For anyone who has followed the budget debate in Sacramento, one thing is certain. After all the agony and drama of cutting programs and raising revenues, the most reliable and least painful way to pay for schools, parks, public safety and other services taxpayers value and want from state and local government is to create jobs.
At nearly 12 percent unemployment, it's clear we would have a lot more money to spend on popular government programs if more people were paying taxes to support them.
Recently, the Public Policy Institute of California, a non-partisan think-tank devoted to the study of California, came out with an interesting report called "Business Climate Rankings and the California Economy."
Their study essentially asked, "If California is such a lousy place to do business, why does overall economic growth in California still keep pace with the rest of the country?"
Their conclusion was fascinating. It said our natural advantages of mild weather and geography help make up for the fact that, yes, California really does have a bad business climate and our state would be growing more jobs if leaders did something about it.
A polite way to restate what's obvious to anyone trying to bring jobs and investment here -- California's taxes and regulations are stifling growth and innovation.
Case in point -- California's tech sector.
California leads the world in Internet commerce; this sector employs more than 100,000 people, generates billions of dollars in revenue and is one of the fastest growing sources of jobs in the state. Companies no one heard of five years ago -- Facebook, LinkedIn, Zynga, Twitter -- employ tens of thousands of Californians, while companies that are slightly older, like Google and Yahoo!, have created brands that are household names around the world.
So what California companies will we be talking about in five years? Probably the ones that started here but felt overtaxed, overregulated and unappreciated, and took their act on the road, to Austin or to Raleigh-Durham or a host of other regions that can't rely on weather or geography to make up for a poor business climate.
But instead of coming up with ways to bring more jobs and investment to California, we come up with bills like SB 242 by San Leandro Senator Ellen Corbett, which would direct the state to regulate the websites of Google, Facebook, Groupon and others and threaten them with massive fines for failure to comply. Just California's way to unfriend cutting-edge businesses.
How would SB 242 stifle innovation and chase jobs?
First, it would undermine company relationships with consumers by setting bureaucratic state standards for the "look and feel" of online sites and making it harder for consumers to manage online preferences on their own. This wouldn't "empower" consumers -- it would infuriate them.
Second, the bill creates an impossible standard requiring Internet firms to remove certain material that any other registered user deems objectionable within just a few days of her request or face fines of up to $10,000 per occurrence, potentially creating millions of dollars in liability -- a legal swamp where trial lawyers and shake-down artists thrive.
Third, the damage would not be limited to a few well-known social networking sites. SB 242 may also affect California-based application developers that depend on social networking platforms for their revenue and growth. The definition of "social networking sites" is so broad that the measure would likely capture the web presence and business operations of a wide swath of Internet companies, ranging from membership-based non-profits to online dating and travel sites.
Protecting an individual's privacy on the internet is a shared duty of the website companies, individual users and government. This legislation adds little to those responsibilities except more unnecessary and unproductive burdens that could chase jobs and innovation offshore.
For California to resume its place as an international leader in innovation and employment, we need to let people know we're open for business. Bills like SB 242 don't do that. Instead, they slam the door shut.
Again cluleless legislatures trying to make rules for the worldwide internet------haven't they learned IT DOESN'T WORK!!!!!!
Boy, I guess Facebook joined the chamber of commerce!!
lol
In 1993 Los Angeles wrote its Telecommuting Study which showed that if Los Angeles instituted Telecommuting for government and private sector, traffic would decrease and the need for high rises would also decrease 30%. That information was a shock. It doomed California's favor means to give millions of tax dollars to the mega wealth, their Community Redevelopment Agencies. When demand for high rises went down 30%, no one would be foolish enough to build more high rises on Bunker Hill. With traffic down 30%, that means the need for new freeways ended. The less people drove, the longer they could keep their car and the less gas they bought each year.
In order to protect the old technologies of freeways, increasing urbanization, and subways, the new major 86'ed the 1993 Study.
If we invested on 21st technology and looked towards the 22nd Century rather than invest all our money in 19th and 20th century technology of trains and high rises, California's tech industry would have a huge boom. We need to increase our Internet capacity to handle Virtual Presence -- that is the essence of Telecommuting. So very many of things which we travel in cars, buses, and subways to perform each day can be done from home.
On the distribution of wealth…
What improves the circumstances of the greater part can never be regarded as an inconveniency to the whole. No society can surely be flourishing and happy, of which the far greater part of the members are poor and miserable.
The Wealth Of Nations, Book I Chapter VIII, p.96, para. 36.
Greed breeds ignorance and they will never agree to Adam Smith. "Power corrupts and absolute power tends to corrupt absolutely." Lord Acton. As long as government can regulate business to stop predatory (anti-free trade) practices, government is too large for them.
The free enterprise system works only when we can make certain that businesses do not cheat. What happens when consumer protection statutes are repealed? in 1999 Congress repealed Glass-Steagall and a few years later California decimate B/P Code 17200, its consumer protection statute. With these 2 statutes gone, the mortgage industry turned into a huge world wide Ponzi-type scam, crashing the housing industry and we are still suffering from the effects today.
When business's motto is "Cheating is better than Competing," we do not have a free market system
"A small body of determined spirits, fired by an unquenchable faith in their mission, can alter the course of history." ~ Mahatma Gandhi
Sorry, just because you pay a lot of taxes doesn't mean you get to roam free and do whatever you want with people's personal information.
A major reason jobs are laving the USA is that other countries are educating and training their people and the USA is sinking lower and lower in educational achievement.
Where would be locate your business? In a country with educated motivated workers or in a country that is 23rd in science and 34th in reading and the workers are lazy? We have known for decades, that certain types of jobs always shift towards the emerging nations, the the country from whence the jobs came must invent new jobs requiring more brain power than muscle power. At the most crucial time in history, the USA has adopted a KnowNothing philosophy which devalues knowledge and promotes ignorant emotionalism, e.g. Sara Plain (Paul Revere rang bells?)