This bill (H.R. 1) will also enhance our economic engine. For decades, we’ve prevented our businesses from being able to grow and compete. Tax reform will help jumpstart job creation… — Rep. Tom Reed
The Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (H.R. 1) overhauls America’s tax code to deliver historic tax relief for workers, families and job creators, and revitalize our nation’s economy. By lowering taxes across the board, eliminating costly special-interest tax breaks, and modernizing our international tax system, the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act will help create more jobs, increase paychecks, and make the tax code simpler and fairer for Americans of all walks of life.–House and Senate Conference Committee
Who or what are job creators?
Some comments on Tom Reed’s facebook page suggest that wealthy individuals create jobs. Interestingly, Mitt Romney made himself rich not by creating jobs here, but by sending domestic automobile jobs overseas. Tom Reed has consistently suggested that small businesses create jobs. Tom and his fellow Republicans believe that business taxes inhibit job creation.
I found an argument much like this on Tom’s facebook page:
Corporations have left and are leaving New York due to favorable tax policies in other countries. Lowering corporate tax rates removes the tax incentive to relocate, and encourages new businesses to locate here. More businesses means more jobs and more tax revenue from individuals. So we should lower corporate taxes to create a more competitive environment for business development.
This argument is false–it begs the question by assuming that taxes dominate business decisions. If this were policy, it would create a “race to the bottom,” as every jurisdiction competed to lure business with low taxes and tax abatements.
Jeff Platsky, in a front page article in the Elmira Star-Gazette today, suggests that higher education creates jobs. He writes:
Ithaca’s job growth since the end of the Great Recession in 2008 has largely been fueled by growth in education and health-related jobs.
Platsky contrasts prosperity in Ithaca with the relative lack of it in Binghamton and Elmira. Surely the presence of a major research university in Ithaca is an important factor. It is easy to think of other examples:
- Electronic corridor around Boston
- Research Triangle
- Silicon Valley
- Ann Arbor
- Boulder
- Champaign Urbana
- Madison
- State College
While the presence of a first-rate educational institution isn’t the only factor in prosperity, it is likely more significant than low taxes or largess for the wealthy. Paradoxically, Tom Reed campaigns against Cornell and higher education, opposes universal health care, and evidently favors tax cuts for wealthy individuals and profitable corporations.
Reed’s press release has a link to the House and Senate Conference Committee summary quoted above. A link to Jeff Platsky’s article is currently unavailable.
https://reed.house.gov/news/documentsingle.aspx?DocumentID=1354
New NY 23rd 
The other employment growth sector mentioned in the article was healthcare. I suspect that when large numbers of people drop their ACA insurance as allowed under the GOP tax bill, healthcare providers, particularly hospitals in Reed’s district, will be significantly impacted by an increase in bad debt and charity care. This will in turn lead to a decrease in healthcare employment. But the Reed family will be smiling all the way to the bank.
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Carol, A large decline in required healthcare services occurred when the natural gas development slowed to a crawl a year or two ago. If manufacturing and general employment were to improve in the area there would be an increase in healthcare services. Occupational Med, Drug Testing, physicals and an increase in workplace injuries etc.
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Who or What Are Jon Creators?!?!? You are serious aren’t you?!?!
The obvious job creators are the consumers. Without consumers we would have no need for products and services. Consumers drive the need and demand for entrepreneurs and then private companies, public companies and private and public corporations.
Government does not create jobs. Sure, there are government jobs (actually at the NY State and the Federal level there are too many government jobs) but they are drain on the private sector.
I also know the government has become too big of a consumer. This is evident by the large number of employees needing office spaces, office equipment and office supplies. It is also evident by the government’s need to command the military to keep blowing thing up and shooting things all around the world.
Real job growth is created by an economic environment that fosters low taxes and regulations that do not impede on a company’s efforts to compete in a global market. This brings about jobs and wealth for consumers to have purchasing power. The Consumer/Industry/Economic cycle works on the law of supply and demand. What inevitable mucks it up is government intervention.
Build a better widget and if someone needs it they will buy it.
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Rynstone, do you agree with Jeff Platsky that Tompkins County is the economic powerhouse of NY-23? If you do, how would you explain this? Could it be that Tompkins County liberals are especially energetic and creative?
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The fact that there are at least three universities in Tompkins County certainly drives and helps this especially when one of them is a private and Ivy league university and one (Tompkins/Cortland Community School) is a SUNY school certainly helps.
It is alse important to note that the amount of state spending on colleges has been very substantial these last 10 years or so.
This has some inherent problems; record amount of student debt, record amount of student loan defaults to name few.
Another thing that confuses me is that Cornell University with an endowment fund of over 3 billion dollars took 1 billion dollars in federal and state grants (that do not get paid back) in the year 2016.
The only reason this is working in Tompkins county is there is enough demand for these services. If that changes (and stats tell us that collage enrollment is declining) then they will have a different picture to present.
I am concerned that we are building too much capacity for the upcoming demand in a college education in our higher education system. Similar to what the automotive industry has done several times in the past 40 years.
Manufacturing hubs like Buffalo, Elmira/Corning, Bath, Hornell, Binghamton, Rochester etc. (and the little towns in between) have a declining jobs prospect and upstate NY State continues to bleed manufacturing jobs, working class families and population in general.
