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How I'd Create Jobs
As Obama gives a big speech on employment today, 14 attendees at last week's White House jobs summit, including Robert Reich and FedEx founder Fred Smith, reveal what they told the president.
Frederick Smith
Chairman, CEO, FedEx
I urged the President to accelerate the expensing of capital investment; reduce the corporate income tax rate; and champion free trade. As detailed by former Treasury officials Ernie Christian and Gary Robbins, every dollar of tax cuts for expensing adds about nine dollars of GDP growth. Allowing companies to expense more of their capital outlay is an inexpensive way to create jobs, because the only cost to the government is the time value of money. By cutting the corporate income tax rate, which at 35% is the second highest behind Japan, U.S. companies will have more money to invest in job creation. The President should also move forward with pending trade agreements with Columbia, Peru and the Republic of Korea—trade-related jobs account for one in five American jobs and they tend to be higher paying than other positions.
Robert Reich
Professor, UC-Berkeley; former U.S. Secretary of Labor
I urged that the Administration and Congress put first priority on helping states and cities, which are now undertaking, in effect, an anti-stimulus program totaling $350 billion over this year and next.
Arpana Mathur
Economist, American Enterprise Institute
My suggestion was for reducing corporate tax rate. A lot of research the American Enterprise Institute has done looks at how high corporate tax rates effects investment. If you look at where U.S. stands, it has the highest corporate tax rate after Japan. If you lowered the rate, you would see a big boost in investment. [Our research] also showed the effects of corporate tax on workers. That single action would achieve multiple objectives.
James P. Hoffa
General President, Teamsters
Think “America first” when it comes to trade policy. If this government wants to do something, enforce the trade laws if we have them.
Diana Aviv
CEO, Independent Sector
The nonprofit community employs nearly 10 percent of America’s workforce and that we are also largely small employers: roughly 80 percent of nonprofits employ fewer than 100 people, and more than half have fewer than ten employees. Nonprofits have no natural home in the executive branch and are largely unable to access the special benefits provided to companies through the Small Business Administration, including loans, mentoring programs, and technical assistance. As a result, the administration has a particular responsibility to remember always that nonprofits likely would need help through different methods from small business.
Robert Kuttner
Co-founder of the American Prospect
Because we’re stuck in this very high unemployment trap where the banks are nominally back to health but they’re not extending credit to the people who need it and the mortgage situation isn’t being solved and jobs aren’t being created you need more public spending in the short run that gets us out of debt. To try to reduce the deficit now would be crazy. The general feeling in the room was certainly we need to do more and I think he personally gets the fact that you have to go deeper into deficit spending.
Edward Wytkind
President, Transportation Trades Department, AFL-CIO.
- The need to pass updates to the nation’s overdue surface and aviation legislation, which are essentially mini stimulus bills that await action by Congress.
- The billions in ready to go, so-called shovel ready, initiatives in all the transport modes: aviation, mass transit, highways and bridges, Amtrak and other passenger and freight rail and ports and maritime.
- Amtrak, which has yet to ever receive full funding as authorized by Congress, as a worthy way to boost jobs through new investments.
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cmhandy
All these answers focus on thier individual pet projects. I did not find one surprising, 'out of the bos' answer. "Ohh la la I think the best way to invent new jobs is for the Gov't to give me a box full of cash so I can go on vacation and hire a new pool boy" would have been at least an honest answer, as opposed to what the DailyBeast posted here (surprise surprise).
al-nafs
That was the point. All these people have their own perspectives, based on what they do, the area of the economy that they have unique insight into. The whole point of listening to them all and giving them a forum and an opportunity to share their views is to find a course of action that would provide the most benefits in the least amount of time.
PS: There is even a profession for ignorant, sarcastic attitudes like yours. If you can write well and present convincing arguments, you could become a critic. If your communication skills are a bit lacking and you can't form a persuasive argument to save your life, you could always become Governor of Alaska. Me? I'm a comedian. Bada-bum-ching!
cmhandy
OW! QUIT IT! OW! QUIT IT! OW! QUIT IT! A hit off of my 43rd album entitled "If I could fart on the moon, would it make the cheese smell any better?"
