I managed to get an outline of Obama’s jobs plan. What do you think?

Obama’s three-part jobs creation plan. A continuation of WTF (Win The Future)

1.       Quick Jobs© Stimulate Private Hiring
We will begin awarding private companies who hire a worker who has been unemployed for more than 73 weeks, has participated in a Federal, State, or local jobs training program, and has successfully been accepted into the Quick Jobs© program, with a 6-month membership in Amish Mart’s Jelly of the Month club. [counted as taxable income]

2.       Jobs-Jobs-Jobs© Green Jobs Program
We will start dumping all kinds of money into Green projects. Vote for this bill and some of this juicy cash will end up in your district.   Acceptable projects will include wind and solar farms. Once these farms are up and running, they will stimulate someone to start building the necessary electrical infrastructure necessary to actually bring power from these types of energy plants somewhere useful, which will create even MORE jobs.

3.       Fair Fees Service (FFS)
In order to fund Obama’s New Deal without more Bush-esc deficit spending, and to maintain his promise not to raise taxes on people earning less than $250k, we will institute Fair Fees. These fees will be accessed on hard work and good ideas.

Workers working more than 30 hours per week will be charged a 5% fee on all wages over 30 hours, and %8 on hours above 40 hours. In addition, anyone in an advanced position (obviously having worked hard already) such as management or company officer, will be accessed a yearly fee, in addition to hourly fees, of $1000. Salary employees will be assessed a 3% fee on all earnings. A yearly fee will be accessed on all professional degrees, excluding law and journalism degrees.

Fair Fees will be accessed on all good ideas by the newly created Fair Fees Service, a vast bureaucracy that will create thousands of new jobs. The fees will be calculated according to an adorably confusing algorithm that will require an advanced degree in accounting to understand, thus resulting in even MORE jobs, and will in all likelihood result in a new accounting specialty in schools, requireing new teachers, and EVEN MORE JOBS.

We will fund the FFS with fee calculation fees. These fees will be a flat rate of 7% accessed on all Fair Fees, as well as all other non-tax fees, non-tax penalties, non-tax taxes, and non-tax calculation service fees and non-fee payments and penalties.

Wow! We’re really getting excited about this new program! The more we talk to each other about it, the more we’re convinced it will ‘fix’ the economy. Too bad we have to worry about the Obama-hating Republicans and their deformed child The Tea Party slowing down Obama’s ingenious progress with their blind and ignorant Obama hate.

The S & P recently  lowered the US credit rating outlook.  The reason for the downgrade, in a nutshell, was:

The United States has a large debt and deficit compared with other highly rated nations, and unlike with those other nations “the path to addressing [the debt and deficit] is not clear to us.”

That’s kind of a leadership – dare I say image – problem, isn’t it??? lol Glenn Beck has been warning of this for two years. lol

I think liberals and democrats have some wrong thinking on the idea of paying higher taxes. Like I said a couple posts ago, rich people will be investors, if not outright businesses. Taxing them takes carefully targeted investment out of the market, and then tries to ‘invests’ it otherwise according to bureaucracy. If the electorate think society needs something that only government should provide, why can’t regular people pay and even share for it – minus financially immovable people of course?

Also, there’s no reason we can’t get the economy back to 90s strength. It’s going to take risk and new ideas of course, and taxes just slow all that down. Once we’re back to 90s strength, then you can start raising taxes on The Rich. It’s actually a good idea then, in order to slow the economy down, to prevent all kinds of goofy crap, and build up a surplus to use in the next downturn.

That’s the idea anyway. The problem is wanker politicians who spend and pump regardless. Bill Clinton explained on an interview I heard a while ago that the reason the housing market was pumped up so huge was because it was the only thing growing our economy after the tech bubble blew. We kept low interest rates even though the housing market was hot as hell – getting people buying and selling homes, stuffing all the cash up in the air to be counted. Ooooooh, Mr. Politician, you’re making the economy so good – yeah!

So we have established the situation is bleak, but I cannot accept it is hopeless and not worth trying something.  Remember that our main goal is to save the state, not the city.

