Jobs Leave America While Obama Dithers in Washington

Obama - does this man know how people make a buck...how money is made? Does he think it drops from the skies by the good graces of God? Does he think that because he is President of the once greatest country in history people will just go on making money while he does all he can to thwart those efforts?

While only 900,000 jobs were created in 2010, U.S. companies sat on $1.1 trillion in cash. Why? The reason is that the business climate in the United States is anti-business and add to that the fact that we have a President in the White House who either does not understand about "business climate", or is downright anti-business then you have the ingredients for a NO GROWTH economy. Take your pick - it doesn't matter because business owners are not going to waste their dollars creating jobs if there is no gain to be had. Would you? So they are going to foreign lands where the lessons of lower taxes and regulations have been learned. Kudos for them. When will Washington get out of our way and leave us to the business of business?

…The fact is, companies sitting on cash aren't doing nothing. They're hiring overseas, creating 1.4 million jobs in 2010 alone, according to the Competitive Enterprise Institute.

That's not because they prefer foreigners to Americans, but because the bad business climate here pushes them to do so.

The rest of the world is a vastly different place from Obama's U.S., which is characterized by high taxes and protectionist set-asides for politically connected unions that shut out free trade.

In places like Indonesia, Singapore, Taiwan, India and Thailand, nobody demonizes business or blasts trade. Instead great efforts are made by the state and the private sector to draw in foreign investment by becoming more competitive than their rivals.

U.S. multinationals go to these places not because labor is cheap but because these policies also create boomtowns with lots of customers. Incredibly enough, sometimes overseas profits and jobs provide a lifeline for troubled U.S. companies back home. Take GM — today, its Brazil and Korea operations help keep it afloat.

Growth in the 8% to 9% range is typical in Asia. But even in other pro-business areas — like the city of Lyon, France, or the manufacturing mecca of Tijuana, Mexico — governments are going out of their way to attract U.S. investment.
…Mexico is drawing aerospace manufacturers and hiring engineers. Colombia, Chile, Brazil, Qatar and even the Republic of Congo are pulling them in, too.

Why? So long as profits are encouraged instead of taxed, the natural outcome is jobs. It's that simple. They get it. Why don't we?

Salon magazine noted that as companies shift their hiring overseas, the 1.4 million jobs created there could have, if they were created here, lowered the unemployment rate to 8.9% from 9.8%... READ "Why Jobs Leave" at IBD.

If We are Honest With Ourselves We all Know that Social Security Should be Eliminated

I think it's time we Americans realized, before we destroy ourselves, that something has to give. Social security cannot be sustained anymore. It simply is impossible...the numbers don't lie. Americans are known for their honesty and their ability to look at reality and deal with it. Let's call for the elimination of this Ponzi scheme. Each individual would then be in charge of his own destiny. Isn't that the American way? Thomas Sowell at IBD has a good analysis of our situation.

...This is the way a Ponzi scheme works, with the first wave of "investors" getting paid with the money paid in by the second wave.

But, like Social Security, a Ponzi scheme creates no wealth but only an illusion that cannot last. That is why Mr. Ponzi was sent to prison. But politicians get re-elected for doing the same thing.

As the baby boomers begin to retire, and there are now fewer working people per retired person to pay for Social Security pensions, this scam is likewise headed for a rude revelation of reality — and perhaps riots like those in Europe.

All the incentives are for politicians to do what they have done, namely to promise benefits without raising enough taxes to pay for them. That way, it looks like you are getting something for nothing.

When crunch time comes and politicians are either going to have to tell people the truth or raise taxes, the almost inevitable choice is to raise taxes.

If the people think they are already taxed too much, then the taxes can be raised only for people designated as "the rich."

If "the rich" object, then demagogues can denounce them for their selfishness and "greed" for objecting to turning over ever-growing amounts of what they have earned to politicians.

Economists often make stronger objections than the high-income people themselves.

That is because history has shown repeatedly that very high rates of taxation lead to all sorts of ways by which those very high rates of taxation do not have to be paid.

No matter how high the tax rates are, they do not bring in more revenue when many of the people subject to those tax rates do not in fact pay them.

The scams inherent in welfare states are not only economically counterproductive, they turn group against group, straining the ties that hold a society together. READ" FREE LUNCHES ARE KILLING US WITH THE COST".

Bush Was Right About Gitmo; Obama Strikes Out

Of the many "errors" of Obama perhaps this one is the most dangerous: The fact that he has refused to continue Bush's policy of detaining these terrorists in Guantanamo and treating them as prisoners of war. It seems like our President keeps making the wrong decisions...time and time again. What's up with that?

When announcing in 2002 that the U.S. would detain al Qaeda fighters at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, then-Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld famously described the base as "the best, least worst place." Mr. Rumsfeld's quip distilled a truth: The U.S. would capture enemy fighters and leaders, and their detention, while messy, was of great military value.

For two years, President Barack Obama has pretended that terrorism is a crime, that prisoners are unwanted, and that Gitmo is unneeded. As a presidential candidate, he declared: "It's time to show the world . . . we're not a country that runs prisons which lock people away without ever telling them why they're there or what they're charged with." Upon taking office, he ordered Gitmo closed within the year.

But the president's embrace of the left's terrorism-as-crime theories collided with his responsibility to protect a great nation. Now the reality of the ongoing war on terror is helping to shatter the Gitmo myth and end its distortion of our antiterrorism strategies.

This week the intelligence community reported to Congress that one-quarter of the detainees released from Guantanamo in the past eight years have returned to the fight. Though the U.S. and its allies have killed or recaptured some of these 150 terrorists, well over half remain at large. The Defense Department reports that Gitmo alumni have assumed top positions in al Qaeda and the Taliban, attacked allies in Iraq and Afghanistan, and led efforts to kill U.S. troops. READ "The Collapse of the Guantanamo Myth" at WSJ