Jobs for NY

As I have stated before New York was once the crown jewel of America. It was one of the main centers for jobs in the United States of America. Unfortunately, over the last 50 years NY has lost its way. It has been more concerned with making it difficult for anyone to maintain their business and almost impossible to start one which will employ a decent amount of people. Unions which started with the public and employee's best interests, have destroyed our manufacturing base by demanding ever higher "living wages" that no corporation can live with and have forced them not just out of our state, but out of our country. The unions should be ashamed of themselves. The only welfare of the people they care about is that the people go on welfare or work for one of their government mandated jobs.

Let us look at one of NY's poorest Counties: Bronx. There have been 2 very publicized incidents in which there has been negative or zero job growth due to well meaning activists. First is the case of the Stella D'Oro Cookie factory. The employees were unionized and made demands that management could not cover 2 years ago. As we all know the economy had begun to descend into a recession. The employees, I have to give it to them, held out for a year on strike. Finally, the courts ruled that employer was not acting in good faith, which is probably true and forced the employer to pay out 2 months salaries and bring them back at a higher salary and better benefits package. However, the company decided to pack up and leave for another state. Why? It simply could not compete in NY State and it was not going to have the courts looking over their shoulders. Now they talked about suing or forcing their hands but this is private enterprise and now all those people are unemployed and will become wards of the state since many had little or no marketable skills. .

The goal of the unions has been to create more and more government jobs which if you do the math can not be sustained by an ever decreasing revenue stream caused by many businesses closing up their doors. A recursive tax revenue in which Tax revenue is only generated by those working in government funded jobs is doomed to fail. We are seeing it already in NY State. The nation is on the brink of a destructive borrowing binge that if not abated will surely mean the end of the Republic when those holding the IOUs show up to demand payment. No, they do not want to hear you need the money for other more important things like MEDICARE.

The plan is to create People's Empowerment Zones in counties whose unemployment reaches the point where it matches or exceeds the national average. In those areas they would be exempt from certain state and federal regulations that strangle innovation and the ability to start up a new business and industry. Businesses in these areas would be exempt from paying federal taxes for 2 years, so would their employees. There would be funding in the form of loans, grants and matching dollars. Local and state governments would have limited oversight on these businesses so that they can thrive and grow. Unions would be banned from recruiting these employees for 7 years. The idea is to maximize the amount of people working and taking some of those pressures off the employers so that they can concentrate on the business growing. We would also look for ways to minimize legal liabilities for 5 years. All employees would be covered under Medicaid for 2 years, then the employer would have to provide healthcare.

In the example, I gave above in the Stella d'Oro factory, with PEZ we could have gone in there and really worked out a deal that would have worked to both sides advantage and diffused the situation for at least 2 years until the economy improved.

Here is another example, there is a great Armory in the Bronx which the government wants to hand over to a company to create a mall in the North Central area of the Bronx. They are ready to inject $300 million into the project. So what is holding it up? Self styled community activist and NYC's beauracracy which is holding it up requesting so called "Living wages" and unionization. This is a disgrace. Again, with PEZ we would quickly move in and get NYC out of the picture and get this project up and get people back to work. Considering that the armory is a piece of federal property I am not sure why NYC needs to get their nose into it.

The People's Empowerment Zone is a simple, but powerful plan which would work very well in tems of creating jobs. After 2 years, half of the taxes paid by the emplyers and employees would go towards funding new empowerment zones for the next 12 years so that it begins to fund itself. In the end this is a win-win for the state of NY and the nation,

Of course there are many details that have to be worked out, but once it were to work in NY, it would be a model for the rest of the nation.