I think the first place to start is with the churches.  Encouraging non-US, preferably black, missionaries to go to Detroit would be beneficial in rooting out a lot of the corruption.  The problem is not simply that Unions are running amok or that Democrats are keeping the poor poor.  The problem is simply the human condition – pride.  It is not money that is the root of all evil, it is pride.  Men seek power and glory out of pride.  Men are selfish out of pride.  We are also lazy.  This problem needs to be addressed first and concurrently with any other program one decides to institute.

Secondly, professional black businessmen, actors, and artists of good character need to get into the inner city and start mentoring not only children, but adults, including in the prisons.  Natural leaders from within need to be supported in every way possible.  Maybe Alfonzo could lend a hand by coming into the high schools and middle schools and giving talks similar to his videos.

The social programs need to be reveiwed for success/failure and be deleted as found necessary.  If the people are being held down by the “helping hand” of the government, the hand needs to be removed.  Basic needs (food, water, and warm clothes) must be met; beyond that we only weaken the poor by making them comfortable.

Michigan needs to hire Rudy Gulianni to come and run Detroit like he ran New York.  He turned that city from one where you were afraid to walk around in, to one where you felt safe.  Of course, it has to be safe, not just feel safe.

A bipartisan organization must be formed to weakenthe Unions.  “The Next Job Could Be Yours” campaigns would be started state-wide.  The idea is not to remove and completely destroy the unions; the unions have done great things for the American worker over the last 150 years.  But the UAW in particular has increased wages and benefits so much that fewer jobs are available.  If you can pay $100 per hour in wages and benefits, would it be better for a city to hire 2 people and pay them $50, including benefits, or to hire 1 at $100?  When you push the wages too high, you either destroy the business you work for and everyone loses their job, or you just make it impossible for the company to pay both you and your fellow worker.  So who gets fired?  You or him?  Worth the risk?  We’ll have to go deeper than this.  I don’t know yet how Gettlefinger thinks.

Detroit could take a while to fix.  In the mean time, we must focus on other cities and strengthen them, like Ann Arbor or Grand Rapids.  My vote would be to strengthen GR.  The population is mostly Republican and that can only bode well for the state.  The city was on the rise before the recession, but they are hurting like everyone else.  Instead of moving large companies into Detroit, we should subsidize construction in Grand Rapids.  Plenty of infrastructure exists already.  Opportunity will take people away from Detroit and push them to GR.  As the population of Detroit continues to fall, our job of fixing it will get easier.  A red Michigan could be a game-changer in national elections.

So this is what we have so far with regard to key components necessary to revitalizing Michigan:

1.  Cut taxes, at least short-term (do we want to put an unemployment goal in here before we raise taxes a little? 4.5%?), for the top 1-2% income earners to create jobs.

2.  Fight the unions.  Now, let us discuss this approach.  Do you convince people one by one, to drop out of their union?  How do you bring down that establishment?

3.  Cut spending.  This will require us to look at the Michigan State Budget.  We could create a website that reviews the budget and proposes cuts to programs and then allow people to give there a opinion of the cut (or increase).

4.  Happier people are more active and social, or is it more social and active people are happier?  Any way, the State could subsidize companies to install full spectrum lights in their offices or install them in street lights so that they are full spectrum lights during cloudy days and normal lights at night.  Thoughts?

5.  Force businesses to build alongside the Detroit river and create a waterfront park like Wyandotte has.

Anymore?

Yes, just picture it.  We could have a bar (English or Irish bar) like the O’Shallaly (ever been there – fricken blast).  And in the summer we could show movies in the park.

I still don’t have much love for the Creationist movement, but this Ben Stein movie is hilarious. It, among other things, follows scientists who were blacklisted for being associated with “intelligent design.” It’s pretty well done. Made me laugh.

Ok, with all the abuses of language and blatant misrepresentation of facts this past year, you might think it odd that I’d mention this – but it’s a good example of common economic stupid. In the past year, 25% of American steel workers have been laid off. So this lady was saying on TV that, “every steel worker’s job creates 7 other jobs.”

Does that sound familiar? Every time someone is trying to argue for aid, bailouts, protectionist taxes, and so on – they bring up this idea that these particular jobs create other jobs. Now what do they mean by that?

Well, they probably mean the fact that a person has a job means they’ll spend money which will result in demand which will result in the extra jobs. Or maybe they’re talking about the other workers who would support the new worker. For example: A new steel worker would be doing work that consumed pig-iron, coke, fuel, and transportation – all of which employ people.