You want to make all of NY State bloom? Eliminate the NY State Income tax. Do not increase any other taxes. Reduce some of the burdensome and cumbersome bureaucratic regulations that do little to nothing to reduce emissions.
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States with no income tax:
Alaska.
Florida.
Nevada.
South Dakota.
Texas.
Washington.
Wyoming.
Many of these are largely rural; few if any are especially prosperous.
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Lets ignore Alaska, South Dakota and Wyoming for obvious reasons.
I have recently been to Tennessee (no state income tax), Florida and Texas. They are so much more prosperous than NY State it is comical. As I am sure Washington State is due to tech companies. Even SC, NC, GA, DE, MA and VA make NY State look like it is dying on the vine.
If you don’t count NYC and LI, NY State is as rural as TN, TX, and a lot less rural than FL.
Look at this to get an idea of populations vs state population.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._state_budgets
NY State Government simply costs too much and spends too much. Period…….
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Ranked by median household income, Maryland is first. Of the states with no income tax, excluding Alaska, Washington is 10, Texas is 22, Florida is 38. Tennessee, which has a capital gains tax, is 42.
New York is 15. The notion that low taxes lead to prosperity is contrary to fact.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_U.S._states_by_income
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Another needless regulation by the Cuomo administration…
Farmers face a tire regulation
Bob Confer Commentary
Dec 25, 2017
We keep hearing from the Governor’s office that New York state is open for business. While that might be true for large corporations for which the state sees fit to give millions of our dollars for them to come here, that misleading marketing campaign glosses over the fact that the Cuomo Administration and legislature have continued to make the Empire State one of the least attractive places in which to start a small business or grow an existing one due to costs and regulations.
Just look at what has been introduced to the New York economy over the past two years: a quantum leap in minimum wage rates was passed; an expansive paid family leave program was introduced, and some onerous employee scheduling standards have been proposed.
Those are just a few of the big items.
And then there are the small things, too.
When the government gets its hands in the minutiae of running a business, you can’t help but laugh at the zealousness of their over-involvement — but it quickly turns out to be not-so-funny when you consider the ramifications of that overregulation.
A perfect example is the latest set of rules put upon farmers.
Take a drive across rural Niagara County and you will see countless old tractor and truck tires in use at farms holding down covers and tarpaulins that are protecting hay, straw, salt, and other feeds from the elements. If it weren’t for those tires, the tarps would blow over or away and the feedstock would be soaked by rain or snow.
Those tires are harmless enough, right?
Not so to the Department of Environmental Conservation. To their policymakers, those tires are evil.
The DEC believes that such tires are breeding grounds for mosquitos and, in turn, viruses like West Nile. So, in their eyes, the tires’ use needs to be regulated. This fall, the agency introduced almost unbelievable standards to do just that.
The new rules mandate that only 0.25 passenger tire equivalents be used per square foot of coverage area. But, farmers aren’t in most cases using tires from passenger cars to keep their tarps down. They are using much larger tires that expired through use on the farm. So, they have to crunch numbers and convert, mathematically, their truck and tractor tires into passenger tires. Under the DEC standards, a passenger tire equivalent is a tire with a rim of 17 inches or less.
As if trying to be a calculus major to manage your feedlot isn’t bad enough, none of those tires are allowed to be whole. In all cases, the DEC says they have to be either cut in half or have holes drilled through them.
That’s not an easy — or safe — undertaking.
Most tires in use as tarp weights are radial-ply, meaning there are wires in both the tread and side walls. It’s a very difficult task for farm laborers to have to mangle such tires and once they do, it puts the cattle — the feed of which they are trying to protect — at serious risk. If metal breaks free from the tires, which is likely, it could get into the fodder underneath the cover. If a dairy cow consumes that metal in even the smallest amounts, it will create life-threatening consequences from torn innards to choking to infection. Many cows will die because of these new rules now that the metals inside the tires are becoming what is a mandated exposure.
The new standards go into effect May 2, 2018. Farms have less than a half-year to be ready for DEC inspections and fines if they don’t comply. But compliance isn’t easy. Do they find alternative methods? If so, what and then what becomes of the old tires they accumulate? Or, do they cut and drill tires hoping a worker isn’t hurt in the process, or that a cow isn’t killed by accidentally ingesting metal afterward?
Never mind that the Empire State has 2.4 million acres of wetlands in which the mosquitoes behind these rules are born; it’s those silly old tires that are the threat to public safety in the eyes of the Cuomo Administration.
Regulations like this show that New York State isn’t open for business, it’s closed.
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The results of the recent tax cut does appear to be having some positive results in share holder earnings, employees earnings and job creation.
That does beg the question…..who or what are the job creators? Lower taxes and less government interference do seem to be the culprit for growing jobs.
Very positive news stories on every news show and many news publications and online news publications.
https://www.npr.org/2018/01/18/578800236/apple-says-it-will-create-20-000-jobs-in-the-u-s
http://money.cnn.com/2018/01/11/news/economy/tax-law-raises-bonuses/index.html
https://www.cnbc.com/2017/12/20/tax-reform-reaction-att-is-giving-bonuses-to-200000-employees.html
https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-raises-wages-bonuses-after-gop-tax-cut/
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