Over-Regulation Leads to Under-Innovation

According to the 2013 Global Innovation Index, released by Cornell University, INSEAD and the World Intellectual Property Organization, the United States ranks as the fifth most innovative country, behind Switzerland, Sweden, the United Kingdom and The Netherlands. While this is an improvement from 2012, when the United States was 10th, there is one root cause for America’s failure to be crowned the top country in innovation: this nation’s lack of support for... Read More

A Culture of Dependency

In most wars a victor is declared. Yet, there is one war that has raged for more than half a century and there is no winner: the war on poverty. It started under the Lyndon Johnson administration with the best intentions. Now 50 years and $20 trillion later, poverty in this nation has actually grown worse. How can the richest nation on earth have 50 million people living in poverty? The answer is that we have substituted a path to employment for a path to dependency. Entitlements... Read More

Are Unions Part of the Jobs Problem?

Trade unions are always proclaiming their mission is to save and create U.S. jobs. But if you have been paying attention to their actions, you would be hard pressed to see this philosophy in action. Jobs aren’t being created by unions — the opposite is occurring. That may explain why union membership has dropped to 6.6 percent of all workers, down from 35 percent in the mid-1950s. Even as the United States engages in important negotiations involving the Asia-Pacific... Read More

When a President Mocks Small Business

As an entrepreneur who has worked my entire life to create new businesses, hire more than 200 employees and risk everything I own on my companies, I join the chorus of Americans who are outraged by President Barack Obama’s recent outburst, “If you’ve got a business, you didn’t build that. Somebody else made that happen.” This is clearly the most definitive proof that Obama does not understand small business, does not like small business and lacks the rudimentary... Read More

EU Turns Its Back on Intellectual-Property Theft

When nations such as Brazil, China and India steal our intellectual property (IP), they are stealing from American companies, their employees and from the American people. This should become an issue vital to every American. Our economy suffers, our employment picture suffers and our prestige suffers when our patents are stolen or ignored. So I was astonished and disappointed to see the European Parliament reject the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA), a multinational... Read More

Small Business Gets Punished by Supreme Court Ruling

The ruling by the Supreme Court that found Obamacare constitutional sent a message to small business that free enterprise no longer exists and the government is now in charge of their future. For the nation’s job creators, this ruling is devastating news for business and worse news for the 25 million Americans unemployed or under-employed. The ruling by the Supreme Court said the law’s “requirement that certain individuals pay a financial penalty for not obtaining health... Read More

The Ghost of the Marshall Plan Hovers over U.S.

Try to guess who said this and when: “The modern system of the division of labor upon which the exchange of products is based is in danger of breaking down. The truth of the matter is that Europe’s requirements for the next three or four years of foreign food and other essential products — principally from America — are so much greater than her present ability to pay that she must have substantial additional help or face economic, social, and political... Read More

Overregulation and Job Creation Can’t Work Together

Several weeks ago, I wrote that as of 2008, small businesses faced an annual regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee, according to an SBA regulatory impact study published two years ago. The Office of the Chief Counsel for Advocacy of the U.S. Small Business Administration estimates that the annual cost of federal regulations in the United States increased to more than $1.75 trillion in 2008. On the heels of this data, I came across a 2009 study from the California State University’s... Read More

Do Something to Send a Message to the Do-Nothing Congress

A Washington Post column recently suggested that “to call this 112th Congress a do-nothing Congress would be an insult — to the real Do-Nothing Congress of 1947-48. That Congress passed 908 laws. To date, this one has passed 106 public laws. Even if they triple that output in the rest of 2012 — not a terribly likely proposition — they will still be in last place going back at least 40 years.” Most people agree that the 112th Congress is the worst Congress in... Read More

Crushing Regulations Kill Job Creation

As of 2008, small businesses faced an annual regulatory cost of $10,585 per employee, according to an SBA regulatory impact study published two years ago. That’s 36 percent higher than the regulatory cost facing large firms (defined as firms with 500 or more employees). And since 2008, the situation has grown worse as the regulation factories in Washington have been working overtime since the Obama Administration has come to town. The Office of the Chief Counsel for Advocacy... Read More