Forum: Government needs to get out of the way of business
Published 1:30 am Saturday, June 3, 2023
By John Branthoover / Herald Forum
Our ever growing population means more food and clothing will be required, more utilities needed, more housing, more schools, and more medical care facilities as well. Government needs to do more to promote new business capacity at every level. It is the only way to meet these ever growing and pressing needs.
Instead, our government’s confiscatory tax and over regulatory environment is getting in the way of producing more goods and services. In the past five years, we lost hundreds of thousands of small businesses and self-employed entrepreneurs. We must to do more to help companies start a new business. As a nation, we need to revert to the rules in place prior to 2017. It should be easier to get started as a manufacturer, or operate as self-employed or small business.
The government should remove the new tax hikes on corporations. If it wants to get really serious about promoting more investment, and lowering government deficits, it should cut the corporation tax rate to 15 percent. Such a move would provide incentives for large companies to once again invest and establish their businesses in the United States.
Government at every level should lift any bans on the manufacturing and selling of new diesel-and gas-powered vehicles. The proposed elimination on the sale of new gas-powered vehicles by 2030 is arbitrary at best. The ban is prohibiting auto and truck companies from investing in new or refurbished factories in the United States. Major over-the-road truck, agricultural and construction equipment manufacturing firms, along with the jobs and taxes they provide, have already moved operations to Mexico and Canada. We need to get the jobs and tax revenue to come back home.
The Commerce Department should suspend the arbitrary emissions trading and carbon tax system. This is imposing higher taxes on U.S. made fuel, steel, drugs, ceramics, glass, rubber, agriculture products. These are all industrial products people in the advanced societies of the world require. It is the leading cause of established business closures, and the movement of their manufacturing operations to other low or no tax countries.
We need to assist new businesses to get started, foster company-funded research, and promote establishment of United States based production facilities. This would create hundreds of thousands of new jobs, grow the tax base and bring prices and inflation under control.
John Branthoover lives in Arlington.