But listen! This argument is illogical on its face. EVERY job creates other jobs in this way. And, if we accept thisargument as clean claimable arguable fact, all we have to do is somehow get one person – that’s 1 individual – hired by someone somewhere. Because, multiplied exponentially, we’ll all have millions of jobs! Even if every new job created only 2 new jobs that same week, in a year wed have more NEW jobs than people in America.

This one ranks with the idea green jobs will fill the unemployment gap.

Regarding the mandate of citizens to purchase health care, I’m interested in how precedent is used in law making. There aren’t any current laws that require every person to purchase something regardless of their personal priorities.

As far as Just and Enforceable goes, personally, I think a mandate is a good law, assuming other rational regulations are implemented to prevent discrimination based on health, and actual ways to make it affordable. My concern was constitutionality. Your input on the broad use of the commerce clause now has me interested in how the passing of a mandate might affect future legislation.

I have plenty of arguments against the actual reform bill though – conceptual ones at least. (I’ve lost track of what’s actually in the current bill(s).) None of them have to do with the Constitution, just rational minded thinking and the honest motivation to actually reform what needs fixing and not simple partisan motivation to stake a damn victory they can call, “historical” and “proud”.

If I were arguing the issue, and even if a mandate were blatantly unconstitutional, it wouldn’t be at the top of my list. I think I’d start with a history lesson on things that have and haven’t worked. Then question why we need to try passing one huge national experiment when we could implement the things we know work, including any of these magic money savers and fraud preventers, at a national level now. The more questionable or controversial stuff we can let the states try out 50 at a time or one at a time in 50 ways.

The damn Liberals hold this religion-like contempt for well accepted and validated economic principles. Or as Dr. Dove would say, the Noisy Dove character is a Conservative zealot who follows a religious-like view of economics. It just so happens this religious-like view of economics I learned in school and is held – in its basic form at least – by any and all practicing economists.

Quick example: The minimum wage increase Obama’s crew made starting in July. Now, is it that I’m a fanatic hateful Bill O’Reilly watching Conservative, that has me so angry that a black man is in office I can’t see this as a much needed increase in poor people’s standard of living, and instead I have to call it a union favor, because I’m so angry and adherent to my little religion of free-marketing angry Reganists?

Or, could it be the irrefutable fact that a minimum wage increase is a price floor on labor. And according to logical and obvious economic principles, raising that floor creates UNEMPLOYMENT. Add that to the fact we are in the worst recession in 70 years with the highest unemployment in 50 – or something like that. Which leads me – no – forces me to the conclusion that a minimum wage increase, especially NOW, will harm the most vulnerable of our poor people. Because having a job means you eat. Not having a job, even though the four guys you used to work with just got a raise, means you have to start selling you shit on ebay to eat.

And then there are the unions. They have the hankering problem that their shops have difficulty competing with non-union shops. This problem is due to the requirements union shops have to meet, like above market wages. So doing this FAVOR FOR THE UNIONS makes keeping those union dues coming in more sustainable – because the union shop’s competition now has to raise wages – and keeps the unions ready with lots of able idle bodies to do campaign work. (Obama talks about union ‘people power’ in The Audacity of Hope.)

And this is all without mentioning that such an increase will also make everything more expensive for everyone. Not every company will lay people off to afford paying the other workers. Some companies need everyone. So they just increase their prices. Basic stuff just starts costing more, which is also wonderful for the poor’s standard of living. Companies put of expansion too when cost forecasts go up, meaning fewer new jobs.

Am I just being the pain-in-the-ass loyal opposition? No. A minimum wage increase was a stupid idea plain and simple. If you want to help the poor get them jobs, and here’s how:

Ok, businesses have costs and revenue. Revenue is the money that comes in from selling their good or service. Costs are all the things they spend that revenue on to produce those goods and services – wages, rent, energy, materials, technology, taxes, and so on. The art of running a business is to set up a plan that will eventually create a revenue stream larger than your cost stream. Once you do, the positive balance is called profit. Now profit is special. Profit means a business can grow.

Now don’t get confused!!! I’m not saying businesses take profit and reinvest it. That’s wrong thinking. You could sit on the average business waiting for profits to accumulate for years before you could afford a simple reinvestment. By then the smart guys will have passed you buy.

