How to Jump Start the Economy

How to Jump Start the Economy

Robert A. Hall

Despite yet another of his endless pivots to the economy and jobs, President Obama cannot seem to move the economy. Official unemployment hovers around 7.5% only because every month more people give up looking. If you add them in, plus those who accepted part time work or under-employment, you get into the 20% range. The economy continues to stagnate. The president can’t understand why his policy haven’t worked after five years, and looks for some place to put the blame—the latest being “phony scandals.” (How many people have to die for it to be a real scandal?) The remedies below would rapidly create an economic boom. But they would be political poison with progressives and the people fed on their Keynesian nostrums for 50 years.

• Reduce the corporate tax rates to the middle of rates for other countries, rather than having the second highest rate in the world. This will encourage more international companies to invest here, and produce more revenue in the long run.

• Fast track US energy development: Drilling off shore, drilling in ANWR, drilling/fracking on public lands, development of nuke plants, development of new gas and oil refineries, development of clean coal plants, and the Keystone Pipeline. This will increase not only jobs, but make us energy independent, greatly adding to national security as our dollars would no longer fund Jihadists. Natural gas through fracking and nukes will also continue the drop in carbon admissions in the US, not that we can make a difference even if carbon does cause global warming, with China and India going full steam ahead.

• Offer a tax holiday for companies to bring home the $1.4T in cash they have overseas, without taxes, if they invest it in job creation in the US.

• Cut the capital Gains tax in half to encourage investment. JFK found that reducing Capital Gains increased government revenues.

• Pass a national right-to-work law.

• Reduce government spending and the deficit.

• Fast track resident status for entrepreneurial immigrants who have money and/or ideas for starting businesses in the US.

• Repeal ObamaCare.

• Pass a Fair Tax/Flat tax. Depoliticize and eliminate the IRS.

• Sharply reduce the size of government. Eliminate the National Labor Relations Board, transfer any enforcement powers necessary to the FBI or courts. While we are on a roll, eliminate the Labor Department and turn its functions over to the states.

• Reduce the minimum wage, creating more employment and job skill/habits training for the poor and young people, especially minorities.

• Eliminate all government funding at all levels for entertainment: the arts, sports and stadiums, public radio and public TV.

• Eliminate the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and turn any needed functions over to the FBI or the states.

• Sign all pending free trade agreements and negotiate more.

• Pass tort reform to protect business from law suit abuse.

• Eliminate all business subsidies, especially green ones. Get the government out of business. Let the market decide.

• Reduce unemployment benefits, forcing people to take less desirable jobs, thus starting the economic rebuilding. Painful, but not as painful as permanent high unemployment and a new dependent class.

• Pre-pay your funeral expense, because anyone who actually improved the economy this way would get wacked by the entrenched interest groups that would be hurt.

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Robert A. Hall is a Marine Vietnam Veteran who served five terms in the Massachusetts State Senate. He is the author of The Coming Collapse of the American Republic.

http://tiny.cc/g02s4 For a free PDF of Collapse, e-mail him at tartanmarine(at)gmail.com. All Hall’s books are listed here: http://tartanmarine.blogspot.com/2010/07/new-book-published.html