Jason’s 3 Simple Ways to Create Jobs in Delaware & 2 Simple Bonus Ways to Create Jobs in America – Part 2
So here are items #2 & #3 for creating more jobs in Delaware. (Get thee to your fainting couch teabaz.)
2) Huge investments in quality of life and education. “Green economy” or “high tech” entrepreneurs will take our tax breaks, but they will not move here from Madison Wisconsin, Austin Texas, Palo Alto California, Burlington Vermont, Seattle Washington, or Boulder Colorado to take them. Why? Because those places are nice places to live and raise families, while Delaware is a shit hole (relatively speaking). Smart creative people want to be around other smart creative people. New business is collaborative business. We can’t compete with great places to live for top talent on a “we have lower taxes” basis. We can only compete with Rankass Alabama and Bungstain Mississippi for the biggest shithole/most slot machines/lowest taxes crown.
Sorry teabagz. We’ll need to spend money to make money. I know it is your wet dream to have a zero tax utopia where everyone pushes his produce cart to market on muddy rutted tracks, but that will not do. Think of Dave Burris and how he is always promoting the benefits of tax dollars spent on Beach re-nourishment. For every $1 million spent on beaches – it returns $1 billion to our economy (or some such crazy ROI.) Similarly, investments our communities that are not touched by the Atlantic Ocean, can go a long way to making us more competitive with the places we actually want to compete with.
Schools? Yes. Open the checkbooks. We need to be at the top of the list on per pupil spending and professionalization of teacher’s salaries – not the bottom. Also, no creationism in science class unless it is a lesson about what how a stupid bunch of dumbfucks don’t understand the point of science. Transportation? Yes. Do you think “car only transportation policies and massive traffic jams” when you think Burlington, Seattle, and Austin? No, you don’t. We need light rail and bike lanes. Not six lane intersections that are more difficult to cross on foot than the North Korean border.
3) Raise taxes. Specifically, raise taxes on Charlie Copeland. Tax Charlie and his Greenville buddies who do nothing but live parasitically off the labor of their forefathers. Wake those lazy bastards up. Put 30% of their dividend haul into play. (As it had been until Bush fucked everything up). Tax the shit out of dividends and Charlie’s lazy ass unearned income. And speaking of free rides, Disney and all of you other “Delaware Corporations” who enjoy our servile court system, and tax laws with loopholes that you can drive 18 wheelers full of cash through… pay up.
Items #1 and #2 involve work and require investments no more free ride Charlie.
See part 3 of this post for the bonus round stuff.
This reminds me of a story I heard at a party some months back. The person telling the story is an executive in a pharmacuetical firm, whose company was being marketed heavily by a bunch of states to come to their respective states to expand. Kansas was one of the states and a team dutifully went out there to hear the pitch. The state folks go through their song and dance and there’s some back and forth as questions are being asked and answered. Until one of the pharmaceutical guys asked about the educational system — specifically how they thought they’d be able to entice portions of their very scientifically educated workforce to move their families to a state whose educational system was trying to embrace creationism as an alternative to science. This tale’s teller said you never experienced such an uncomfortable silence – as every bit of the salesmanship these folks tried to invoke utterly failed them.
The lesson being that people with great educational experiences want the same for their kids. One of the ways to attract a highly educated workforce is to have an educational system that people will choose to move to. Education is as much of the infrastructure as great roads, bike paths and high speed rail. It is well past time to treat it that way.
“…people with great educational experiences want the same for their kids. One of the ways to attract a highly educated workforce is to have an educational system that people will choose to move to.”
Very well put.
For the 2005-06 school year (the year I could find data for), Delaware ranked 11th out of the 50 states plus DC. Education spending does not create jobs, nor does it bring employers.
See: http://www.edweek.org/rc/articles/2009/01/21/sow0121.h27.html
As for taxes, cut the BS rhetoric. Higher taxes lead folks to leave the state. Just look at Maryland’s recent experiences with its so-called millionaires’ tax.
Boy, I’m really glad you’re not in charge.
Thanks for the anti-growth anti-jobs position. Think about your fellow Republican Dave Burris and how he allows that where the state makes good investments it is good for the economy.
Tax cutting is an investment, but an investment is the wrong shit. Namely Charlie Copeland’s Swiss bank account and Michelle Rollin’s tropical hideaway.
And the Maryland millionaires story is something of a old wives’ tale — wingnut apocrypha edition. If you look at the date that people cite that there were fewer million dollar tax filers, you’d see that it coincides with the economic meltdown. When lots of people and institutions were losing money. And Maryland’s decreased revenues were largely due to the downturn — like every other state that lost revenue.
But thanks for being Exhibit A as to why Delaware needs a better education system.
I looked this up a while ago. The Maryland millionaires didn’t leave – they just stopped being millionaires. They lost income just like everyone else. That’s why there were less of them.
Wingnut chestnuts never die.
Very important to hit these points. Plutocrat lobbying groups have been meeting with the Markell administration on an ad hoc basis ever since the Delaware estate tax returned two years ago.
