Gross National Product (GNP) is a count (or perhaps estimate) of the value of all the goods and services produced in one year. At least that's what they called it when I took economics in college. Now that PC has slipped in thru out the land, "national" has become a bad word. So all the PC MSM call it Gross Domestic Product (GDP) now a days.
Ever since WWII the US GNP has increased by about 3% a year. This means that the number of jobs increases at 3% a year, which is enough to offer jobs to each year's crop of high school and college grads, as well as jobs to a lot of immigrants.
But, since Obama took office in 2008, the US economy has only grown at 1% a year. Which is why young people are having a tough time finding jobs, and all that anti immigrant talk. What can we do to get economic growth back on track?
1. Repeal Obamacare. Obamacare lays heavy costs upon business. Businesses larger than 50 employees get hit harder. So a lot of businesses have decided not to grow beyond 50 employees. All businesses get levied for a lot of costs and the levy is on a per employee basis. So businesses have stopped hiring, except when it is absolutely necessary.
2. Reform the income tax. The current tax code is just a vast fabric of loopholes. If you hire clever and expensive tax lawyers, they can find ( or create) loopholes for your company. Loopholes create a lot of pure tax dodge companies, like "hedge funds". Hedge funds enjoy a giant loophole called "carried interest". I'm convinced that many hedge funds are in business solely to take advantage of "carried interest", not because they are serving any real need.
3. Get the cost of health care down. The US pays 19% of GNP for health care. That is twice the amount paid by any other country in the world. And US health, while good, is not the best, there are a dozen countries with better health than the US and they are doing it on half the money. If they can do it, so can we. Right now all US goods cost 19% more than they ought to, just to pay the worker's healthcare.
To do this, we ought to make health insurance good anywhere in the US. Any licensed health insurer ought to be free to offer policies in all 50 states. Right now, an insurer has to be licensed in the state in which it is selling the policies. Needless to say, the necessary licenses require the insurer to do a ton of paperwork and in a lot of cases, they decide it's just too much trouble. Which is why we only have two companies selling health insurance up here. And we ought to allow duty free import of any drugs from any reasonable first world country, places like Canada, England, Germany and others. If the authorities of a reasonable first world country allow the sale of the drug in their country, it is plenty safe enough for Americans.
4. Straighten out the patent office. Right now, if a company introduces a new product, it gets sued by a patent troll. We ought to outlaw patents on "business methods" and software, and common standards like the ASCII code, the QWERTY typewriter layout, TCPIP, and the like.
5. Get Uncle out of the home mortgage business. Close down Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, which triggered off Great Depression 2.0 and then went broke, costing the taxpayers billions. Home mortgages are the safest and most profitable investments out there, and private businesses can raise all the mortgage money needed.
That's enough to get started on.
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