Here’s the proper thinking. Like I said, profit is special. It gets you loans and/or investors. Say you have a widget factory. You can produce 100 widgets per day. You’re costs are $100 per day and you earn $1 per widget. profit=$0. This company would be considered, especially right now, a successful company – it’s not LOSING money.

Since you’re an entrepreneur, you know that if you could buy your materials in larger quantities, you would get a discount. Right now you get a shipment of 700 units, which is good because it fits in your warehouse and you can afford the, lets say $.20 per unit, $140 per week. But, your supplier charges only $.15 per unit if you order a whole truck load of them, like 10,000. You can’t order that many though because you don’t have the space nor do you have the $1500. But if you did – well – you’d have a profit of $5 per day.

Profits means you are in running for a loan. Or you can find investors who will buy part of your company and give you a chunk of cash to make this $5 per day profit happen.

Now that was just considering efficiency. What about capacity? If you can find the sales, and you’re making $.05 per widget, why not double capacity? Now you’re making $10 per day. And – holy shit guess what – you just hired a bunch of people. Or what about this? Say you currently don’t have the excess sales. Maybe you use some of that investment money to put up some ads, build a better website, or hire some more sales team and go get those sales?

So you see, profit is the key to a business’s ability to expand and hire poor people and pay them good wages. But what if you don’t follow this hooky religion of mine? What if you think business owners will work people for one cent per day? Well, if the going rate for that worker’s output is one cent per day, I’d agree. In other words, if what that worker’s abilities produce over the course of a day equals one cent worth of productivity, he’s getting a good deal. Usually the employer gets a cut because he set up the job.

But what if he doesn’t get his fair share? In other words, what if the business owner is screwing him out of the market price for his labor? Well, what would you do? You’d probably start looking for another job or demand more pay – and if not you’ll likely be a depressed not very productive worker. You’re also an investment to the employer so it’s in his interest to keep you happy. Things would be different if we still used humans like disposable machines, but we don’t. Not just because of laws. The more technical jobs get the more valuable the worker’s happiness becomes, because after you pay your best widget polisher to stop his normal productivity and train a new widget polisher on the fancy widget polishing machine, that new widget polisher is an investment who will cost you all that productivity ($) if he wonders off, gets hurt, or turns out to be unmotivated.

So with unemployment being a problem right now, the biggest problem in our country at the moment actually, what is Obama doing to nurture this system? Well let’s think…

There’s been a lot of talk about the stimulus bill saving/creating jobs. I’ll ignore the horror stories for now, the misspent money on airports, dead people getting checks, and gross miscounts on jobs. You can find them all over. And then there’s the fact that we’re talking in the ‘hundreds of’ thousands of jobs created/saved while millions are disappearing. But let’s stay focused. According to the House Appropriations Committee each job costs us $217,000. Now that’s an unfair number because the stimulus wasn’t ONLY a jobs bill. It also is making infrastructure improvements – I guess – and dumping money in a variety of bureaucracies. They repaved my street. It didn’t need it. We could use some water lines that don’t break EVERY winter though, sometimes twice.

But what is also unfair is how the jobs are counted. Say I get a job with my uncle Peat who runs Ray’s Paving. (life partners) Now say Peat and Ray get a couple stimulus jobs from their city, three from the next over, a couple more here, a couple more there, all equaling 9 projects. Now let’s say they tale a week each and I work on each one. That’s nine weeks of work for me! But how many jobs does that count as? 9 weeks is three months, which is ¼ of a year – so does it equal ¼ of a job?

No. The count is much simpler than that. They just ask the city, or whoever, for each project how many people it put to work. So in this case, my 9 weeks of work would count as 9 jobs. *sigh* This is so stupid, screw it. Let’s look at something else…

Let’s look at the cap and trade bill, since Pelosi and the gang are/were selling it as a jobs bill. What this bill essentially does is makes energy more expensive. A simply way to do this would be through a simple energy tax based on carbon emissions – but an energy tax is not popular – because it’s called a tax. And, an energy tax would use current bureaucracies to be levied while the cap and trade system would require a whole new bureaucracy to be created, and everyone loves new bureaucracies. I doubt they are counting the new bureaucracy as the ‘green jobs’, at least for their sanity’s sake I hope not. But anyway, the law would change to require businesses who release carbon into the air to buy so many credits for so much carbon release. The idea is that by making carbon release more expensive it will make people release less of it – which is true, sort of.

