Jobs and Automation

President Trump ran and was elected on jobs. If you listen to democrats, there are more jobs than people, which means labor must be Imported. Since the beginning of the industrial age people have been worrying that machines would replace humans, which is the main topic of this writing.

A friend and I were discussing economics when he asked me what I thought about minimum incomes and wages. I told him that in the USA the economy is regional and not national. For that reason any minimum wage should be regional or restricted to the state.

Reasoning Behind Eliminating Business Tax

Whenever elimination of corporate/business taxes are mentioned, people get excited. People have been conditioned to see corporations as greedy entities. We see this conditioning happening all the time on television and in movies where CEOs are seen as Scrooge types who care more for profit than human lives. There are some who might be much like the Scrooge character, but there are many more who care for their employees. What we can't forget is that the CEO's primary obligation is to the stockholders. Sometimes it's hard not to hate a corporation when you have to deal with tech support or try to solve a simple billing problem. I sometimes feel like punishing them myself, but I know taxation should never be about punishment.

Government Controlled Economics – A Failure

With the US economy trying to dig its way out of what has been erroneously called the Great Recession – we sit and watch the happenings in Washington. We recently heard a speech by the president reaffirming his desire to defeat climate change. Carbon emissions seem to be the number one item on the Washington agenda. While Congress sleeps the EPA and other agencies expand their regulatory power.

The American people elected a president who promised to destroy the coal industry. He has the desire to make the coal industry a thing of the past. While use of coal in the USA has dropped, exports to Europe were up 92% in 2010-11, according to Platts. Electrical rates are expected to increase dramatically because of mandates for closing coal powered generation plants. The president said, “Electrical rates will necessarily dramatically increase.” This is all in the name of saving the planet from climate warming that isn't currently happening and was never proven to be caused by humans.

How many of you have taken a cruise? If so, how many of them flew the American flag? There is only one cruise ship operating under American registration, the American Pride. The reasons are simple that this profitable industry operates offshore – US regulations. These regulations are wide spread – everything from labor laws, environmental regulations, to health inspections.

Economics – Chickens, Cows, and Money

People place a lot of importance on money, which is understandable. Bartering was once the major method of payment. In some eras something as simple as salt or spices were worth more than gold. The more rare an object the more its worth in comparison to other goods and services. The more rare the tradesmen, the more their worth.

People can't provide everything they need for themselves. Let's say that a farmer needs a cow for milk. The cow cost ten chickens. Most cows are raised in a different village so the farmer has to haul the ten chickens to that village for trade. Most times he takes 11 chickens because one might die on the way.

Someone decided a long time ago that gold coins were a lot easier to carry around. One gold coin is worth 10 chickens. The farmer doesn't need a wagon to carry a single gold coin with which to buy the cow. He simply sold ten chickens to a village that was closer. Sounds pretty simple doesn't it? Well it was until the bankers came along.

Progressives Versus Corporations

I recently had a day long twitter exchange with a progressive. As usual it always came down to the evils corporations do. Are there corporations that place profits over common morality? Of course. There are corporations doing things that can be seen as crimes against nature, but they typically do them in countries like China.

I tried explaining to the progressive that taxes and government regulations force these companies to move jobs to countries like China where sweat shops thrive. In some cases the poor in China are happy to have jobs even if they are in deplorable conditions. This isn't an excuse for consumers and corporations that ignore the plight of foreign workers—it's just one symptom of poverty and an out of control Chinese government.

In the USA we have a long list of jobs that the left calls, “Jobs that Americans won't do.” For those jobs we import workers from south of the border who are happy to have any job. Those people are so desperate for even the lowest paying American jobs that they sometimes risk their life coming to this country. This is despite such trade agreements like NAFTA that has driven American jobs across the southern border. NAFTA decimated many rural textile communities such as the one in which I live.

Eliminate the Tax Scam

Each year we watch a parade of politicians promising us everything in order to gain our vote. We know that most of these promises will never be fulfilled. We also know that they will blame those failed promises on the other party. I am here to talk about the promises they do keep.

We have amassed a $16.5 trillion dollar debt. We have some telling us that the debt doesn't matter. I m told it won't matter until we reach $20 trillion. At the rate of debt growth we can see this happening in at least four years. We have one side telling us that we need to stimulate the economy. We have the other side spending more and wanting to raise taxes on the rich. That same side also tells us that we need to stop subsidizing certain industries, while increasing subsidies for others. For those who are unclear, a subsidy is no more than a tax exemption on certain aspect of that business. This is done to move the businesses in certain directions.

1892 Homestead Strike

While watching the History Channel’s Men Who Built America I became intrigued with the Homestead strike of 1892 where 10 men were killed, three of which were Pinkerton agents. History sometimes portrays this as some kind of atrocity. In a sense it was, but who was really at fault? We could blame Carnegie Steel’s Fricke, but that is too easy.

Working conditions were hard, but that was life in America in those days. Those people worked twelve hours a day in the torturous heat. Those men were steel workers who were known for their toughness.

Enter the union who told the men they needed more money, which was fair. The unions took things too far. They convinced those workers that the steel mill belonged to them. They were the ones who built it. Unions and the left are telling people the same things today. They tell people that those who built the industry couldn’t have done it without the worker, which is true in some sense. It’s this kind of thinking that leads many of us to say that unions and the Democratic Party are communistic. They overlook the fact they were given much needed jobs in which to feed their families.

Corporate taxes at the Debate

In the debate Obama said that the USA was paying corporations to move out of the country. Romney responded correctly that he had never heard of such a thing. The truth is Obama and the Democratic tax policies are in part running corporations out of the country.

We all know this is a global market. Any successful major corporation is doing business out of the country. In all except the USA a corporation pays corporate taxes only on the money earned in that country. If a Japanese corporation operating in the USA moves those earnings after US taxes into a Japanese bank, there are no additional taxes.