Tuesday, September 25, 2012

Unemployment - increasing and personal


Bureaucrats hire economists to do studies and produce numbers. Politicians use those numbers to buy votes. With enough votes, politicians use your taxpayer dollars to hire more bureaucrats to hire more economists to produce more statistics.

Meanwhile, your neighbor's home was foreclosed.

The house is falling apart. The lawn is brown, except for the weeds. Another neighbor has lost her job. Many are concerned that the businesses they work for may not be able to employ them much longer.

You don't need a bureaucrat to know that things are bad.

But they told us anyway. The Colorado Department of Labor and Employment recently told us that 8,400 Coloradans lost their jobs last month and another 11,300 became so discouraged that they quit looking for work.

Over 20 years ago, I opened Paradise Rock Gym, my first business. Adams County government welcomed my business, eliminating red tape, allowing me to focus on building my business, gaining customers, and selling something that people willingly bought. I willingly provided benefits for my employees, so they would willingly continue working for me. It was a solid middle class business, helping middle class people earn a living while pursuing their dreams.

These days, our government, with its insatiable desire to control our lives, regulate our businesses, and confiscate our money prevents businesses from doing what I did.

The bureaucrats tell us what we already know - our government is hurting us, the very people it claims to help.

Wednesday, September 12, 2012

Innovation Investment Tax Credits Hurt Free Markets


According to Dictionary.com, innovation is “something new or different introduced”.  The caveman that turned a round rock into a wheel and used it to move things was an innovator. Steve Jobs, co-founder of Apple was an innovator. Even the neighbor kid who convinces you to let him mow your lawn is an innovator, because he tapped a new market. And the single mother who gets her kids to band practice, finds the time to help her kids with homework, and goes to work to provide for her family – that’s innovation.

So innovation is good, right? It expands our economy, helps businesses thrive and improves lives. Businesses, in turn, hire more people, buy more equipment, invest in more innovation.

However, not all innovations are equal.

In free markets, entrepreneurs are rewarded when they bring valuable innovations to their customers. And only the free market can determine whether those innovations are valuable. But when government decides to reward “innovators” it becomes a political decision - not a free market decision. Politicians have a notoriously bad track record when it comes to making good investment decisions.

My opponent in my campaign for State Representative believes her “Innovation Investment Tax Credit” idea will create jobs. However, that has just never proven to be the case.

An innovation tax credit requires that all taxpayers pay more taxes so that the few politically favored businesses (those that the government defines as “innovative”) can receive gifts from the government. If your neighbor kid somehow innovates the best, most innovative lawn mowing service in the world, he will likely not be popular enough with the State Legislature to get payouts.  

This is not government by consent of the governed - - it is government by elitists who believe they know what’s best for you and your family.

It’s what caused the debacle with Solyndra, the solar panel manufacturer that received $535 billion in federally guaranteed loans and then went bankrupt, eliminating 1200 jobs, and leaving you and me to pay the bill.

It is what nearly forced Colorado taxpayers to spend $300 million on the Gaylord Hotels project, a project which Gaylord itself decided is no longer financially viable. We dodged the bullet on that one.

My opponent’s “Innovation Investment Tax Credit” scheme is just another example of her flawed understanding of how economies and businesses work. In her vision for Colorado, entrepreneurs who have more concern for politicians and bureaucrats than customers will benefit – regular people like you and me will be left to struggle on our own against her redistributionist policies.

Many politicians seem to believe that government’s main purpose is to help them buy votes. I believe that my fellow citizens are smarter than that. They can run their own lives, they can build their own businesses, they can find employment in a thriving economy - if only government will get out of the way.