GOP rep just told All Things Considered: “You can never raise taxes on the job creators.”
Be prepared to rebut this bumper-sticker logic.
“job creators”
For America’s wealthy elite, an unearned title if there ever was one.
“job creators” Yeah. If you want to create accounting jobs in the Cayman Islands keep shoving tax money toward Charlie Copeland and Michelle Rollins.
Job creators – yeah in other countries and perhaps Swiss bankers. The so-called job creators had a record year last year. Where are the jobs?
It’s really hard to keep up with the wingnut arcana. It’s so extensive and reading RWNJs blogs make me want to pull out my hair.
To bring jobs to Delaware, fix the public schools.
Jason should move the blank out of Delaware if he hates it so much. What a classic foul-mouthed narcissist.
Btw, New Jersey spends the most on its students (per/pupil) in the entire U.S. Yet they are well in the ‘middle-of-the-pack’ as for test scores and outcomes. Money per/pupil is not a strong indicator of a student’s success.
Finally, Jason’s contemptuous and banal attitude, along with his parochial association fallacies he projects onto Tea Party folk, is ridiculously tired and old.
Where on Earth did that fuck wit get the idea that I hate Delaware? (Can’t follow a fucking parenthetical comment I guess?) Poor chap.
Shorter Jason, Tax and Spend, Spend and Tax.
Even shorter Jason: Tax and invest.
Shorter David: Social Darwinism
The nice thing is that we have empirical evidence and don’t have to honor arguments that amount to having faith in the trickle down unicorn.
UI had a great line earlier which bears repeating, “The so-called job creators had a record year last year. Where are the jobs?”
“The so-called job creators had a record year last year. Where are the jobs?”
I told you it bore repeating.
Personally, I think some of the educational money would be better spent in providing uniforms, discipline, and changing the start time of school later.
There is tons of research out there that says just simple uniforms take pressure off of kids resulting in higher grades. Also, lots of research points to higher scores from schools that start an hour later. (please excuse lack of sources, it’s late but I’ve read articles in the NJ, associated press as well as periodicals).
Another thing that we need to realize is that a lot of children today do not have the strength and stability of families years ago. Two working parents, single mothers or fathers, or just plain negligent parenting can cause displine problems resulting in lower school grades and violence. Now I’m not an expert in child psychology so I can’t put out a step-by-step plan, but I’m sure there are ideas out there.
In my opinion, it’s not so much as an educational problem as much as a cultural one. There are no major celebrity figures, or cultural icons for for this generation to look up to. It has basically come down to bratz dolls or books, and books is far far behind.
“changing the start time of school later” I’m cool with that one.
“There are no major celebrity figures, or cultural icons for this generation to look up to. It has basically come down to bratz dolls.”
Thank you George Bush, you MORON!! It will take generations for the country to recover from the Bratz Dolls presidency.
Shouldn’t Jason actually have a job before he tries to tell anyone how to create a job?
You’re nit being fair to me. You know I only send you the beach replenishment stuff because it gets under your skin. Also, the $300 for every $1 spent on beach replenishment figure came from Carper and Kaufman, not me.
I’ve talked about the need for infrastructure and the infrastructure deficit in Delaware many times before, particularly in terms of water and wastewater projects. Unfortunately, we need major structural reform before we can spend that kind of money. We already spend gobs and gobs of money, but we’re not seeing the infrastructure. We spend more per student on education than most states, and that was before RTTT. Reform DelDOT, reform DOE, get rid of prevailing wage and then I’ll be the first in line to spend money on infrastructure (which is a very legitimate exercise of government).
And, in closing, I created a job in 2010. Now I’m just a small businessman, so it was just one, but I did it anyway, without any money from the state.
That’s the beauty of the state wide entrepreneurship focus. It doesn’t cost money it makes money. Just like beach replen.
“Green economy” or “high tech” entrepreneurs will take our tax breaks, but they will not move here from Madison Wisconsin, Austin Texas, Palo Alto California, Burlington Vermont, Seattle Washington, or Boulder Colorado to take them.
Don’t tell that to Fisker Automotive Jason. They’re making a huge committment to revive auto-manufacturing in Delaware. These will be good paying blue collar jobs that will shore up the local economy too.
Think this just might be a good idea for jobs and green also
http://www.wimp.com/solarhighways/
Is anybody else sick of all the green speak. Your brains are being washed in green. It’s mostly a sham. Just another scheme to keep the consumers buying product. Slap a stupid depiction of a green leaf on any product and the zombies will buy it. Your “green” cars ain’t doing shit for the environment anyways. Talk to me about reducing pollution and I’ll listen. From what I see the people spouting the green speak are the ones I see laying down the biggest “carbon foot print”. Bunch of hypocrites.
The dot com bubble was a sham too, but I bought my house with the proceeds. And in truth it wasn’t really a sham. The dot-com companies built the modern web technology which was then bought up by Fortune 500 companies for pennies on the dollar. Green tech can follow the same path, and the potential payoff is even bigger. Anything new and cool will have some irrational exuberance attached to it, but that is OK, it is human nature.