Jobs

There is a lot of consternation about the jobs situation in this country and deservedly so. If you want to restore prosperity, you need to create real sustainable jobs. Now ultimately, this is the role of private industry, but Government policy has to create a climate that is favorable for job creation.

The fastest thing the Government can normally due is spend money on infrastructure improvements. Now, this does create jobs and also fulfills a legitimate Government purpose. Infrastructure is something that has to be paid for out of Government funds.

The idea of reducing taxes to create jobs has some problems. The equation has to be such that the jobs created ultimately create more tax dollars than the incentives cost. I fear that Government in general is unable to fathom this relationship and uses political factors to make the decisions. If our Government could simply make sure that sound business principles were used in all our decisions, we would be on the path to balancing the budget and reducing the deficit.

Very simply, if we simply created incentives to promote the use of domestic energy sources, and required pollution mitigation payments, we would stop exporting wealth and jobs overseas and transfer them back here. Think about a class of vehicles that ran on natural gas and were significantly cheaper to fuel up. Ultimately we would encourage a tremendous boost in building infrastructure to deliver the natural gas to delivery stations and we would create a significant demand in either converting current vehicles or building new ones. How hard is this?

Also, changing our tax system to one that taxes the point of sale instead of the point of manufacture would change much of the incentive involved in exporting jobs. Also, if we could equalize the cost of health care for companies doing business here, via paying for it out of a consumption tax, we would further encourage domestic employment.

These are actually relatively easy things and we just need some leadership to get them going.