He wrote a diatribe about how restrictive government regulations and the weight of government was the reason why the economy is not thriving. As part of this onerous mash of stifling bureaucracy are the supposedly sky high capital gains taxes, that are "choking economic growth".
I have some friends who were small business owners. The conservative ones mimic the same party line, it is all the government's fault that small businesses are not thriving.
So, when we cut regulations where do we start? Where do we go to cut costs, and regulations, so businesses can thrive?
If the experience of Wisconsin or Michigan are any guide, it is straight at labor. Cutting labor costs is the key to success; not innovation or new ideas, but labor costs.
There was a time in America when workers stayed with the same company for a lifetime. Employees were part of the family, and worked alongside the owner for over thirty years.
This system died a long time ago. Now, employers actually discourage longevity, because it...guess what...drives up labor costs.
And one of those most onerous costs is health care. To keep those costs down, small business owners long ago came up with the idea that older workers mean higher health care costs, so they are expendable.
America is the ONLY country in the world who runs its health care system through employers. The only one.
And health care insurance is an enormous pain for small business owners. Many have done away with any coverage at all, prompting the present fifty million or so who have no health care insurance at all.
So, to survive small business have cut benefits, laid off older more loyal workers so what is next to become "lean and mean".
Workplace safety, workman's compensation, unemployment insurance become candidates and are identified as "government burdens" that are "stifling" small businesses. Add to that, any thoughts of a pension plan, and you have the target for business conservatives...basically reduce the labor force to 1880-90 conditions. A conservative Presidential candidate even suggested children serve as janitors at their schools to eliminate expensive union backed custodians. That is child labor.
And it makes sense, when according to conservatives, to compete in the global economy means you treat workers like they do in China or Singapore, no protections, low wages, no benefits.
There are a lot of moral and economic problems with this approach. For one, we have had this debate already, and decided a long time ago that the key to a robust economy was to have a class of consumers who have money to spend on the products and services our economy produces. A thriving middle class as the bedrock of a growing economy is an accepted fact of economic vitality not only in the United States, but throughout the world.
China and India have rapidly growing middle classes, regardless of the relative poor working conditions that exist. There are some economists who say America's middle class is shrinking, as those in the "developing nations" increase, and there is not much we can do about it. There is only so much wealth to go around, it is finite in the world, so what we are witnessing is a shift of wealth from the middle class dominated developed nations to the growing developing ones.
The problem with that thesis is the phenomenon of fantastic growth in wealth in the top of the American economic hierarchy. There appears to be plenty of wealth to go around, it is just concentrating in the top.
One thing is for certain, a strong middle class means a better America for all. Huge gaps between the rich and the poor, with the majority of wealth in the hands of a few, does not bode well for a democracy.
I suggest the following: 1. It is not the government that is holding back economic growth, it is mostly America's health care insurance system, that siphons off vitalilty through a labyrinth of profit taking, a huge bureaucracy that could be eliminated by a non-profit, government run, single payer system. Stop employer provided health insurance completely, Medicare for all really is the answer no matter what the insurance industry lies about. . 2. Enforce the progressive tax code, and stop the Bush tax cuts for everyone. They did not work, and have actually retarded economic growth. 3. Eliminate all state employment laws and regulations and concentrate them in a universal federal code of labor law.
We are operating with a labor code that has layers of local, state and federal laws that often conflict and are more expensive to everybody. We have a mobile workforce, people move across state lines all the time, why have a workman's compensation program in every state, that sometimes is contradictory?
Put Congress to work on developing a national economic policy that would protect American workers and yes, condition our participation in the global economy. I often have thought that we keep arguing about free enterprise, government regulations; etc., while we SHOULD be arguing about a national economic policy that would present a united front to the world.
Why does each state have global economy approaches? Why does Texas compete against California for economic growth, when workers travel from one state to another?
We are spending our time competing against ourselves, when the enemy is out there. It reminds me of the wagon train joke, where the settlers turn inward and shoot at each other rather than at the enemy.
The problem is government over-regulation, but from multiple, overlapping areas, without a strong central core.
That is what will begin to make it better for small businesses to compete in the global economy.
And that, of course, is what conservatives will resist to the death. Because small, de-centralized government, is their mantra, their bedrock of belief, and America's passport to defeat!
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