Tag Archives: Government

Intel CEO blames Democrats for destroying the economy

Article from CNET News by someone who understands job creation. (H/T Neil Simpson’s latest round-up)

Excerpt:

Intel Chief Executive Officer Paul Otellini offered a depressing set of observations about the economy and the Obama administration Monday evening, coupled with a dark commentary on the future of the technology industry if nothing changes.

Otellini’s remarks during dinner at the Technology Policy Institute’s Aspen Forum here amounted to a warning to the administration officials and assorted Capitol Hill aides in the audience: unless government policies are altered, he predicted, “the next big thing will not be invented here. Jobs will not be created here.”

The U.S. legal environment has become so hostile to business, Otellini said, that there is likely to be “an inevitable erosion and shift of wealth, much like we’re seeing today in Europe–this is the bitter truth.”

[…]Otellini singled out the political state of affairs in Democrat-dominated Washington, saying: “I think this group does not understand what it takes to create jobs. And I think they’re flummoxed by their experiment in Keynesian economics not working.”

Here’s Republican Senate candidate Carly Fiorina, from the same article:

The comments from Intel’s chief executive echoed statements made a day earlier by Carly Fiorina, the former HP CEO turned Republican Senate candidate.

America’s skilled-worker visa system is so badly broken and anti-immigration that “we have to start from scratch,” Fiorina said, adding that too many government policies push jobs overseas instead of making U.S. companies competitive against international rivals.

“Our corporate tax rates are the second highest in the world,” and Congress has repeatedly failed to make an R&D tax credit permanent, Fiorina told the Aspen audience. It’s time to start “acknowledging the reality that companies go where they’re welcome,” she said. (The effective U.S. corporate income tax is 35 percent, far over the industrialized-nation average of 18.2 percent.)

Here’s a recent IBD article with more from Otellini, and other CEOs

First Otellini:

“I can tell you definitively that it costs $1 billion more per factory for me to build, equip and operate a semiconductor manufacturing facility in the U.S.,” he said. And 90% of that added cost, he said, is due to taxes and regulations that other countries don’t have.

Then other CEOs:

Earlier in the week, Illinois Tool Works CEO David Speer, whose company employs 60,000 worldwide, laid out his dilemma — and that of hundreds of other CEOs: “I could borrow $2 billion tomorrow for 3 1/2%,” Speer said. “But what am I going to do with it?”

[…]In June, Ivan Seidenberg, CEO of Verizon Communications and head of the Business Roundtable, warned of a growing anti-business slant in both Congress and the White House. Tax hikes, regulations and constant policy shifts, he said, “harm our ability … to grow private-sector jobs in the U.S.”

And don’t forget the costs that Obamacare imposed on companies, causing all medical premiums to go through the roof because of the new health care mandates and taxes on things like medical devices.

Red State explains what the Obammunists should be doing:

As our government continues to make it more difficult to do business in the US, companies must increasingly look to more favorable climates abroad. If Washington really wants to spur job creation here in the US, they should repeal the health care overhaul, reduce spending, cut the corporate tax rate, give up on cap and trade, and reform litigation. Instead we have been treated to an extended experiment in government control – one that is obviously not producing new wealth, new jobs, or any real hope for the emergence of the industries of the future.

It takes a lot of courage for a CEO like Otellini to come out against the Obama administration, and the neo-Keynesian oligarchy in Washington. Taking a billion dollars from Intel to study Chinese prostitutes and to build turtle tunnels is not a good thing to do if you want to have more jobs. But the thing is – Obama thinks it is a good thing to do, because he is totally ignorant of how the economy works. So, don’t vote for him or any of his silver-spoon limousine liberal friends who were born with rich parents. Democrats don’t know how jobs are created.

US suffering largest drop in employment since World War II

From the Wall Street Journal. (H/T ECM)

Excerpt:

In contrast to the better-known unemployment rate, which measures the percentage of working-age Americans who are actively seeking jobs but do not have one, the civilian employment-population ratio measures the percentage of working-age Americans who have a job, whether they are seeking one or not.

[…]Looking at this ratio, America is suffering its largest drop since World War II. When the economy was at its Bush-era height, in 2007, a little over 63% of adult Americans had jobs. Friday’s report shows that only about 58.4% do, a decline of nearly five percentage points. While the unemployment rate remains steady at 9.5%, the employment-population ratio continues to fall each month. In April it was 58.8%, in May 58.7%, and in June 58.5%.

Since America has about 238 million noninstitutionalized civilian adults of working age, this decrease means that we have nearly 12 million fewer jobs today than we would have if the employment-population rate were still at its 2007 level of 63%.

No other recession in the past 60 years saw such rapid job destruction in either absolute or percentage terms. In the 1979-82 recession, unemployment topped out at a higher rate, 10.8%, but the employment-population ratio declined by only three percentage points, to 57% from 60%.

History also delivers sobering news on how long it might take to recover our economic health. There is only one instance since World War II of the U.S economy increasing the employment-population ratio by five percentage points in a decade: the recovery that followed Ronald Reagan’s tax cuts in 1983.

But Obama isn’t interested in tax cuts, nor are the people who voted him into office. In fact, they are going to allow the Bush tax cuts to expire, removing more job-creating capital from the economy. Everyone seems to believe that government spending, which is funded by removing money from corporations and investors in the private sector, will create jobs. But government spending on turtle tunnels and Chinese prostitutes doesn’t create jobs.

Is it a good idea to give the government money to run health care?

Consider this article from the UK Daily Mail, which shows how socialized medicine is working out in socialist Europe. (H/T Memeorandum via ECM)

Excerpt:

A ‘man of 21 with learning disabilities has been granted taxpayers’ money to fly to Amsterdam and have sex with a prostitute.

His social worker says sex is a ‘human right’ for the unnamed individual – described as a frustrated virgin.

His trip to a brothel in the Dutch capital’s red light district next month is being funded through a £520million scheme introduced by the last government to empower those with disabilities.

They are given a personal budget and can choose what services this is spent on.

This is what happens when taxpayers hand their own money to bureaucrats to spend. When you have your money in your hand, you use 100% of that money to buy things you want because you need them – like breast cancer exams. But when you give a bureaucrat your money, their goal for spending that money is to buy votes so that they can keep their job and to feel good about themselves. And what makes them feel good about themselves is equalizing life outcomes. They don’t think that anyone should have to face the unhappy consequences of their own decisions.

In some provinces of Canada, sex changes and in vitro fertilization are taxpayer-funded. Abortion is taxpayer-funded in every province. That’s socialized medicine. Equalizing life outcomes by transferring wealth from a person who has money to a person who has a felt need.

Here’s a comprehensive article from The American Spectator that explains what we can expect from our version of socialized medicine, i.e. – “Obamacare”. (H/T ECM)