My point was: They each had an opportunity to go to the W.H. and pitch for job creation, and all they did was pitch thier own pet projects. Three of them called for tax cuts (a rather Reagonesque response to recession, I thought), Jimmie Hoffa JR. wants trade reform (he said the same thing pre-recession) and the others wanted to create jobs in their own companies (with govt' subsides I could only assume). None of thier ideas struck me as either innovative nor even plausible. So again, The Daily Beast shines a laser spot light on an issue without putting any depth to the article. Thanks Tina Brown for wasting more of my time.
ghettosavant
@cmhandy you're hilarious, thx for the sniggle :-)
oliverckerr
"In December, 1995, Time Magazine's Richard Stengel gave our non-stop Lev poet prophet Daily Beast post man a one liner in his article, "Look Ma, I'm Running," a piece about unknown candidates running for president in New Hampshire. Levinson proposed building ten thousand clipper ships for a jobs program, but Stengel left out the Lev concept of college students paying lesser tuition for crewing the ships, "sew" with or without a cargo, the clipper ships generate money, and pay for their building carrying cargo.
"We could say to any country, we will take all of your goods without tariff, as long as the goods come to us on our clipper ships. The students could inspect the cargoes as they are loaded, with state of the art detectors, so weapons of mass destruction, or contraband, won't be coming into USA on our clipper ships.
We can deliver foods to these poorest nations most cost effectively on our own ships.
The candidate for president Levinson shipbuilding program creates meaningful steady work on the East Coast, Gulf Coast, West Coast, also along the shores of Lakes Huron, Michigan, Erie, Superior, and Ontario; more than a couple million decent good paying jobs wherever there is water and people need work.
Which is better for the planet, fleets of clippers with semi-automatic computer controlled sails, or giant container ships three stadiums long with thirty-four crewmen? Any sea mammal, napping on the sea top is dead meat for these mammoth ships and what matter, with lobbyists stuffing the blubber down the throat of your district's I-must-be-reelected congressperson.
When the clipper ships come across hundred acre wide swaths of sea top with garbage floating everywhere, the "stew dent" volunteers will lower long boats with electric motors and rake the sea top, bringing the garbage aboard and, supervised by the captain, weigh it up, because the kids will be paid $100 a pound for time and trouble. This is a great way to "sea" the world and work your way through college. Harvard, their fleet, forty ships, will have an additional 1600 undergraduate seats to fill.
Mother Nature will shine on your good deeds besides the millions of genuine long term jobs created. Her dolphins will jump the long electric motor boat bows in unison, as wild dolphins have been known to playfully jump the bows when their mood arises; the gentle Right whales and Sperms, in pods, will show off their kids, and let the college kids hop on their backs for a sea top ride.
Whoops. What is left out of the Levinson for president equation - left out is all that required slush money for your corrupt leader bleeders. The filthy money these people require for their reelections was excluded from the Levinson ship building bill of lading.
Recollect lobbyist slush deregulated the financial industry, nearly sinking the world's financial house!
Handing over billions to the banks' sinkholes shows your whole congress is on the take. They all need to go.
The other side of the coinage of their realm. Without lobbyist slush nothing positive can happen either!
"Sew" you won't be building any clipper ships because how to is a you don't know, it's too creative, and the container shipper's lobby won't allow it. Expect instead your hollow Congress' derision, in your innovative ship building face.
Of course you could build fleets of clippers without the government, the investment from the university endowments. Not-for-profit corporations, run by the universities whose students are the crew, can run the fleets of clipper ships regardless, underbidding for a steady cargo, except for all your elected on-the-take bleeders who will be blocking your way.
Do not expect five million jobs without your Blagojevichite congress tithing your pay.
candidate for president
michaelslevinson.com
LynnRobb
Except for the CEO of FedEx all of the commentators were from think tanks, charities, academia or unions. If these are the only voices Obama is listening to on job creation we are in serious trouble. Where was the small businessperson? 80% of job creation is from small business. Oh--right. They were too busy working to sit around a table gazing at their neighbor's navel and uttering banal generalities.
xlntcat
You are making a flawed assumption that these few individuals were the only people present. Several small businessperson's were interviewed on CNBC prior to the summit. Mayors were also present along with a crosssectional representation from diverse small businesses. If you assume that teabaggers can travel across country for months complaining about the taxes that those of us who have a job and show up for work so they can draw their welfare, SSI, and social security checks, why would you assume that concerned owners of small business wouldn't show up to try to make a difference for their industry.
