We must stop exporting jobs

Bob Wical
Published: October 31, 2008

McCain/Palin are saying that a targeted tax increase would devastate the U.S. economy. They are also telling their audiences small business is the engine that makes our economy work. These statements are absolute lies.

Consumption — people buying goods and services — is 70 percent of what makes our economy work.

Entrepreneurs can create 10 million small businesses, but if people don’t have money to buy goods and services these small businesses offer, the small businesses will go broke.

Sixty-five percent of U.S. corporations pay no income tax due to the thousands of pro-business loopholes in our tax code.

Money small business owners invest in their business or pay out in wages is, or will become, an expense; it is not income nor is it taxed.

Free traders are supporting a tax policy that gives U.S. companies a large tax break to move their companies offshore to other countries where labor is cheaper.

We must stop exporting U.S. jobs, create American jobs that produce affordable products needed by Americans and create jobs that rebuild our national infrastructure.

These jobs can be funded with some of the tax revenue produced by a 3 percent tax increase on the wealthiest Americans.

The new tax rate for the wealthiest would be 38 percent — about the same as it was under most of the Reagan and Clinton administrations. 

If a business owner can generate massive wealth on the backs of low- and middle-class workers, then the workers should be able to share in the wealth their labor creates.

Bob Wical
Culpeper