The 10 for 5 Solution

And now, on to tonight's topic.


It is only in certain situations that the government is required to create jobs. Most of the time, that is the function of the business sector. Jobs are created in the private sector when the public is spending money and supply and demand are in harmony. Jobs are created by the government when corporations are unable to provide the jobs.

It happened under FDR and it brought this country crawling back into power. Then a little thing called Pearl Harbor happened, and our economy boomed. But before the war effort, the government had to create the jobs, which meant they had to spend a boat load of money to do it. But it was the mandatory thing to do. When one part of the process breaks down, the other part has to make up for it. In that particular case, the private sector couldn't do it.

Now, the private sector won't do it. It's not that they can't, they just refuse to. American workers cost too much money. American regulations create delays and cost money. The cost of doing business is greater here, and there is nothing more sacred in American power circles today than the bottom line. Gordon Gecko, what hell hath you wrought?

Now, let me preface this next by saying that I am not an economist but I am someone who listens to that they have to say. What they say has to make sense, and what they've been saying makes sense to me. It makes sense because the mechanics of it are clear. If there are any economists who are reading this that want to correct anything I'm about to say, please feel free to do so.

The 10 for 5 Solution:

The top 100 companies based on pre-tax profits must pay the Federal Job Creation Program ten percent of that pre-tax profit for five years. That money is to be strictly and only used on federal infrastructure projects, like converting every single government building and school to green technology systems, road and bridge repair, etc. Any difference between the corporate contribution and actual costs are made up by the increase in payroll taxes the jobs create. And the excess goes toward the deficit and debt. The federal jobs created eventually move back into the private sector, where they belong, and the country is once again prosperous.

Negative incentives, like a tax, do little good if there's no additional upside. In the five years of the program, corporations can reduce the amount they pay in by increasing the number of jobs they create by way of FJCP tax reductions for hiring workers, and greater tax cuts by bringing jobs back from overseas. I've said here before, Vampire Economics does not work. Once you suck the blood out of everything, then what? In this case, economic extinction.

Obviously, a paradigm alignment will be necessary. And since reason has been tried, failing miserably, then we just have to make them do it. There is only one solution to our economy, and that is jobs. With jobs, people spend more money and pay more taxes. What the corporations have failed to grasp is that their longer term survival depends on us have some of the money to spend. Keeping it all to themselves, or spending billions of dollars on a mid-term election, is counter-productive to their best efforts. They are One Quarter Thinkers. They cannot see beyond the quarter they're in. What's our bottom line look like today, Bob?

How do we get them to see the future? Americanism. Dammit, we want to buy American products made by American workers in American factories. You put that "Built In America" sticker on your stuff and watch it sell. How many Toyotas are built in America? I don't know, but you'll sell a lot more of them if people know they're built here. You are the corporate overlords of the most consumption-happy people in the planet. We don't even care how much money you make as long as we have enough ourselves. Hell, Americans are all about America.

We the People? We'll do our part. We'll spend virtually everything you give us. Sure, it might not come right back to you. It'll be swirling around on the whims of public enthusiasm, but if you offer a product that we want and it works the way we expect it to, we'll buy more of it. Sustainable profit comes from sustained demand. And all of that put together creates stability.

And we all know we could use a lot more of that.

Hamster Prez

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