ImNoPUNK
Hey xlntcat...
My guess is you've yet to observe first hand a Teaparty demonstration..... Instead you choose to malign those exercising their right of free speech by suggesting they're L.O.F. and not willing to work. That their very subsistence is dependent upon your government levied magnanimity.
Baseless accusations such as yours are not new. There will always be bigoted shills eager to promulgate fiction rather than fact. One has only to reflect on the last century's civil rights and suffrage movements to realize your brand of evil has been around a long time.
aackc1
X... Its real funny you pick on teabaggers for their welfare...
I don't remember seeing any of them in line to get their "Obama Money!"
The reason why they voted for Obama, was for more free handouts, and they felt that he could relate to them.
BTW, according to Elizabeth Gates, their was a 90% chance that Obama was in a household that used foodstamps before he was 20 years old.
OldCrow
I do a lot of international business travel and there are many, many businesses moving portions of their operations out of the US due to high taxes, excessive regulation and the fear of more Obama 'change'. Most of his initiatives this year are anti-business and this horrible health care legislation coupled with the EPA ruling are scaring more jobs out of the country.
The reason we are only at 10% unemployment is that the federal government has been pumping money to the bloated state governments. When that tap is turned off next year, we will see a spike to at least 20% unemployment. Add in the businesses that are leaving and you will see a decade of 20 to 30% unemployment.
In a few years, Obama will be loathed and hated for the destruction he has done to this country. But heck, his picture is on the cover of GQ, and that's all that is important to him.
sernajr
I'm with OldCrow. I live in El Paso, Texas and I see more and more professionals moving from the East into El Paso and working across in Juarez. Yes, these are called 'Twin Plants'. China now makes clothing, pumps, wind energy equipment and so forth. IT companies like IBM and others are hiring programmers from India. These programmers earn around $10,000 per year. We import 20 million barrels a day. At $75 a barrel that is $1.5 billion a day or 547.5 billion dollars a year! We need to be firing on all cylinders and we're debating frigging weatherization of our homes and business tax incentives for one year! In the short term you cannot do much except provide incentives to businesses by not increasing their taxes, i.e., reset the button on health care, cap and trade and card check. I'm sorry to say but you cannot redistribute the wealth without destroying half of the economy. And when you create one government job it is like destroying 1/2 job in the private sector. Maybe more, I've seen little or no work coming out of a $120,000 per year government employees in my lifetime. And ideas like clash for clunkers, growing the government, weathering your home and others is like pissing in the wind. I heard alot of doctors will retire who are over 50 who will retire because, as it is, they are providing health care to the poor, charging them very little or not at all. When you get 5 times that much then they that is what broke the camels back. How many times must we go through these good feeling--bad results socialistic scenarios! We can provide help with the poor but not with full entitlements, they've got to have some skin in the game.
neverlate
I guess no one had the nerve to tell him to start by jetisoning his overtly anti-business agenda, and stop trying to reengineer the whole economy in the middle of the largest unemployment crisis we have had in a lifetime.
aackc1
It is kind of funny... Then this happens...
ON THE ATTACK: Gibbs slammed Gallup's daily tracking poll that showed Obama's approval at the lowest point at this stage of any presidency since Truman's.
"I'm sure a six-year old with a crayon" could do the same thing, he said of Gallup, labeling it "the EKG that is the Gallup trend" and calling it "meaningless." And that's the news. (10:04 a.m.)
Get ready for the spin...
