlated. Now, that isn't a causative argument, but it does show that when the top marginal tax rates are higher, unemployment is lower. Ergo, cutting the tax rate is not likely to reduce unemployment.
Let me say this again: Cutting taxes will not create jobs. This is all.
A free idea for the government
One of the biggest problems facing America today is rampant unemployment. I don't know what jobs plan President Obama is going to present next week, but I think it is safe to say, it is probably going to be underwhelming. On the other hand, the Republican plans are appalling, so we're stuck in the middle of two mostly useless camps.
So, we the people need to come up with good ideas that the government can steal, since their own suck so badly. I have one.
A lot of American companies over the past thirty or so years have moved a lot of jobs, and many manufacturing jobs, to less developed countries. I think we should apply a large tariff to any imports done by American companies who want to sell in the US. Ford wants to make a car in Mexico? Fine, but there's a thirty-percent tariff on top of it.
If these companies don't want to make their products in America, we should let them go where they like, it's only fair. But if they want to take money out of the pockets of American workers, we should make them pay for it.
A lot of people say that free trade creates jobs. And you know, it does. When we export products to other countries. We get to grab some of other countries' wealth when we do so. But when American companies think it is good business to take money from Americans and send it to other countries... I think we can make them pay for it.
And this would create jobs in the US- once it is too expensive to import these goods the manufacturing will have to come back - Americans just spend way too much money for these needs to go unfulfilled.
So, what are your thoughts on spurring job growth?