Larry Kudlow and Stephen Moore write, “Study after study shows that corporate tax reform is a middle-class tax cut, not a tax cut for the rich. You see, corporations don’t really pay taxes.
They simply collect them and pass the cost along in the form of lower wages and benefits, higher consumer prices, and reduced shareholder value.
“The overarching theme of this election is an angry revolt by the middle class over the fact that jobs and wages have barely increased in the past decade. They blame Washington, China, immigration, power elites, and almost everything else.
"So be it. There is a lot of work to be done on all these fronts. But without radical tax, regulatory, and currency reform, business investment will never fully recover. And neither will the economy.”
Actually, we need a lot more than corporate tax cuts. We have to do everything possible to separate economics and state. When government interferes with the activities of business, it prevents customers and owners from communicating effectively with one another.
Government steps in and says, “We know better. Do it this way. Spend it this way.”
While it’s true that taxes are way too high, it’s even more true that government hurts business every day through regulation, subsidies, bailouts, welfare/entitlement programs, and just about everything government does aside from keeping us physically safe.
When government hurts business in the name of helping “the average guy,” government actually hurts the little guy. Why? Because any increase in American prosperity will take place in the realm of business, not government.
And when government makes it more expensive to do business, the average middle or working class person pays, either in higher costs for products, fewer jobs, or lower wages.
What’s interesting and upsetting about this election is how most Americans will not blame themselves for these problems.
They blame China, for example. But China is a fascist, government-controlled economy; in principle a lot like the one we’re becoming. If China outsmarts us, it’s because their government officials are better at playing the government-interference-in-private- business game than we are.
The solution is to correct our own mistakes, and move closer to an unhampered, laissez-faire free-market economy. We’d leave China in the dust.
People also blame the power brokers in Washington D.C. But there would be no power to broker if economics and state were separated. Some corruption would always exist, but not at the expense of the economy, because government would not be involved in choosing economic winners and losers.
Kudlow and Moore also report that the GDP for the first quarter of 2016 came in at a paltry one-half of one percent.
That sorry showing follows growth of 1.4 percent and 2 percent in the previous two quarters. “The already anemic economy is actually getting worse,” they write. “But even worse than that, the latest GDP numbers reveal a collapse in business investment, the real driver of the economy.”
This anemic growth is not because of China. It’s because of the American government.
In the last two presidential elections, a majority of Americans have elected the most anti-capitalism, anti-business administration in history since Franklin D. Roosevelt.
We can’t go on like this.
People like to blame China because China makes us look bad. But we really should be blaming ourselves. A majority of us have permitted our elected officials in both parties to run the debt up to a mind-blowing $20 trillion (and counting) – all the while keeping the freebies, entitlements and favors flowing.
We also like to blame politicians. In a way, we’re right. Politicians will not tell us the truth. They will not tell us, for example, that Social Security and Medicare cost way more than people contribute to them in payroll taxes. If they did tell us, most of us would probably fire them.
The people voted them in; the people are ultimately the problem.
Everyone’s a victim of someone else. Nobody’s blaming themselves for the mess in America. But until or unless more Americans start facing the truth about government spending and regulation, we will be facing a fate much worse than a stagnant economy.
Michael J. Hurd, Ph.D., LCSW is a psychotherapist and author with a private practice in coastal Delaware. He is the author of “Bad Therapy, Good Therapy (and How to Tell the Difference).” For more of his reports, Go Here Now.
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.