The Green Jobs are then believed to be created when carbon releasers start looking for cheaper (lower carbon) energy sources. In reaction to the higher costs then being incurred, companies are supposed to do things like buy wind mills and carbon scrubbers – which will increase the demand for such technologies and create jobs.

This almost makes sense doesn’t it, as long as no one throws in any more valid premises? But there are a few fundamental problems here and a few in the details. One detail is that – if you want to buy a lot of this clean energy technology right now most of it would come from Europe, we don’t have much capacity here yet. Another is that many businesses will do a simple equation counting the new cost of manufacturing in the US and simply leave.

And for the fundamental problems, if you reference the above example about the widgets, your cost goes up. So what was a profitable venture might need investment in clean energy just to get back to break-even, ruining your efforts for expansion. There is no doubt, increasing the cost of energy WILL result in slower natural expansion and job creation. Essentially, instead of expanding and hiring people, you’ll have to use that money to invest in green energy, which will create green jobs instead, which would undoubtedly equate to fewer over all jobs created, and jobs created would be in Europe. (if YOU aren’t actually releasing the carbon you still get stuck with the cost your power company has to pay Obama for its tax credits, or its green investment) Stuff would cost more too. And getting anyone to build a factory here will be one tough sell, probably requiring the gift of 50 years’ worth of carbon credits and some major tax breaks, instead of just the usual major tax breaks.

Oh yeah. The primary goal of cap and trade is to reduce carbon release. The US already has some of the bestpollution standards. Cap and trade would drive many carbon releasers out of the US and into countries like Mexico who have lower standards – or even China, India, and Africa who have little if any actual standards, subsequently causing the opposite of the primary goal.

Am I insane? Someone talk to me. With all my efforts in exploring Liberal economic thinking the only reasons for anything I find are historical, proud, change, fair, and compassion. But nothing good comes from grand ideas that don’t work!

So what then? What WILL create jobs? Cap and trade adds to business cost hence reduce business growth hence reduce employment or employment growth. This huge stimulus was flushed down the can in the form of random goodies for congressmen to take home and backfill for state and other bureaucracy budgets – which is dept that will either result in higher taxes or inflation, both of which increase business cost.

The answer is simple actually. The Democrats have been mentioning it for the past few years: Tax cuts for the rich. Yeah sure, we elected Obama so he would stop the cuddling of the rich and start cuddling us. Wait, hang on. I’m starting to sound like a jerk. Let me start over.

The answer is simple really. We want to stop all the job loses and/or increase job creation. We’re also broke. I mean, now that Obama’s been President for a few months we’re REALLY broke. So we need to be prudent about this. Obama himself said small businesses created 65% of all new jobs in the last decade. We also know that during economic downturns small businesses generally produce the most new jobs – being small and maneuverable. Stimulating small business hiring sounds like the place to start.

Here’s where things get a little frustrating. Obama talked about small businesses specifically – for the first time I think – on October 24 in a weekly address. He said, “Small businesses have always been the engine of our economy”. He described numerous things that will one day help small businesses, things he plans on doing – you know, the usual Obama grand outlook. I’m not even sure people are writing all these ideas down anymore though. So let’s look at what HAS been done over this past 10 months, which means if we’re concerned with small business the stimulus bill is the only place to look.

In that address, Obama named two things in the stimulus that have helped small businesses, $5 million in tax relief and a temporary reduction in fees for SBA loans. The $5 million must come from the tax law tweak that allows businesses to use current losses to offset profits made in the previous five years instead of the two – which means a tax refund for some hard hit companies. And the spiffytemporary reduction in loan fees is just silly. If you CAN get a loan you aren’t going to be hindered by some goofy fee. That’s just ridicules. If it were a permanent reduction – companies that use many loans could forecast lower costs – thus expand – but it ain’t.

See, you think they’re on to something and they end up committing $787 billion with NOTHING to stimulate small business job creation, or really jobs creation in general. So really nothing has been done in this area – nothing.