OldCrow
Gibbs should hire some of the corrupt scientists who rigged the global 'warming' hockey stick chart to spin Obama's growing unpopularity.
debbieqd
Yeah, let's just keep doing what the previous administration did. Then, we can go full circle and end up iright back in this shape again. Great idea!
aackc1
Unfortunately, that is the direction we are going.
judeseverin
There's a saying "if it's not broken don't fix it" but it was broken the whole system is broken. But they can't fix it main because the American people are to afraid of the devil they don't know. Come on, do you really think this country, with all it's brilliance can't give people decent health care at a decent price while other countries can. That we don't rank in the twenty of taking care of our elderly. Do you really believe that? Shame on America, seems to me you can't call yourself the greatest country in the world if you can't, as a country take care of children and the elderly. I'm all for making a buck but you can't just not give a shit about anybody else. And that's what capitalism in this country has turned into. It's sad when "Greed is good" is the American slogan.
neverlate
Obama said health care at 16% of the economy was way to high, how is it that a health care Bill that guarantees that it will be over 21% of the economy demonstrates "brilliance"?
Sidewinder
At least Obama is using that engineering degree. The previous occupant just sat on his ass and gave in to the trickle down crowd.
YARROW
I don't hear enough talk about our huge trade deficit. How often can you find on apparell labels ?
MaeQueen
Hey, here's a thought, how about the President:
1. Asking the American workers what should be done to solve the unemployment problem.
2. Stop outsourcing jobs overseas.
3. Fine Big Business for outsourcing those jobs.
4. Apply that $$$ to creating more jobs.
And let's dispell a rumor here - the WH is not clueless when it comes to creating jobs - because the government sector has grown by 74,000 new jobs since Obama took office.
OldCrow
MaeQueen:
Companies are not outsourcing jobs overseas, they are leaving the US, taking all the jobs, all the revenue, and all their assets with them.
They are running away from a failed President who is intent on destroying the private sector.
escomments
Another Liberal without a clue on how economies work. Or freedom, for that matter.
Now we are going to ban corporations from leaving the country?
Sounds like the old days of the Soviet Union.
When are we going to erect our Berlin Wall?
sophia5
" let's dispell a rumor here - the WH is not clueless when it comes to creating jobs - because the government sector has grown by 74,000 new jobs since Obama took office. "
Government jobs are in many cases money wasting taxpayer funded bureaucratic jobs.
They don't create or make anything, they just find ways to tax and tax
and tax private industry, so that private industry can't hire more employees.
So keep praising your "community organizer" in chief.
Liberals think money grows on trees or in this administration's case, printing presses.
bigdn53
Hear, hear! with special interest to points 1) and 3)
CoventryP
Answer your 4 points critically and truthfully.
1. What does the Average Joe really understand when it comes to global economics? What can we really offer in the way of healthy constructive ideas?
2. Stop outsourcing jobs overseas? Why on earth do you think this is happening? Anyone who buys anything (this is where you and your "american workers" might have a clue) if you can get the same thing for less somewhere else, where do you buy it? Macy's or Walmart? Same goes for business. If the labor rate in China is 10% of what it is here for the same thing, where do you think I will spend my money? Business will do business where the quality and cost are nicely balanced. In the USA, labor rates are high, taxes are high, regulations are restrictive. We are not friendly to business, so it goes elsewhere. Simple.
3. Read "Atlas Shrugged". That book does a fine job of answering that question.
4. The Gov spending money does not create a sustainable economy! They have to take that money from somewhere and the only place the Gov can make money is by printing it.
The only way we pull out of this long 40 year economic deterioration is to allow the economy to run without all the government imposed overhead. Mr. President, get out of the way!
myrevenge
How about if you create a birth certificate first.
kitem08
lol
ndspinelli
92% of the people appointed by the prez to his administration are either from govt. or academia. This panel corroborates his world view. These are people who have never nmade a payroll.
Having run a small biz for 25 years I can tell you there are few responsibilities more daunting then making a payroll on a weekly basis. I don't care if its Dems or Repubs, all ANY politician ever gives to small business is lip service. We don't give big bucks so we are 2nd class citizens. This prez may be the worst for small biz....but they sure have taken care of big biz...politicians know where their bread is buttered. So, the next time you hear ANY POLITICIAN talk about helping small biz you know they're lying!
Cforchange
Your concerns are valid but small businesses have been chugging for some time in spite of the government. The fact is that there are few or no individuals that move from successful small business into politics so maybe that is just the type of candidate that should surface should all these brilliant academics fail this time round.
