Posted by Kromey at 9:53pm Jan 16 '121) Repeal Obamacare
The fact is, businesses are not hiring right now because they literally have no idea what their payroll costs will be as the provisions of Obamacare (conveniently set to start after Obama's shot at a second term...) kick in. A huge part of that is the fact that in more than a thousand pages of legislation, Obamacare basically all boils down to "The Secretary will determine..." And so far, the Secretary has not determined, well, anything, meaning no one knows what the costs will end up being! It may end up being cheaper to take the $2,000/employee penalty for non-compliance than to meet all the stipulations that have yet to be stipulated but are already required to be obeyed!
Repealing Obamacare returns certainty to the future of those businesses who want to expand and hire on more employees, creating jobs and giving a real good kick start to the economy.
2) End the War on Drugs
Not a whole lot really to say on this one, since I think pretty much everyone here agrees it should end. But how will it kick-start the economy? For starters, it gives the government an extra $15 billion per year [that's federal spending only -- who knows how much the states themselves spend on this fruitless and insane endeavor?] to do with as they will. Whether you believe that more money in the government's hands is good for the economy (e.g. infrastructure projects, unlike every such project to come before), or that the money could be used to pay for a tax cut to put more money into the hands of Americans, $15 billion not being spent locking up 2 million non-violent Americans every year certainly can't hurt anything.
More importantly, though, it leads into (3):
3) Legalize industrial hemp
Don't even have to legalize marijuana (although that absolutely should happen). Industrial hemp has much less THC than "recreational" hemp, making it almost impossible to get a good high from it. However, growing hemp is cheap, is easy, can be done in areas where other cash crops can't grow/grow well, and it has all kinds of applications -- paper (much easier on the environment than making it from trees, too), rope, cloth, etc. This would create a new agricultural boom in the country, leading to new jobs and an economy quickly turning back around and growing again.
So why is this amazing cash crop illegal today? Same reason the DEA somehow feels it can regulate the non-drug iodine and treat everyone with the sniffles as a criminal: Mission creep. Industrial hemp looks like "recreational" hemp, but rather than regulate the one they're actually after the government simply decided to make them both illegal for no other reason than the visual similarities of two plants with very different chemical compositions.
Why will Obama not do any of this?
1) This one's obvious, so not even going to say it.
2) This one's only slightly less obvious: Ending the War on Drugs would require Obama to admit he was wrong when he increased funding to it!
3) He can't really do this one without doing (2), at least not in an effective way, which means he'd again have to admit he was wrong.
As all of these suggestions ultimately rely upon the private sector acting in an environment of reduced regulation, they would all also involve an implicit admission that the government is not the best vector for directly creating jobs, which directly undermines the billions upon billions of dollars Obama has handed out in the name of economic recovery -- a recovery that despite the heftiest price tag in history we have yet to see...
The fact is, businesses are not hiring right now because they literally have no idea what their payroll costs will be as the provisions of Obamacare (conveniently set to start after Obama's shot at a second term...) kick in. A huge part of that is the fact that in more than a thousand pages of legislation, Obamacare basically all boils down to "The Secretary will determine..." And so far, the Secretary has not determined, well, anything, meaning no one knows what the costs will end up being! It may end up being cheaper to take the $2,000/employee penalty for non-compliance than to meet all the stipulations that have yet to be stipulated but are already required to be obeyed!
Repealing Obamacare returns certainty to the future of those businesses who want to expand and hire on more employees, creating jobs and giving a real good kick start to the economy.
2) End the War on Drugs
Not a whole lot really to say on this one, since I think pretty much everyone here agrees it should end. But how will it kick-start the economy? For starters, it gives the government an extra $15 billion per year [that's federal spending only -- who knows how much the states themselves spend on this fruitless and insane endeavor?] to do with as they will. Whether you believe that more money in the government's hands is good for the economy (e.g. infrastructure projects, unlike every such project to come before), or that the money could be used to pay for a tax cut to put more money into the hands of Americans, $15 billion not being spent locking up 2 million non-violent Americans every year certainly can't hurt anything.
More importantly, though, it leads into (3):
3) Legalize industrial hemp
Don't even have to legalize marijuana (although that absolutely should happen). Industrial hemp has much less THC than "recreational" hemp, making it almost impossible to get a good high from it. However, growing hemp is cheap, is easy, can be done in areas where other cash crops can't grow/grow well, and it has all kinds of applications -- paper (much easier on the environment than making it from trees, too), rope, cloth, etc. This would create a new agricultural boom in the country, leading to new jobs and an economy quickly turning back around and growing again.
So why is this amazing cash crop illegal today? Same reason the DEA somehow feels it can regulate the non-drug iodine and treat everyone with the sniffles as a criminal: Mission creep. Industrial hemp looks like "recreational" hemp, but rather than regulate the one they're actually after the government simply decided to make them both illegal for no other reason than the visual similarities of two plants with very different chemical compositions.
Why will Obama not do any of this?
1) This one's obvious, so not even going to say it.
2) This one's only slightly less obvious: Ending the War on Drugs would require Obama to admit he was wrong when he increased funding to it!
3) He can't really do this one without doing (2), at least not in an effective way, which means he'd again have to admit he was wrong.
As all of these suggestions ultimately rely upon the private sector acting in an environment of reduced regulation, they would all also involve an implicit admission that the government is not the best vector for directly creating jobs, which directly undermines the billions upon billions of dollars Obama has handed out in the name of economic recovery -- a recovery that despite the heftiest price tag in history we have yet to see...
3 Steps to Kick-Start the Economy and Create Jobs - Kromey