Friday, September 17, 2010

Capitalism

When you wake up in the morning, everything you see around you; your room, your house, clothes, shoes, alarm clocks, TV’s, radio’s, your mirror, the sink, toothbrush, your morning coffee, just about everything you have was made possible by capitalism. Capitalism drives you to work or the store to buy goods again created by capitalism.

Michael Moore thinks capitalism is a bad word, yet if it weren’t for capitalism, we would not be making his films, nor could he profit from them. In an interview with Sean Hannity, he would not deluge what tax bracket he was in but he certainly lives a lavish life-style although he does not dress for the occasion.

Capitalism built the middle class in this country starting right here in this state known as Michigan. It is “big business” that the democrats try to persuade us is the problem with this country, that big business somehow has screwed the American people over by taking our jobs over-seas, by having things built in places like Taiwan, China, India and other places. It wasn’t big business that decided to go there, it was pressure put on them to compete.

Our government has helped destroy the auto manufacturing in this country, first by regulating it into submission and then by passing “unfair trade policies” One recent shiny example of our governments trade policy in action was when they tried to dry up the drug trade by convincing the people of Bolivia to quit growing Coca for cocaine and grow asparagus instead with the promise that we would buy it from them.

Seemed like a good plan to those Einstein’s in charge at the time, but now we are importing ten times more than we have a demand for. His has forced the Michigan growers to sell below costs to get rid of their crops, not to mention an unbalanced trade deficit.

There is a reason these kinds of people are in politics. Most of them couldn’t run water if we showed them the faucet; the rest are bad attorney’s that couldn’t find where to sign their names on a contract unless you drew and X it in front on them.

In Michigan, the politicians could not help themselves, they saw the money the auto companies generated and they needed to get their spot at the trough.
They started by propping up their position by making Michigan the third state in the union to have a full time state legislature, costing tax payers billions over the years but wasn’t a problem, we’ll just tax the auto-makers. The same policy was repeated over and over whenever the budget was running short because of over-spending; they would raise another tax on our manufacturing industry.

When the manufacturers saw this happening, they started to move some operations out of the state. The politicians noticed that they golden goose was laying less eggs than it used to. What to do? I know; let’s add a Michigan Business Tax (MBT) so we can collect more from those still doing business in the state.

It never occurred to them to cut some programs and reduce spending and time and time again the budget fell short.

Desperate times call for desperate measures. During the Granholm regime who continued to drive businesses out by not only adding another 22% surcharge on top of the MBT, but decided they should pick and chose who was going to be successful by offering massive tax incentives to bring businesses to Michigan, businesses such as Cabela’s. It didn’t matter that there was already a major sporting outlet (Jay’s Sporting Goods) already in the state employing over 2,000 people. What did Jay’s receive to stay in the state? Zero -- How much money did Jay’s ever borrow from the state in the terms of loans or tax credits? Zero -- What was the outcome of this move? – Competition to already weak business climate due to mass of people leaving this state looking for a future.

This process was repeated again and again giving money to meat packing companies, the movie industry and battery makers. These businesses will pick up and leave as soon as the money pit runs dry. As long as they are gaining credits and incentives, it serves their purpose but as soon as the MBT and the surcharge whack them upside the head, they’ll be gone.

Capitalism built this country. Are there bad eggs in the carton? Sure there are but what would the alternative be? The liberals won’t let us drill for the oil here so we can’t depend on that like the Middle East does. Europe has been dying a slow death but the speed has picked up and they are broke, trying to dump their public health program as is Canada. Greece is out of money from promising its work force unaffordable benefits and retirement packages. We have let our technology companies dwindle by supporting electronic manufacturers from China, Japan and Korea to build our products.

We need to bring conservative ideas back to this country. We need to bring manufacturing back and along with it the R&D that will change our future needs for energy and products; it will be the only way to recover.

Spending has led us to the brink and it must stop yesterday.
Political Correctness has seen its day and it’s time to bury that notion. We need people that really and truly care about this country to take the helm and bring us back, but the rest of us need to hold their feet to the fire to make sure they do the will of we, the people.

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