Work with Gary for More Community, Less Olympia

On this Labor Day, our state's unemployment is the highest it has been in almost thirty years, 17% if we include the underemployed. For too many businesses, especially small businesses, our legislators have transformed hiring people from an asset into liability. In demonizing business, our government does not increase equality or justice. It takes away the dignity that we have always felt as productive members of society.

Money doesn't make us happy. What makes us happy is earning our success by being productive. As someone who collected unemployment insurance, I can tell you that it may feed the body but it does not the soul. You are paid for declaring on a weekly basis to the state that no one considers your abilities valuable.

70% of our state's legislators, including my opponent, have never held a job in the private sector.  They do not understand the joys of individuals inventing products and services that others find valuable.  While government can provide valuable services when it is well run, the creativity, imagination, and energy of the individual human spirit is only unleashed through free enterprise.

Too often, government officials understand only the coercive taking of money through taxes and the warm glow of redistributing that money to their favorite causes. One of their favorite causes is always extending the bureaucracy. They do not understand the power the individual in making voluntary exchange of money where we address our needs as individuals by willingly servicing the needs of other individuals. They do not understand the joy and freedom of letting everyone, even the most humble person, vote with their own dollars about what products and services are the most valuable.

As the world grows more productive and competitive, there is not shortage of needs for us to fill, but people must be willing to risk their money and hire workers to fulfill those needs. We call those brave, creative risk takers "business people."  Our state's  regulations on small business stack five feet high. Our B&O tax system punishes businesses during economic downturns, taxing them even when they are losing money.  Business are not leaving our state, they are being driven out by runaway regulation and taxation. Thus begins the vicious cycle in which we find ourselves. As jobs are lost and business activity slows, the state, unwilling to control its spending, increases the taxes on remaining businesses, further punishing them for hiring workers. This in turn increases the unemployment rate, especially among the most needy among us.

Our cultural elite have transformed these "business people," who create all productive jobs, into the source of all evil. The only politically correct villains in the movies and television these days are those who create the jobs that make us productive and the products that satisfy our needs. As we can see in the recent manifesto of the Discover hostage taker, it is a short step from hating the economy that keeps us all alive to hating humanity itself.

As the world grows more competitive, our businesses must compete with businesses around the world. Our politicians and media can attack the "evil corporations" for exporting jobs overseas, but people all the over world need jobs and want to be more valuable and productive. Increasingly, it is not US companies who are providing them with work, but the companies with whom US companies must compete.  Increasingly, our companies are losing the competitive battle to companies from Brazil, China, and India. Still, the US feels the need to punish its corporations and one symptom of that is our corporate tax rate, the second highest in the world. 

If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving regulate it. When it stops moving, bail it out.