Sunday, August 7, 2011

How We Can Fix Our Economic Problems

As the financial world continues to burn, what we hear from Mr. Obama is only more of the same, that the Government needs to spend, spend, spend. He calls it investment, but what he really means is spending. While I cannot disagree with incentives for hiring returning veterans, they have risked their lives to defend us, the rest of Mr. Obama's strategy for curing unemployment hasn't worked up to now, and there is absolutely no reason to believe it will work in the future. If you do what you always did, you will get what you always got, it is as simple as that.

I listened to a psychologist the other day compare the Tea Party to addicts. Knowing a little something about addiction myself, I had to laugh. It is plain that this Administration is addicted to an Ideology. Everyone with a rudimentary understanding of free market economic theory knows what is necessary to jump start our economy and put America back to work, but Mr. Obama and his crowd are deeply rooted in the river of denial that their program of excessive regulation and deficit spending will one day work if they just do enough of it.

Allan Meltzer, award winning professor of economics at Carnegie Mellon University's Tepper School of Business and visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute recently commented that new regulations such as Obama's healthcare bill and Dodd-Frank financial reform have "exacerbated enormously" the uncertain feeling gripping corporate leaders. "How else are you going explain why there's all this cash and so little investment?," he asks. "The reason is they don't know what the rate of return on that investment is going to be."

According to the American Action Forum “at the current pace, the total regulatory burden for the year will exceed $108.5 billion, with more than 900 major regulations.”

While it may be popular in some circles to blame our economic woes on private jet owners, oil companies and millionaires, the fact is that uncertainty about tax and regulatory policy are stemming the tide of investment in our nation.

There is a Presidential candidate who gets it. There is a candidate who understands that the way to get our economy moving again is to reform our tax code. A candidate who favors an immediate cut across the board in tax rates, reducing the capital gains tax, suspending taxes on repatriated profits, and eliminating the death tax permanently.

This candidate knows that the over extension of regulatory burdens including the new health care law are impeding business growth by increasing the cost of hiring and of doing business. The crushing weight of over-regulation is killing our economy. While he understands the absolute need for clean water, air, and the importance of conservation, this candidate knows that common sense can be brought to the regulatory process. He understands that there is a point of diminishing return beyond which the gains achieved pale in comparison to the costs of achieving those gains.

There is a candidate that understands sometimes people fall on hard times, but what they need is a hand up, not a hand out. He knows the we must care for those in our nation who truly cannot care for themselves, but that empowering people to care for themselves is truly the compassionate way to help them help themselves.

We can elect a candidate who has not only balanced a budget, but turned a profit. A candidate who knows how to get things done, who has experience taking a failed entity and turning it around. We can elect a candidate who knows the meaning of meeting a payroll, who knows how to calculate the cost of hiring an employee, who knows how the federal reserve works, and what is broken inside it. We can elect a candidate who came from nothing, who followed the American dream and succeeded, and wants the dream to be available to all Americans.

We can elect that candidate. That candidate is Herman Cain!