When It Isn’t Good to be Number One

America loves to be number one. But now we have the dubious distinction of being number one in a category that nobody wants: we have the highest corporate tax rate in the world. The result is that the U.S. tax code continues to drive American employers to outsource jobs overseas. Since 2001, Japan had levied the highest combined corporate tax rate among the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD) countries at 39.5 percent. They recently lowered their rate to 38.01 percent, which according to a study by the Tax Foundation puts Japan’s rate below America’s combined federal and state rate of 39.2 percent — the highest in the world. What does this mean for America’s job picture? Our job creators have fewer financial resources to work with as they struggle to hire more... Read More

Compromised Secrets Compromise Job Creation

Secrets are a trust between individuals and groups. They play a role in security and building sustainable relationships. But when secrets are compromised, trust is the victim. There have been two recent situations where secrets are being compromised — both of which will compromise job creation. The first surrounds the supposed secret deliberations by the Supreme Court over Obamacare. The cost of implementation and compliance with a government controlled healthcare system will be staggering. The estimates escalate each time another layer of regulation is peeled back. Ultimately, this heavy burden will be passed on to American businesses in the form of higher insurance premiums and taxes. The consequence is that companies are not hiring new employees and will start reducing staff to afford... Read More

When Patents Are Stolen, so Are American Jobs

Ideas build nations. Great minds fueled the economies of nations as far back as the ancient Egyptians. Yet, after only a bit more than 200 years, America has become the world’s innovation leader. Small and medium-sized American companies generate the overwhelming percentage of this creativity, filing 13 more patents per employee than large corporations do. Meanwhile, the core copyright industries alone (not including the broader sector) lead all major industry sectors in U.S. exports and have grown three times faster than the overall economy in the past 20 years. Core copyright industries are those that create copyrighted works as their primary product, including motion pictures, music, software and publishing. Our intellectual property (IP) is in demand everywhere around the globe. Unfortunately,... Read More

Traditional Donor Base Lukewarm on Obama Re-election

If you’re looking for proof that President Barack Obama has lost his luster with his voter base, two of his traditional big donors – labor unions and Hollywood — are taking a tentative look at supporting the Democratic Party with big money. While the AFL-CIO will certainly support Obama and Democrats, they are not generating the kind of money that Democratic presidential candidates are used to receiving. And they certainly are not as enthusiastic as they were in 2008, when unions gave $400 million to Obama and congressional Democrats. Last year, labor political action committees gave federal Democratic candidates and committees $21 million. But this was 20 percent from the same period in the 2008 election cycle, according to a Chicago Tribune story Consider the irony that Obama faces.... Read More

Manufacturing Needs to be Remanufactured

Nationwide, an estimated 600,000 manufacturing jobs are going unfilled, according to a survey published last year by Deloitte and The Manufacturing Institute. The survey found 5 percent of current manufacturing jobs are unfilled due to lack of qualified candidates, 67 percent of manufacturers have a moderate to severe shortage of qualified workers, and 56 percent expect the shortage to increase in the next three to five years as older workers retire. Most of these unfilled jobs are in the skilled production category — positions such as machinists, operators, craft workers, logistics managers and technicians. How did the U.S. manufacturing industry – historically and currently the worldwide leader in manufacturing — lose its mojo? (Yes, the United States is the largest manufacturing country... Read More

Cherry-Picking the Employment Numbers

The White House trumpeted an unemployment figure of 8.3 percent as great progress. That would be encouraging if it were true. It’s not. The administration selectively chose the data that seemed to indicate a drop in unemployment while ignoring any numbers that would detract from their findings. Interestingly, this is exactly how the first unemployment figures were tabulated in 1878 by Carroll D. Wright, chief of the Massachusetts Bureau of the Statistics of Labor. According to the New York Times, he circulated a survey that asked town assessors to estimate the number of local people out of work, but only count adult men who really want employment. “By doing this, Wright said he understood that he was excluding a large number of men who would have liked to work if they could... Read More

The Waiting is the Hardest Part

As I watch the general malaise gripping Washington, I find myself thinking about the lyrics of Tom Petty’s hit song: “The waiting is the hardest part.” I know I am not the only one waiting for something to happen to get this nation back on track. Our small businesses, entrepreneurs and 14 million unemployed feel an endless gnawing, the grinding of gears, as America performs like a broken clock. Time stands still. It has become all about the waiting. • The waiting for the Supreme Court to strike down Obamacare so we can get our future healthcare costs under control. The Affordable Healthcare for America Act is anything but affordable. When the majority of states consider it unconstitutional, something is very wrong. It’s just one more thing keeping small business from hiring.... Read More

Could George Washington Be Elected President in 2012?

With an angry, dispirited electorate looking to undermine the candidates of both parties even George Washington would have a hard time getting elected. I recently read some biographical information about George Washington and wondered how he would have fared in our current contentious congress and negative media coverage. He had several advantages: a lack of a 24-hour news cycle, no talk shows, a small group of eligible voters, and a reputation earned as the general of the Continental Army that defeated the British and set the stage for America’s independence. There’s a reason he is considered “The Father of our Country” and the “American Moses.” Much of it had to do with his size and presence, charisma, courage, character, and temperament. But even back then pundits sniped that... Read More

Maybe Governors Should Run the Country

If you want proof that the federal government has lost its way on fiscal leadership, then look no further than the spending cuts being made by individual states. The message is clear that if states want to be fiscally sound they no longer can look to the federal government for help. Long before anyone in the Obama administration recognizes the folly of out-of-control spending, state governors are taking the lead and making the painful cuts that the federal government should have been making instead of racking up this year a whopping $1.4 trillion deficit. Perhaps most telling is that state legislators recognize that levying more taxes will not fix the economy. While the Obama administration is poised to raise taxes on small businesses (where 75% of new jobs are created) they are contributing... Read More

Looking at Strike Three

If President Obama was trying to revive his approval ratings with his foreign tour and dance demonstrations, he’s heading in the wrong direction. First, he struck out in South Korea on getting a badly needed Free Trade Agreement ratified. Now he’s struck out again in the G-20 Summit where he was unable to convince world leaders to approve US currency policy changes and to put pressure on China to stop manipulating their currency. While there are no guarantees in international negotiations, the President’s inability to build consensus with foreign leaders can be traced to his administration’s disengagement on trade policies. Worse, world leaders have rejected America’s fiscal policies. Like most of us, the world leaders are skeptical that the Federal Reserve System’s creation... Read More