Perhaps we will never be served accurately because just maybe the rapid responder to constant change and challenge is just a personality type that can not tolerate the boring government slow dance. But then again, maybe that explains the current state of affairs in the USA.
ndspinelli
Cforchange, Superb comment! Like most of us small biz people I surmise you would agree that we mostly just want govt. to leave us alone. I worked in gvt for a few years and found it insane. I transitioned into a private sector job for a few years prior to starting my own biz. The biggest shock was starting out. But, @ each step[incorporation, hiring employees, etc.] the obstacles placed by govt were there. You are so correct about our personality type being an anathema to politics
bobizwild
Comrads, just sit back and let the State decide what's best for you. That's what appears to be happening anyway. We don't need no stinking U.S. Constititution! Not when we can legislate from the bench and empower agencies (EPA) to dictate what we are to do. WAKE UP AMERICA!
ImNoPUNK
Moody's just announced, if by 2013 the USA hasn't reduced the deficit it will lose it's AAA rating. Meanwhile, Obama contemplates his navel or plays the fiddle at a state dinner.
Johnnyappleseed
There was not a person at that table that had an idea.
We are in serious melt down and they were all glad handing, and grand standing, pitiful! maybe when unemployment hits 11 or 12 percent they will get a clue....It' small business you idiots! get them at the table you if want job creation health care answers.
immparts
Each of the individuals suggesting a economic fix to the President has a specific agenda. However, there is a common thread among the suggestions. That is, each recommends a course of action that requires some form of manufacturing.
That being said, let's look at the fastest way to stimulate the economy and begin to bring manufacturing back to the U.S.
It is the Machine Tool Industry which has slid from 10-12 billion dollars annually to 1.5 to 2 billion annually now.
Manufacturers need Machine Tools. They also need to be close to the Machine Tool Builders so they can interact with the builder to design the new machines the manufacturer needs. That close collaboration is what drives the location of the Machine Tool Builder.and the Manufacturer. They need to be close to each other.
If you want the new manufacturers to stay here, give them access to the Machine Tool Builders, here in America.
I cannot stress enough how important that collaboration is and the need for each to be close to the other.
So simple a concept, yet totally misunderstood by the decision makers.
In the 1980's, under the Regan Administration, we lost nearly all of our Machine Tool Builders. They went to China. Those of who were left here tried to warn everyone that the manufacturers would follow the builders to China. Sure enough, that's what happened. It's now time to reverse that policy and re-invigorate the Machine Tool Builders in this country. We are still here, small and hungry but willing to design and build machines to grow our economy.
jjsim1965
Gibbs is a ninnywit. If the number continue to slide Obama won't even be on the ticket in 2012, and he has said that himself. He thinks he can get all his damage done by the end of this year, so that is ok with him.
lisais2
Does anyone remember the hundreds of billions of dollars the government recently gave to wall street, the auto companies and don't forget the huge corporations. Taxing the rich and taking away their loop holes is a good thing. The only reason corporate America sent American jobs overseas is for huge profits and out of control greed. We need to stop free trade and close our borders. We need to make the big corporations pay the same taxes as the rest of America. We need term limits in government. We need to put a stop to runaway profits in health care, big business, and big government. All government lobby should be illegal and last but not least we must have enforcement of current laws. If the greed doesn't stop the people will rebel in one way or another. If they kill us all who will be left to pay taxes and work!
CoventryP
Kill or be killed. The reason corporate America sent American jobs overseas is profit. A company not turning a profit is soon out of business. A government cannot operate unless its businesses are turning tidy profits so they can skim off the top so they can do all the things they want to do. A businesses job is turn the biggest profit it can without destroying the people or the environment they live in and while following normal ethics. After that - gloves off.
Is Apple greedy or just wildly successful?
bigdn53
Where's Ross?
Nafta........Pass it and wait for the sucking sound.
locmai23
Employment taxes have been around for sometimes now so we know this recession did not cause by taxes. I think this mess is caused by the cost of wars and uneven import/export tax rates.
Obama once said we cannot solve worlds' problems, so please don't act like you can. If companies and countries want to bring their products here that were made elsewhere then just apply the same tax rate like they were made here.
Thank you.
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