Morning Joe Rewind 12/26/2012 -- Business in the US

Morning Joe is rewinding 2012 during the holiday season, replaying this year's segments that stand out. One segment that stood out this morning was a discussion between Steve Rattner, Dan Senor and Michael Porter, a professor at Harvard Business School. Porter said that large US businesses are global now and the market is global. Other countries that were once economic basket cases are now removing regulations and freeing their businesses to compete globally. At the same time, the US is burdening US companies at home with regulations and taxes, so US companies are moving more operations overseas.

Rattner tried to explain the over-seas' operations as the result of low wages in competing, emerging countries, but Porter said that US companies can compete against low wages with high productivity and efficiency if they are not burdened by high costs which result from too much regulation and too high taxes. I would add that regulations in the US have favored large, established, politically-connected US companies while harming smaller, politically-disconnected US companies, and this helped large politically-connected companies doing business in the US, but the extra costs that the large companies have been able to bear and make a competitive advantage at home are a disadvantage in the global market.

Until the US can reform our statist system, and this entails a tax and regulation system which is killing US companies, US companies will continue to take operations overseas.

As I was saying about regulatory agencies

http://hotair.com/archives/2012/11/29/video-feds-shut-down-100-year-old-oyster-company-destroys-some-lives-and-dreams/

Our representatives have to be pushed to act against these abuses of power, because they are too weak to stand on their own.

Morning Joe 11/29/2012 -- Fiscal cliff, taxes and spending

On Morning Joe today there was a more serious approach, with Scarborough coming on long distance from Boston for a short while. The guests were Steve Rattner, Howard Dean, Michael Steele, Donnie Deutsche and a few others. The main subject was the fiscal cliff and what the two parties are doing to solve the fiscal problems. Howard Dean says that a multi-faceted approach is necessary and that allowing the time period to pass and the automatic cuts to take place along with the tax hikes across the board is the best way to go although it will painful. Rattner believes the markets will react too negatively if we go over the "cliff". Scarborough wants to raise capital gains taxes, or whatever we can do to get more money from the rich without hurting small businesses. Scarborough also wants to see reforms to entitlements. Michael Steele is on Scarborough's team.

What's actually happening is that Obama is taking his plan to the Little People to tax the rich so that the rich bastards pay their fair share. Boehner wants entitlement reforms and tax reform, but Obama wants to raise tax rates. Democrats like Reid and Durbin say they've already proposed spending cuts up to a trillion dollars, and that now we need higher taxes. Many moderate Republicans are now saying they are fine with higher tax rates on the rich -- after all, it's only fair.

When all is said and done, we're still stuck with serious financial problems. For decades interventionist government has complicated our economy. The business people who spoke with Obama say they want certainty, but the great majority of businesses will have no certainty. The giant corporations which have become a part of the State have sophisticated teams to deal with politics and ensure their connections with government and the changes that come from government are managed, but the great majority of businesses, small, medium and large, but with no political connections, have no certainty and will have no certainty going forward.

The federal government and the states can't decide what to do with Obamacare, so businesses don't know how to factor in the costs. When the dust settles, the tax hikes on the super-wealthy will not be enough, so immediately there will be talk of other means of raising revenues -- carbon tax, wealth tax, whatever they can come up with to take more money from the private sector. Spending cuts will be promised for the future when the economy recovers -- Keynes said this is the way to do it. The large connected corporations will survive Obamacare, taxes and regulations, but the majority of businesses who could do most of the hiring to get unemployment down don't have the ability to deal with changes, so they will wait it out, and some will go out of business. We don't know, though, how long they'll have to wait, because this is different. Although Obama's actions and inactions have contibuted to the problems, until we change our statist system, these problems will continue under any President. Bush's Medicare D is an example of government intervention and spending that has gone on for decades and now has reached a tipping point -- we can't afford the spending, the debt is crushing us, and the continuous stream of regulations are all combining to stagnate the economy, for the most part. It is slowing businesses down so that hiring is stagnant and expansion is out of the question. Businesses don't know what to expect next, and they don't what the costs will be.