Nothing unless you count harm, of course. Keep your widget business in mind. You’re hoping to pull of that expansion sometime soon. But what if your costs go up? You remember Obama’s promise not to tax anyone making less than 200k – or something – right? Well half of those are DBAs. (Doing Business As – Individuals who function as a small business. Some contractors, consultants, roofers, tree trimmers, pool cleaners, house keeping, and those kinds of small businesses.) What about your energy costs? Will cap and trade go through? What about labor costs, which by the way are almost ALWAYS the largest cost for small businesses? What will the new healthcare reform do? Obama talks about how healthcare reform will help small businesses but all congress talks about are taxes, fees, and mandates. And this HUGE DEFICIT has any rational minded business owner paying attention. Don’t let any assets sit around in cash, not the US$ anyway!

LOL – Hell, maybe that is the one good thing Obama has done for small business. You know there’s at least a couple hard core survivalist business owners out there predicting 1000% inflation – thus taking out loans predicting the dept will soon be monetized by all the money printing just like the Federal dept. If you got a massive loan and bought a bunch of long term real assets (stuff you can use to produce a good or a service) and we get hit by the coming inflation, you’ll be GOLDEN.

But seriously, the way to create jobs and aid the recovery in general is with long term tax cuts on businesses. Of course, you might want to aim a little more precisely. If we just cut every business’s taxes, many of them would simply pay down dept or lower prices. What about a long term tax credit for new employees? If you’ve got 500 employees now, for every employee you have over 500 for the next 10 years you get $xx.xx per year in tax credit. And we can do such a program easily and right now with existing bureaucracy – IRS. Also, instead of raising the capital gains tax as Obama has, you could lower it to spire investment, which equals growth and job creation.

And you know what else is cool? You can apply this rational line of thought to save the planet. Right now we burn a shit load of fossil fuels – coal – to make energy, which releases carbon. This carbon – I guess – is going to kill us all. The ‘experts’ would like to cut our carbon release by replacing fossil fuel consumption with green energy.

If we want people to switch to green energy we need to understand why they’re using the other source now. Generally, burning fossil fuel is much cheaper. You could buy a wind turbine to power your widget factory. It would be an investment that would lower energy cost. But it would be an expensive investment that would likely take 50 years to bring in returns. And you’re not likely thinking that far ahead. You’re more likely sweating over a payment that’s supposed to arrive today to pay the bills you have stacked on your desk.

So how do we bring down the cost of green energy? How do we make wind turbines, solar panels, and algae farms less expensive and more efficient? The answer depends on how serious you are. First you cut taxes on rich people who are investing in green energy. Or, since if we don’t stop emitting carbon we’re all going to die, why not get serious and make green energy investment tax free???? Do you realize how much money would suddenly be dumped into green energy research if capital gains on green investment were %0? Holy horse shit!

And just imagine that your widget is actually a solar panel for home use, so bring the numbers up by a few orders of magnitude. If you could get the right investments for expansion, you wouldn’t keep your panels at the original 100 units per day price would you? Sure, it would be nice to quadruple production and have 20k in profit rolling in per day. But in reality you have competitors who are fighting the same current as you are. You need to sell your panels for the lowest price. It’s better to sell more for less because sales equal further investment and expansion, which means more efficiency, profit, and a lower priced panel – round and round it goes. As the solar panel sector grows, just like the laptop industry, all components of the solar panel will become increasingly and offensively cheap – likewise other green technology. So the return on green investment would become faster and faster.

At the same time this is all happening in the green energy manufacturing sector, investors are finding other ideas, motivated by this juicy tax cut. Companies currently exist that will purchase and install solar panels on buildings. They only charge the building owner for the power used, sort of like having a power supplier living on your roof, you just pay your utility bills. For the investors it currently takes 20+ years to see a return, but it is a solid long term investment, especially with increasing energy costs. And this type of investment would be showered with cash if capital gains were removed from it.

Liberals would rather tax all the evil rich people until they’re afraid to come out of the house with cap and trade – then use a bureaucracy to pick and choose where to dump research money. Merit of an idea and feasibility will not be criteria to get some of this government green investment money. Nope. Influence in Washington will.

On the other hand, green venture capitalists unleashed by a green capital gains tax cut would be numerous with endless amounts of cash. And their cash isn’t the government kind that just gets allotted here and there in arbitrary round sums. Venture capitalists don’t see money the way government does: something to collect and irrigate with. Venture capitalists see their money as soldiers – soldiers they send out and EXPECT to come home with prisoners. And oh yeah, people would be getting hired. To keep that hiring in the US we could make the green capital gains tax cut only for domestic investment.

