by Joseph J Kusnell published in BoomerYearbook.com

Obama has done it again. I hear today how the new law which went into effect today curtailing the credit card company’s treatment of users is a great boon to the American consumer. lol. But is it really? Or just another underhanded way of redistributing America’s wealth. I wrote this to Fox News today following a spot they aired:

A FEW IDEAS TO AID OUR FLOUNDERING ECONOMY

By Joseph J Kusnell for Boomeryearbook.com

A bad idea: This economy has lots of very serious problems that may never be resolved. But the idea that a business is going to go hire someone for $104,000.00 who has been unemployed for 60 days all so they can get a $5,000 credit from the government is asinine. They simply will not spend $104,000 to get $5,000.00. If their business warrants adding someone at the high rate, they will do so with or without a tax credit. If it does not, they will not. Someone in Washington isn’t too bright.

Our problems seem to be magnifying daily. It’s now beyond special interest payoffs. It’s beyond politics. It’s beyond taking care of your support base or even your campaign contributors. It’s now about our future as a nation and the future of our children. In all my 80 years, this is the worst mess I have ever seen. And it’s not over yet, not even close. Soon, another explosion in real estate will hit us, this time commercial real estate like shopping malls. Their ARM’s are coming due. When that hits us this Spring, it will cause still another blow to our ailing economy.

We have a lot of problems. Nevertheless, here are a few ideas which might help.

1. Continue unemployment compensation until the unemployment rate gets down to 6.5% but introduce legislation to allow individuals to take jobs for less money and then if their new wage produces less income than what they were getting in their workman’s comp check, issue them a check for the difference. This would go on for three years to give workers a chance to adjust to lower paying jobs and perhaps earn an increase. It will also reduce government payments by up to 75% for each worker affected and that is a tremendous saving.

2. Re-introduce the old “Schedule-G” type IRS allowance for income averaging going back three calendar years for businesses and the last three years of employment for individuals. For individuals, if their average income for the last three years of employment is greater than the current year, the difference will be subtracted from the current year’s AGI. This is directed at those who have lost their jobs and had to take new jobs for less money. It will help them over the adjustment period.

3. Establish a 4.5% national cap rate on mortgages immediately. This cap on mortgage interest rates will remain in effect for five years and will be for all mortgages whether new purchases or refinanced mortgages. This will help the real estate market for home sales while helping to prevent more foreclosures by lowing carrying charges. It will also have the effect of revitalizing the economy permanently because refinancing puts more money into the economy on a monthly recurring basis unlike one time spending from a stimulus check.

4. Speaking of a stimulus, let’s have one more for $600.00 per family. BUT – and this is a big but – it will not be cash. This will be in the form of a purchase VOUCHER. The voucher will have a 120 day expiration date and will be transferable (we don’t care). However, the vouchers can only be used for the purchase of LOCAL services and/or the purchase of durable goods that are manufactured in the United States. (Not “Made in America” because that includes Canada and Mexico.)

5. GAMBLING. Hundreds of billions of dollars are now being spent in Casinos around the country and that money is ruining local businesses everywhere. They say “oh yes, but look at all the people we employ”. That’s true but it would be well to remember taking billions out of local economies and from small businesses causes lost jobs in those businesses. Usually a lot more than are hired by Casinos. Here is an example. Philadelphia Park has renovated its Casino and is now taking in millions a DAY. At five million a day, they will take in 1.8 billion dollars a year. Yes the Casino hires 600 people a good part of that money is coming from local communities. If you spread that 1.8 billion over a thousand local businesses, each one would get 1.8 million and with that increase in business they would hired in the aggregate far more than 600 people. Plus the businesses would then have to restock what they sold and that generates orders, and that in turn generates more employment by their suppliers. So the Casinos hurt not just the local community but the extended local community creating blighted areas wherever they show up. So it’s time to ask ourselves what kind of society we want to be. Once we limited Casinos to remote locales where people vacationed. That was much better than what our shortsighted states are doing now in their misdirected quest for tax money. You see folks, no matter where that 1.8 billion was spent, it would generate tax money one way or the other. This was a mistake. You can’t build a healthy society with Casinos on damn near every street corner (and yes, I do gamble).

6. Online Shopping: This is another attack on our society. With no need to maintain fancy stores in local neighborhoods, online marketers can offer products cheaper. We buy them and local businesses have to shut down for lack of business. Jobs are lost locally and society suffers. Our downtown areas become more and more blighted. You know, angry people with too much time on their hands are dangerous. Keeping people working in their localities is a sure way to keep the peace. Having an orderly society is equally important. Making money should not always be government’s number one priority. So what do we do. It’s like competing with cheap foreign labor only the competition is right here in our own country – usually. I say increase the tax on profits from online marketers to level the playing field. We need to reinforce our communities. When communities collapse, nations collapse. Online businesses take money and jobs from the local communities leaving us with empty deserted blighted downtown areas. If we are a society and not just a bunch of moneymakers, we need our local communities and we need our local businesses and we should take care of those who run businesses in our local communities and not be so generous with out-of-town online marketers.

