Just looking at the numbers, June seemed like an example of strong economic recovery, with the Dow growing, unemployment shrinking, and more jobs entering the economy. However, writing in The New York Sun economist Lawrence Kudlow found some problems brewing in the seemingly positive June jobs report:
But there were some important glitches in this good-news report. For one, worker wages remained soft, rising only 2% over the past 12 months. Total hours worked are 2.1% ahead of a year ago, suggesting that overall income and nominal GDP are growing at a relatively slow 4% rate.
Meanwhile, the U6 unemployment rate, which includes part-time workers who want better full-time jobs or folks who have given up, dropped only slightly to 12.1%. That’s still a historically high rate. And the labor-force participation rate was unchanged at 62.8%, a 30-year low.
One of the problems Kudlow highlights is that unemployment goes down in two ways—either more people are employed, or more people stop looking for work. He notes that while, “2.15 million people gained employment in June, 2.35 million dropped out of the labor force.” In order for the economy to have true increases in employment, businesses need to be able to freely add more positions to their payrolls. The answer to this problem is simple: stop holding the market back, and lower the corporate tax rate. With the highest effective corporate tax rate in the developed world, the U.S. is making itself into a much less desirable home for the kind of lucrative corporations that provide the economic growth that Americans need.
Kudlow cites a dynamic economic model released by the Tax Foundation that demonstrates the market potential currently being restrained by the 35-40% corporate tax. Cutting the tax to 25% would, “over ten years raise real GDP by more than 2 percent, increase private business-capital investment by more than 6%, boost worker wages by 2%, and increase total federal revenues by nearly 1%.”
In June, The Wall Street Journal published an op-ed regarding the fact that numerous corporations are doing exactly as feared and choosing to leave America in favor of kinder tax rates in places like Ireland, and why shouldn’t they? Medical technology firm Medtronic is planning to shift its principal executive offices to Ireland, which boasts a corporate tax of 12.5%, and according to The Wall Street Journal, corporate friendly countries are numerous.
Ireland isn't the only place with a more competitive tax policy. The near-40% U.S. average rate is almost double the 21% average in the European Union, or the 22% in Asia, according to KPMG. As we noted recently, about the only place outside of captive Marxist countries with a higher corporate tax rate than the U.S. is the United Arab Emirates. But its top rate of 55% is generally applied only to foreign oil companies.
By overtaxing, we are intentionally sending jobs, wealth and innovation away from the United States. The corporations that the current tax-and-spend administration seems so eager to hold back are the very entities that can bring vitality to the struggling American economy. Relieving them of excessively high tax burdens relieves the American people and helps put the economy on the road to recovery. The rest of the world knows this, and it’s high time our government caught up.