Well, the G-20 conference took place in Pittsburgh last week. And as usual there were plenty of protesters – although not near the traditional number – and they came in all type. My favorites are the regular anti-capitalists.

I’m not sure where these kids get their ideas. I doubt they come to their conclusions on there own, mainly because they aren’t able to clearly explain their conclusions – but some try anyway, and sometimes we get the basic idea. And since the conference began I’ve seen a few interviews of these anti-capitalist protesters, and for crying out loud (Hannity) no one is mentioning the glaring flaw in these kid’s logic.

Of course, anti-capitalists think capitalism is bad. Why? They usually sight industries becoming obsolete and leaving people unemployed, or exploitative work conditions. And then they sight statistics – like the fact that the top 20% of wealthy Americans control 85% of the wealth while the other 80% are left with 15% – and the fact that this “disparity” is growing.

Often they try to help us understand their view with the aid of a pie analogy, where five people have a pie to share and four of them have to share one piece while one rich person gets the other four pieces.

After hearing this stunning information some might be tempted to sympathies with this view – that capitalism is bad – and may even sympathize with their solution: redistribution. Because, as the anti-capitalists love to remind us, how much does a person really need? Does anyone NEED to make more than 500 thousand dollars a year? Does anyone even need to make more than 150 thousand, especially when some people barely have enough money to eat?

But wait. Before we join the great cause and correct this problem – which requires growing the government and seriously increasing taxation – lets take a quick look at: A Glaring Flaw.

The fact that there are five people doesn’t mean that there is automatically a whole pie with five big pieces to distribute. And the fact that the rich person has four pieces which have been growing doesn’t mean that he’s taken them from the other four people or that the other four people’s piece has been shrinking. The only reason a pie exists at all is because someone made it. And that’s the problem with removing capitalism. Capitalism creates wealth. Systems like socialism simply distribute wealth that is assumed to exist. So to keep using the stupid pie analogy, removing capitalism effectively removes most of the pie – most likely the four big pieces the rich person (entrepreneur) used to get (create) – leaving all five people to share one piece, if that.

Indeed, it seems unfair to many that a factory worker or janitor puts in 40 hard hours each week and only make this much– while the owner of the company puts in the same hours, but makes fifty times as much in an air conditioned office. But Capitalism isn’t the fault of this unfairness. Nor is removing capitalism and replacing it with some idealistic fairness system of redistribution a solution.

Capitalism isn’t a method of distribution of wealth. Nothing about capitalism determined that this person’s efforts are so much more valuable and deserve so much greater a reward – that’s freedom’s fault. Capitalism is what allowed the owner of the business to create that business and the wealth and jobs that came along with it. Freedom is what kept anyone from taking the business owner’s wealth and allowed him to build the business and now allows him to pay himself what he wants.

Efforts to make pay ‘fair’ and otherwise redistribute wealth leave less wealth to be distributed. Such efforts weaken the economy by slowing the growth of business, including the wealth and jobs they create. Redistributive efforts to make us all have a fair share of the existing wealth has only prove to make us all have less – and logically there is no reason to think giving it another try will have different results.

Green jobs are great. We can do a lot of stuff here in Michigan, like build wind turbines. But that won’t result in more jobs. The greener we get the fewer energy jobs there will be in the energy industry, especially if we reduce our overall use.

Example: The left wants to stop coal. They so want to stop coal. It’s their main target of the cap and trade “jobs” bill. What replaces coal? Nuclear and wind. It takes people to mine, ship, and burn coal on a continuous basis – if you’re burning you’re mining and shipping. Nuclear takes mining too, but nothing even comparable and not continuous. The wind doesn’t hire anyone.

The irony is that the “climate” bill (cap and trade) is based on taxing energy. Taxing energy will be the main jobs killer. Even if every energy job was replaced with a green job – one for one – there would still be a net job lose due to the bill’s effects, because it slows the economy by making business and industry more expensive. And we can’t forget the long-term costs in businesses leaving the US.

I’d rather we burn coal than oil (natural gas) – we need that for making plastic and petrochemicals. Burning coal is dirty, but it’s an energy source we have plenty of. Utilizing green energy is the best thing long term. But trying to sell energy taxes as job creators is extremely dishonest. And taxing business any time soon is a recipe for recession pancakes.