Warren Buffett can blabber about taxes and his secretary's tax rate, but it means nothing to the millions of people dependent on stable rules for the game. At a time when we should reign in regulatory agencies, lower business taxes and eliminate capital gains, so that American businesses can take advantage of our global position regarding energy production and the extra boost this would give all parts of the economy, those in DC who have created this mess are trying their best to tax wealth producers as many ways as they can and to tie their hands with more regulations. The business people in huge corporations who are rent-seeking in DC are, like Buffett, a part of the problem, so one of the main things that should happen first with any list of solutions is to end all corporate welfare, but followed by limits on government power so that the problem doesn't come back. This is not going to happen, so what we'll see are higher taxes on the rich, the same financial problems, more regulations, more uncertainty, more confusion with Obamacare and nothing will get better. But, symbolically, higher taxes on the rich will look good to the Little People.

Obama will give another speech with an even larger group of Little People behind him, and Obama's team will perfect their hi-tech email and social media campaign to control the Little People and get them politically involved and active. The Morning Joe crew raved over the Democrat's sophisticated get out the message and vote machine, but what have they achieved with this machine -- how can they govern? What will they do with this system that is geared toward destruction? We're headed toward collapse, but the good news is that the machine that delivers us to collapse is the most sophisticated the world has ever known -- full speed ahead.

Kudos to Damon Root for championing economic freedom

http://reason.com/archives/2012/10/27/how-the-supreme-court-stacked-the-deck-a

All too often even those who self-indentify as libertarians champion free speech rights and rights to privacy but when it comes to economic freedom they balk and remain silent. Root is complaining about the Supreme Court's tendency to allow economic freedom violations in the form of regulations, and anytime a freedom fighter includes economic freedom, then I will highlight it.

Morning Joe 5/16/2012 -- How does Obama change the perception?

Morning Joe was very revealing today. On the show were Donnie Deutsche, Mike Barnicle, Steve Schmidt, Paul Ryan and others who discussed the national debt, the two visions that separate Romney and Obama, economic stagnation and compromise in congress. This morning was different because the they had more guests from the Right who believe we have to cut spending and generate economic growth. One guest was from the private sector and he advises businesses on how to survive and thrive -- he said we need to depend less on government and work together more in the private sector to make things happen. Yes!

The Leftist view, though, was still presented, and one of the questions was whether Obama can do anything to help deal with the debt problem. Paul Ryan said that if we enter a debt crisis, it will be too late and no one can be helped. This has been my position all along. If we don't get government under control, welfare and social justice are moot points. In the future, we are going to need private sector solutions to social problems rather than Leviathan.

Scarborough asked one of his guests what Obama has to do to change the perception that he's a Spend and Tax Liberal. First off, this is the problem with programs like Morning Joe and with the pundits who populate the shows. They still believe in the old strategy of managing perceptions to win elections, then when elected returning to the agenda that's the real priority. Obama can't change the perception unless he changes his political philosophy and understanding of economics.

Democrats are in a bind. They think they can position themselves as Centrists who are blocked by radicals from the Right, but Democrats are in power maintenance mode. Unions, minorities, women, young people, the poor, the elderly, environmentalists, the LBGT community, are all dependent on the Democrat Party because they've been promised one thing or another. The problem is that we are going so far into debt, spending on these groups is restricted, But, it's not only spending, it's regulations that favor certain groups. Between the regulations and the spending, however, economic stagnation has developed and money just sits on the sidelines because investors are afraid to take a chance when they don't know what changes will come about tomorrow. Democrats want to take the money sitting on the sidelines, but there's backlash to more taxes, and taxing the producers more just adds to the uncertainty and the stagnation. Producers will operate overseas and keep their money overseas if they are threatened in the US.

Obama attempted early on to create the perception that he was with the Big Corporations, and Obama did help the Jamie Dimon types and the Goldman Sachs executives and GM and Big Unions, but it was a set-up. Now, the real agenda is unfolding, and it is written into the tens of thousands of regulations that are building the healthcare, energy and finance structures. When government controls finance and healthcare and enegry, it controls everything. How does Obama change the perception in order to get re-elected? The question is ludicrous. How does Obama reign over government control of the entire economy, yet fool voters into thinking he supports free markets and less government intervention? He can't. Not in the Information Age. Maybe Obama could have pulled it off when there were three main news outlets and they gave their versions of the news for about an hour a day, but not now.

I will write another post about the current pleas for compromise in DC. We don't need compromise that expands government power -- we need political unity that works to limit government power.