Issues
We’re #5! We’re #5!
The hardest states to find full-time work
By Thomas C. Frohlich, finance.yahoo.com/news
…The traditional unemployment rate does not include all jobless individuals, nor is it a percentage of all the people available for work…To account for people left out of the calculation, the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) provides alternative measures of labor underutilization.
The underemployment rate, also known as U-6, includes the standard unemployed population as well as marginally attached workers and persons employed part-time for economic reasons…
To determine the states where it is hardest to find full-time work, 24/7 Wall St. examined average underemployment rates for the 12 months through the second quarter of this year measured by the BLS…
These are the states where it is hardest to find full-time work.
10. Rhode Island…
9. Georgia…
8. Michigan…
7. South Carolina…
6. Mississippi…
5. Oregon
> Underemployment rate:12.8%
> June unemployment rate:5.5% (tied-20th highest)
> GDP growth 2007-2014: 15.3% (3rd largest growth)
> Labor force growth 2007-2014: 1.1% (21st largest decline)…
We Respond & Your Comments
We hope you’re as flummoxed by this as we are. How on Earth can it be harder to find a job in this wonderful state than in 45 others?
Here’s some of what we have in Oregon:
- Fine universities
- Educated work force
- Two deep water harbors
- Mild weather
- High tech sector
- Natural resources
- Viable transportation system
So what’s wrong? What’s holding us back? Herewith a few possibilities:
- Tax structure that discourages risk taking
- Environmental extremism
- Urban growth boundaries that artificially inflate housing prices
- Decades of single party governance
- Add your ideas below
Every one of these obstacles to job creation can be changed so that the dormant potential of this great state can be turned loose to make Oregon the economic powerhouse it should be – and make our state the #1 place in America to find a job.
Print this and read it again whenever you vote.
Bugs Bunny, White Squirrels and the Gas Tax
EDITORIAL
Just raise the gas tax
It’s the obvious choice to pay for America’s roads
…National gas prices are averaging around $2.85 a gallon. There has not been a better time in recent years for Congress to take the difficult but necessary step of increasing the federal gas tax to put the nation’s Highway Trust Fund on sound long-term footing.
A growing number of federal lawmakers — mostly Democrats but with a sprinkling of Republicans — have begun calling for an increase in the federal excise tax of 18.4 cents per gallon on gas, which has not been increased since 1993. They include Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., and Rep. Earl Blumenauer, an Oregon Democrat who has proposed nearly doubling the current fuel tax…
…an increase similar to the one proposed by Blumenauer could provide a long-term extension of the trust fund…
Lawmakers should stop avoiding the obvious and raise the federal gas tax.
We Respond & our Comments
For Progressives like Rep. Blumenauer (we used to call them “Liberals”) the answer is usually simple: “Just raise the (fill in the blank) tax.” Any tax. Any time.
But we have a few questions for Rep. Blumenauer and his merry crew of taxers about how Highway Trust Fund money has been spent:
Might we have more money for highways if the Feds hadn’t blown:
- $850 million for 2,772 “scenic beautification” landscaping projects?
- $1.6 million for morning cartoon cruises with Bugs Bunny in Oklahoma?
- $112,000 for a white squirrel sanctuary?
- $84 million for road kill prevention & similar programs?
- $313 million for “behavioral research”?
- $16 million for transportation museums?
- $520 million for sidewalks and bikepaths?
We could save tons of your and our dollars by foregoing projects such as those above. Or we could “Just raise the gas tax.”