7. The world is shrinking. We can’t stop that. But it is also causing us a giant problem: we have to compete with cheap foreign labor and nations that have no environmental laws, no health insurance mandates, no unemployment insurances and no labor laws. All these regulations tend to increase business costs so the lack of them decreases costs and that allows them to lower their prices and undercut our businesses that are faced with all those costs. So what do we do? About all we can do is find ways to help our companies out. So here are some ideas that might be of help.

8. Reduce corporation taxes based on the number of workers employed in the United States as a
percentage of this company’s worldwide employment. The more Americans you employ here, the less tax you pay.

9. Immediately transfer 3 billion dollars from the unspent stimulus money to the SBA for DIRECT loans to small businesses for startup or expansion. This is NOT to be a minority welfare handout, this is to be a sound business program lending money to entrepreneurs with going businesses or business experience married to a sound business proposal. I repeat: this is not to be another welfare program handout.

10. Encourage Americans to buy products manufactured in America wherever possible. Public service ads
explaining why they should might help.

11. Increase the minimum wage by $1.25 / hour.

11. Barring a major change in health care costs, grant a $1.50 deduction to companies for each $1.00 in health care costs paid for their employees.

ABORTION:

Abortion divides Americans. So here’s an idea. Let us take the profit out of abortions by making abortions unprofitable. Just set a price for abortions to cover all COSTS but nothing else. Make abortion clinics all non-profit. After all, why should anyone make money out of destroying the unborn? Making abortions a “product’ simply encourages more “sales” [sic: more abortions]. So, let’s take the profit out of abortions and then we’ll see whether this fuss is truly about a woman’s right to choose or simply about making money.

ENERGY: This is as dumb a policy as we have had for years. We send money to places near and far to buy their oil even though we have lots of our own oil including off shore and shale. But because of some convoluted reasoning, we would rather buy it from others who drill for it wherever the can find it without any regard to so called environmental problems rather than drill for our own WITH said safeguards. Then we turn around and lend them billions of dollars to help them drill for oil offshore (PETROBRAS, a Brazilian Company that drills OFFSHORE down there got two billion. I think Soros had a lot of shares in that company and that might explain it). Anyway, it seems we only care about the environment in our own country and not in other countries. Somehow I get the feeling it’s another scam. So let’s drill for our own oil wherever we find it. And develop our clean coal resources and our natural gas resources. The C02 scam is about over and these resources are plentiful in the United States. The fact is we haven’t even explored for 30 years so newly developed technology might uncover even more oil reserves that we thought we had. And there is always shale oil. We should have started this yesterday.

GOVERNMENT vs THE PRIVATE SECTOR: The workers doing the best these days are government workers. They make twice as much money on average as the people who pay them – the taxpayers – and they have better health insurance and better pensions. Plus they actually produce 1.8 hours less a day than their civilian counterparts.

There is a reason that of the 10% of American workers that are unionized, 70% work for non-profits (that’s a joke) or for the Government. Can you tell me who represents we taxpayers in wage negotiations between government Managers and government workers? Both are using OUR money so where is our seat at the table and where is the incentive to increase productivity or lower payroll and install cost cutting measures on the part of all these government workers?

The more people that we put to work in government in America, the more certain we are of failure. The sector that pays the bills should be the biggest by far and the sector that spends the money that creates the bills, needs to be as small as possible. So why are you all so hell bent to increase the size of the spenders (government) at the expense of those that produce (private sector). Can you show me any country in the world that ever prospered with that philosophy?

It is past time to stop spending money like drunken sailors. We need to cut the size of government not expand it. We need to reduce payrolls in government. We need to cut back down time and increase productivity. And we need to bring their benefits into line with what workers get in the private sector doing the same kind of work. Government is not SUPERIOR to the private sector it is INFERIOR. That’s why the private sector far out produces the public.

Working for the government is a great job. My friend has been working for a State government for 22 years now. He makes $100,000.00 doing a job that would get him about half that much in the private sector. He has a great pension plan and wonderful health insurance. All paid for by taxpayers who are not nearly so well off as he is. And do you know what he says to me? He says, “anyone who doesn’t work for the government is a sucker!” He’s obviously right. It is time to reign in the government. We need to cut government budgets by reducing both staff and expenses by 5% a year for the next three years for starters.

We are in a real mess and it’s just getting worse. Confidence is the basic motor for an economy and that’s what we don’t have today. Our people rightfully have no confidence in the future and that’s sad. Well, other than people working for the government. They are so isolated from reality it’s not even funny. That’s because they really don’t have to worry about losing their job as the rest of us do. Sometimes I get so confused: who works for whom again?

I care about Americans and about America and I am prepared to throw anyone – ANYONE – out of office that doesn’t have the same priority that I have. Mine is SAVE AMERICA. It’s far and away the best country this world has ever seen even if half the Obama appointees don’t seem to know that.

But that doesn’t matter because they aren’t going to be around much longer anyway.

  

 

 

 

Joey

Welcome to Joey’s Newspage, where people come to exercise their minds

http://www.blogger.com/profile/00659050837324784709

 

 

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