The Economy Can't Improve Unless There's a Reason to Improve - Tax Cuts or Increases are Irrelevant

By Marc J. Rauch
Exec. Vice President/Co-Publisher

PLEASE READ THE UPDATES FIRST IN ORDER TO BETTER UNDERSTAND THE ISSUE

UPDATE #1: July 15, 2011: It disgusts me that as of mid-July 2011 that there is not a ray of hope to turn our economy and our lives around. We are still faced with a president and congressional members who are nothing less than common crooks just looking to pad their own pockets and to take care of their relatives. This isn't a question of Republican vs. Democrat, or liberal vs. conservative, this is an issue of people who have become modern day American royalty and they don't give a damn about the rest of the country, or even the world. We have an idiot in the White House, we have idiots and incompetents in Congress; we have degenerates and perverts as governors, and we have judges who are schmucks. It's very, very disheartening.

UPDATE #2: August 31, 2011: We're about a week away from when Obama is supposed to unveil his post-Labor Day Jobs Plan to get the economy back on track. My guess is that it will be the same dance around pouring money into one-dimensional programs that do nothing except buy short-term votes for the next election. So for the second time this summer I respectfully submit this story in the hope that someone in Washington sees the light.

UPDATE #3: December 21, 2011: Ah, the start of winter, how symbolic as we are about to enter the last year of Barak Obama's first term of presidency. All the issues that were supposed to be solved, according to his campaign promises, remain not only unfulfilled but further from reality - especially the economy. Sadly, there continues to be no one in the Obama Administration that understands how to create jobs. There is also no current Republican candidate for Obama's job that understands how to stimulate the economy. Meanwhile, as I set forth in an editorial last week, the oil dictators and gasoline companies won the Iraq War at the peoples' expense. So for the final time this year, I encourage someone with guts to step forward and lead one of the political parties in a platform that doesn't just further enrich enemy regimes and anti-American "American" companies.

UPDATE #4: September 25, 2012: It's 7 weeks to election day and neither presidential candidate has a clue as to how they are going to fix the economy. It's thoroughly disheartening.

Originally published August 8, 2010

We can't tax our way out of the financial depression we're in; nor can we tax-break our way out of it. Taxes are not the solution.

Pissing away more money to banks and bailing out more crooked Wall Street brokerage houses won't stimulate anything but the spouses of the goniffs that get the money.

Jobs don't get created because some flatupendantic* politician says that we have to "create more jobs." And bringing back low paying, mind-numbing call center jobs from Bangladesh are not the jobs we need.

We need new industry that requires a vertical range of jobs, which spawn additional supportive industries with vertical ranges of jobs. And this industry must produce products and services that benefit all of us; that save us money, are healthy or at least healthier that the products and services that are being replaced, and that improve our overall standard of living. In other words, products that consumers truly need and actually want to buy.

Providing money to patch holes in our roads, as one example of the government's idea of job stimulus, is at best exactly what the job is: a quick patch job. The pot holes will be back tomorrow and the short lived road improvement is meaningless if you don't have a job to go to or any money to spend at the shopping mall.

If we have a good new robust industry with all the aforementioned attributes a tax increase is not needed because existing tax revenues will already increase. On the other hand, a tax break – while always welcome - is also mitigated because many people will be earning more money via the uptick in the economy. This is why we feel that taxes are neither the issue nor the solution.

The key to a prosperous economy is the creation of industry. My partner and I at The Auto Channel have thought on this for a long time. Our business experiences are far, far broader than just the automotive industry, so we've tried to imagine all kinds of options and technologies that could be the progenitors of a needed industry. We always come back to the same thing: The solution, the magic lamp, is alternative energy and fuels. And the alternative energy and fuels must be produced domestically. The raw materials must come from our own domestic resources with the domestic jobs reserved for our citizens (the operative words are "our citizens"). For countries outside the United States we recommend the same solution: build your own manufacturing facilities, use whatever raw materials you can produce or grow in your country, and reserve the jobs for your own citizens.

Bob Gordon and I have written on the subject many times over the years. The only proviso we feel that must be made is that petroleum oil and gasoline (regardless of where the oil and gasoline originates) must be eliminated. Why, because even the production and sale of domestic gasoline supports the global oil-gasoline machine that is controlled by enemy regimes intent on our destruction.

If there’s another potential industry or slate of products and services that could do more for us than alternative energy and fuels would someone please step forward and share this information with us. Heck, we'll even pay for the airline ticket for you to go to Washington to share the information with the sorry SOBs that are running (or is it ruining) this great country.

* Flatupendantic is a word I invented. The literal definition is "fart-breath" but figuratively I use it as a highfalutin way of saying that someone is full of crap