Report prepared by Jordan Greene | The SOURCE takes a stand: The Economy
Home ownership levels are at a record high. Inflation is under control and interest rates are attractive. The economy enjoys a promising 3 percent annual growth rate. Every month, new jobs are cutting into the deficit. This is despite four years of terrorism, war, corporate scandals, and unfounded consumer pessimism. Bush’s stance on free trade and tax cuts is exactly what America needs to increase foreign investment and give domestic industries a real incentive to create jobs. The Kerry-Edwards ticket tries to hide its Maoist tendencies behind class-warfare rhetoric. It’s time their masks were ripped off and they were exposed as the lying, protectionist scoundrels they are.
In March of 2004, Kerry began running a television ad in Ohio proclaiming “three million jobs lost [under President Bush]… that is an astonishing failure.” Astonishing indeed, considering the net job loss never topped 2.6 million and that actually, by March, 1.5 million new jobs had been created. Instead of subtracting 1.5 from 2.6, Kerry turned a job loss of 1.1 million into three million—creative accounting even by Arthur Anderson standards. President Bush took office shortly after a cyclical economic highpoint of 132.5 million payroll jobs. As economist Alan Reynolds posited: “Since it took 120 months to climb to that peak, how can we reasonably expect to have regained the peak after only 39 months?”
The Kerry-Edwards plan to create jobs is to provide “tax breaks” to companies for keeping jobs in America. The tax break, though, is only a relative one. Kerry’s plan involves placing heavy penalties on corporate income earned abroad, likely causing many companies to move their headquarters overseas, thereby relinquishing their tax burden entirely. Even tax penalties are not enough to make American workers competitive with Mexicans or Indians for jobs requiring a relatively unskilled workforce. What penalties will do is make American companies less competitive with foreign rivals unencumbered by protectionist regulations that conflict with market forces. Tragically, American consumers are ultimately deprived of lower prices afforded by un-manipulated markets.
Perhaps even more detrimental is the impact corporate tax increases would have on foreign direct investment. Until the Bush tax cuts are made permanent, foreign investors are unlikely to significantly increase speculation in the US because a destructive force like John Kerry could stumble into the White House and jeopardize the profitability of their American ventures.
Kerry opposes the bush tax cuts by crying “fiscal crisis,” but real national debt is a bankrupt standard for judging fiscal responsibility: a colossus like the United States cannot compare its total debt to the marginal powers of Europe and Asia. National debt as a percentage of GDP is a more revealing statistic. The US national debt is 62 percent of its GDP, compared with Germany, at 64 percent; France, at 69 percent; Belgium, at 102 percent; Italy, at 107 percent; and Japan, the second most industrialized country in the world, at 155 percent.
John Forbes Kerry-Heinz portrays himself as a defender of the middle class and a corporate slayer. The former isn’t true; the second should make Americans sweat—lest they forget who employs them. Kerry’s rhetorical strategy is one of class-warfare. He blames the ills of the poor on the fortune of the wealthy. Even more insidious, his class-warfare rhetoric makes the middle class think that they are poor. This is unforgivable.
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