A potent political agenda
Fair Shot group unites social, economic issues
A lobbying group that wins enactment of 80 percent of its agenda can congratulate itself for having had a highly productive legislative session. Oregon’s Fair Shot Coalition will celebrate that level of success today, when Gov. Kate Brown is scheduled to sign four of the five bills the group promoted in Salem…
Brown will sign Senate Bill 454, mandating paid sick leave for most employees; House Bill 3025, which makes it illegal for employers to include questions about applicants’ criminal histories on job applications; House Bill 2002, which will establish a system for collecting data about racial profiling by police, and House Bill 2960, which takes the first steps toward creating an employee-funded workplace-based retirement savings system for workers without access to a savings plan…
The Fair Shot Coalition emerged from a recognition that the two groups heavily overlap. The coalition is made up of labor organizations such as the Service Employees International Union and the Oregon AFL-CIO, and social justice organizations such as the Urban League of Portland and Basic Rights Oregon…
We Respond & Your Comments
Let’s think about “Fair.” Here’s why we avoid that word:
- Ask 5 people if something’s “fair” and you’ll get 6 answers;
- People usually think what’s “fair” is what works for them;
- When a politician tells us something’s “fair” – we grab our wallets. You should too.
Now let’s look at the “Fair Shot Coalition.” We doubt any of these “Fair Shooters” could say with a straight face that their union pals wants what’s “fair” for companies. Unions are paid to get the best deal for worker members. Fine. But let’s not confuse that with “fair.”
“Social justice organizations”? Economist F.A. Hayek hit the ol’ nail on the head: “(Social justice is)…conveniently used to assert that a particular claim is justified without giving any reason.” Amen.
“Fair” is a good word for 6th graders to use on the playground. But because it’s usually a code word for justifying the unjustifiable and/or extracting money from our wallets, let’s avoid it when discussing public policy.
We Meant for You to Pay Minimum Wage – Not for Us to Pay Minimum Wage. Got It?
Minimum wage advocates struggle to walk the talk: Editorial
– The Oregonian Editorial Board
House Speaker Tina Kotek acknowledged last week that the 2015 Legislature will adjourn without increasing the minimum wage. But the issue is likely to remain at the forefront of political discussion…
Even some minimum-wage advocates are finding it hard to live by the rules they propose. One recent example, pointed out by Portland public affairs consultant Cody McLaughlin: Advocacy group Working America advertised through Facebook for field managers for the $15 minimum wage campaign. McLaughlin asked what the pay was. The answer: $12.25 an hour, increasing to $15 after 90 days…
Consider what happened in Los Angeles. Last month, the city council approved a five-year plan to boost the minimum wage to $15 an hour. Late in the campaign for that increase, labor unions, which had led the push for a higher wage, made a surprising request: They wanted collectively bargained contracts to be exempt from the new standard…
We Respond & Your Comments
The irony simply couldn’t be more delicious – the “advocacy” group that wants everyone else to pay workers $15/hour wants to pay its workers $12.25/hour.
Unions that scream themselves hoarse lecturing about “fairness,” “living wages” and “the little guy” want to negotiate contracts at less than minimum wage.
There’s nothing we can add to this, so we’ll just quote 19th century cleric Frederick William Robertson:
“There are three things in the world that deserve no mercy: hypocrisy, fraud, and tyranny.“
Oregon to test pay-per-mile idea as replacement for gas tax
– AP, By Gosia Wozniacka
…The program [“OreGO”] is meant to help the state raise more revenue to pay for road and bridge projects at a time when money generated from gasoline taxes is declining across the country, in part because of greater fuel efficiency and the increasing popularity of fuel-efficient, hybrid and electric cars.
Starting July 1, up to 5,000 volunteers in Oregon can sign up to drive with devices that collect data on how much they have driven and where. The volunteers will agree to pay 1.5 cents for each mile traveled on public roads within Oregon, instead of the tax now added when filling up at the pump.
Some electric and hybrid car owners, however, say the new tax would be unfair to them and would discourage purchasing of green vehicles…
The OreGo program is projected to cost $8.4 million to implement…
We Respond & Your Comments
We’re not taking sides on OreGo. But we do want you to anticipate this program’s unintended consequences…
- A big reason people buy green cars is that they save on gas taxes. OreGo will decrease or eliminate these savings;
- Green cars are mostly affordable because of government subsidies (that means the govt. takes your money to give to people who buy green cars). So will government goose lower sales of green cars by increasing subsidies with more of your money?
- Or will government let the price of green cars rise as demand falls, thus decreasing green car sales and increasing sales of gas cars that release more carbon?
- The more that sales of green cars decrease, the less the value of OreGo. So in the end will Salem junk it and just raise the gas tax for everyone?
Please join us in thinking through these “sounds-good-costs-millions” programs and anticipating what the real results might be.
It’s Baaaaack – Minimum Wage Campaign Rises From the Dead
Government-Imposed Minimum Wage Increases Don’t Work for Oregon Small Businesses
– Steve Buckstein, Cascade Policy Institute
The concept that everyone should earn at least some government-mandated minimum wage is politically very appealing. It’s almost the classic example of taking from the few and giving to the many. “The few” in this case are portrayed as rich businessmen who could never spend all the money they have, so what’s wrong with making them pay their workers a little more? Now, proponents of raising Oregon’s minimum wage are trying to convince us that somehow such policy is actually good for small business owners…
Let’s just hope that if another bump in Oregon’s minimum wage results in some workers losing their jobs and others not getting hired in the first place that they place the blame for their troubles where it belongs―not on employers, but on those who promised them higher wages but couldn’t deliver because economic reality stood in the way.
We Respond & Your Comments
They’re back – Democrats are again campaigning to raise the Oregon minimum wage from $9.25/hour to somewhere between $10.25 and $15.00.
We’ve shared with you why this is a bad idea. By way of review, here are some of the reasons:
- Businesses facing increased labor costs typically respond by a combination of reducing labor, increasing prices, or decreasing the quantity or quality of their products;
- Increasing labor costs incentivizes businesses to replace labor with technology. At about 800 Olive Garden restaurants you’ll soon order and pay for your spaghetti on computer tablets at the table – tablets that don’t earn anything, call in sick or take days off;
- Many union contracts are tied to the minimum wage. Raise that and you raise lots of union salaries;
- Low wage workers don’t necessarily come from low income families. A recent study shows that if you raise the minimum wage to $15/hr. only 12% of the benefits will go to poor families. 36% will go to families earning more than 3 times the poverty line.
These are just a few of the reasons that raising the minimum wage is bad for Oregonians. Please click the link above and discover even more.
Study: 60 percent of 2014 job growth caused by expiration of unemployment benefits
– Jason Russell, The Washington Examiner
Sixty percent of job creation in 2014 was caused by the expiration of unemployment benefits, according to a new working paper published by the National Bureau of Economic Research…
In late 2013, a standoff between Republicans and Democrats led to the abrupt expiration of long-term unemployment benefits. Democrats warned that the expiration would have disastrous ramifications, but Republicans had long argued that allowing Americans to collect unemployment benefits for an indefinite period of time provided a disincentive for them to work.
The new working paper found that the expiration of benefits was responsible for the creation of over 1.8 million jobs. Nearly 1 million of those jobs were created by workers who would have otherwise stayed out of the labor force if unemployment benefits had been extended…
“The negative effects of unemployment benefit extensions on employment far outweigh the potential stimulative effects often ascribed to this policy,” the study said…
We Respond & Your Comments
Here, again, is an iron rule of economics: “If you want more of something, subsidize it.”
Driven by false compassion, Liberals subsidized unemployment by sending checks to the unemployed. What did they get? More unemployment. When payments for not working stopped, people found jobs.
We would bet the farm that you could show these facts to 100 Liberals and 98 of them would deny them. That’s because Liberals are driven not by facts, but by what sounds and feels good. And it feels good to take money from you and us and give it to someone who isn’t working.
That’s because of another Liberal guideline: “There just ain’t no end to the good you can do with other people’s money.” Even if you’re really doing harm.
Statement by House Speaker Tina Kotek on Quarterly Economic and Revenue Forecast
“…The budget process underway may be impacted by a personal kicker. The investments in our schools and mental health programs which came out of the 2013 special session are the lead factor in the kicker prediction…”
http://www.mycentraloregon.com/2015/02/19/speaker-kotek-says-kicker-could-impact-budget/
We Respond & Your Comments
Herewith some questions for Ms. Kotek:
- Concerning the “impact” on your “budget process:” Did you ever worry about the “impact” your ever-increasing taxes and fees have on Oregon families’ budget processes?
- Regarding your use of the term “investments”: Would you please explain the difference between “investments” and “spending”?
- We notice that whenever you want to spend (excuse us, we meant “invest”) more of the money we worked for it’s almost always for schools or something else for “the children.” Yet Oregon is crawling with poor kids. What did you do with all the money that was supposedly for them?
And herewith our guess at Ms. Kotek’s answers:
- Why on Earth would I do that?
- Huh? Well, It’s …uh…
- Ever heard of PERS, knucklehead?
The Keystone debate
Senate GOP needs Demo votes to override veto
– Eugene Register Guard Editorial
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky., has promised an open debate over the Keystone XL pipeline, one that will allow amendments by Republican and Democratic lawmakers…
While a Keystone bill already has passed the House and Republicans appear to have the votes needed for Senate passage, the case against the pipeline remains compelling. The project would generate only a small number of permanent jobs and would do little to promote U.S. energy independence. It poses serious risks to the environment, including potential leaks that could foul groundwater and wilderness areas…
We Respond & Your Comments
Rarely do we dive into a national issue. We do here because it’s important for readers to get both sides of an issue that might affect them.
The Register Guard (RG) claims that Keystone would create few permanent jobs. The Dept. of State (DOS) “Supplemental Environmental Impact Statement” claims we’d get 42,100 construction jobs but just 50 permanent jobs. forbes.com projects 42,000 jobs with a majority being permanent.
The RG fails to mention that Keystone construction would add $3.4 billion to the U.S. Gross Domestic Product and that year one of operation would generate $55.6 million in property taxes (DOS estimates).
Would Keystone impact U.S. energy independence? Definitely. washingtonpost.com reports that Texas’ Valero refinery alone will buy about 150,000 barrels per day, replacing a significant portion of the oil we buy from Venezuela, an unstable, unfriendly country.
“Serious risks to the environment…”? Concerns center on climate change and spills/leaks. washingtonpost.com reports: “Keystone Pipeline would have little impact on climate change, State Dept. says.” Spills? DOS reveals that Keystone has incorporated 96 “Special Conditions” and “mitigation measures” to prevent and mitigate spills/leaks and raises no alarm concerning them.
Now you have both sides of the issue.
Capitol Tax List: Over 50 taxes proposed!
By Taxpayer Association of Oregon, reprinted in The Oregon Catalyst
Hb 2080 – Provides that for first property tax year after sale or transfer of property, assessed value and maximum assessed value equal real market value of property.
Hb 2086 – Imposes fee on fossil fuel or fossil fuel-generated electricity to be paid by vendors.
Hb 2151 – Limits, for purposes of personal income taxation, availability of itemized deductions.
HJR 8 – Proposes amendment to Oregon Constitution to repeal individual income tax surplus refund “kicker” provision.
HJR 14 – Proposes amendment to Oregon Constitution directing Legislative Assembly to adopt sales tax at rate of five percent on sales of tangible personal property and services and use tax at rate of five percent on purchase price of tangible personal property….
Our Response & Your Comments
These are a mere one tenth of the bills proposing new or increased taxes that will be considered during the current legislative session. Taxes on gas, homes, water, more.
As the old saying goes,”Elections have consequences.” And Oregon’s continued leftward drift toward liberal (sorry, we meant “Progressive”) nirvana has resulted in these 50 new attempts to grab money from our pockets.
Unless you want 50 more new taxes in 2017, remember these 50 the next time you vote. Also remember…
“For a nation to try to tax itself into prosperity is like a man standing in a bucket and trying to lift himself up by the handle.” – Winston Churchill
“A liberal is someone who feels a great debt to his fellow man, which debt he proposes to pay off with your money.”– G. Gordon Liddy