How can we lower the cost of living to help allow us all to regain personal capitol, a in-depth look at all the fees, taxes regulatory oversight and looking at the benefit, versus the social economic cost?

All we have to do is look at our monthly phone bill, or power bill. Look at all of the add-on cost that we have had to deal with, which have been put into place over that last decade or so. How about local small business, how many new permits, fees regulatory changes that have added cost to the operation. How about public works projects that close down streets in front of many small businesses, how many have closed down due to the interruption of business and the inability to downsize for 4 to 6 months. We have to ask where our priorities are, the Left will make the argument that these fees are needed to make us safer, or to provide a needed service. I would have to say that I feel that we have overreached. For the dollar for dollar benefit of a dollar in taxes does not bring in a dollar worth of benefit. Think about it, you cannot just build a program and not have cost associated with it. You have employees, they have cost associated with it, payroll, health, sick leave, retirement and so on. That takes some of this tax revenue away from the end benefit. Them where are these people working, they have buildings, which have power bills, upkeep cost repairs and maintenance, and well insurance cost and so on. The employee costs have vehicles, which have cost in fuels and maintenance. Plus we have waist whenever we have a system that can never attempts to save revenue that is a private sector trait. The end result is that the general population is lucky to achieve 10 cents on the dollar benefit from a dollar in tax paid.

 A government program needs to grow, for the net worth of a program is determined by the size of their budget. We have many examples of city, county and state departments that do not combine efforts and in the end work against each other over a battle for budgets. An example here is a parks department and a maintenance department that have different values in terms of their budgets. A city pool needs a pool cover for the winter months, the cost let’s say is around $10,000.00, each department does not want that to come out of their budget, yet the cost is still there. Instead of buying a cover for $10,000.00 that has a life span of 8 years, we have a maintenance department that spends $10,000.00 each year to clean and repair the pool. The losers are our city pools, and you the taxpayer. The fact that these departments work against each other just reaffirms the waist in our present tax and government service system.

The great disconnect is the battle of words coming from our elected officials. They say they want jobs but they are destroying careers. These cost that have been imposed on all of us need to come into question. Many on the left and a few on the right have pet projects and will fight this movement. Yet we are not trying to destroy services, we just want a better outcome, and realize the path we are on is leading us over a cliff. If you want social programs we need to focus on private sector careers, for people that have careers have a long term relationship with their communities. They are vested in a beneficial outcome of the society in general. They also hire individuals and have a shared goal to build and growth local economies. This is the growth that will reduce the need for social programs. This is the effort that we should be focused on, yet it is the discussion that is not being heard.

How do we create jobs, with the lack of capitol, is the answer big business or small business or some combination?

Job Creation, what is the answer? If you listen to the left they would say that we need more spending, more services to soften the effects of this recession. The problem goes back to the lack of capitol, not only for the government but for the everyday citizen. We have to start to look at not only the taxes that we pay but we have to look at the policies and regulations that these taxes and fees pay for. The main question to regain a healthy economy is to allow individuals, whether rich and poor to hold on to more of their money. This is the big capitol question, how do we balance service with a level of commerce that gives most of us the ability to not need the services. The most stable our nation is depends on more of us having the ability to take care of ourselves. This makes the human condition more comfortable and thus creates human activity. This activity creates commerce and creates capitol growth and personal wealth.

It would seem that every time we have a social agenda coming from the Federal government we have an uptick in the unemployed especially in the minority community. an example is during the George bush administration we had a black unemployment rate of 10% during the Carter and the Obama administrations we have a black unemployment rate of 14%-16%.Why then are the policies coming from the folks preaching the most about the poorest of us, deliver the least for us. Simply it is their policies. We have to ask ourselves does a federal policy of increasing taxes in an economic down turn increase human activity. I would say a very load No, it will continue to suppress activity. By having a public policy that says the rich need to pay more it negates that fact that we all hope one day to grow our own wealth and become rich ourselves. What we want is a system that allows us to grow, and far too often we now have a system that protects the rich and inhibits competition especially from the small start ups.

Many of you may not understand but if we need to have job growth and if that needs to come from small business then we need to live in the world of small capitol operations, where time is money. Our present system of governing puts a big priority on building a system that slows down the ability to build and create. We have a system of procedure, and regulation. Far too many times a small operation cannot wait, or will have difficulty passing these costs along. If you cannot start up a new operation in a couple of months, we have overreached and we need to rethink, how we govern at the lower end of this economy. If small business is the answer, we need to realize that there are limitations, and adjust our policies to help create job growth. Big businesses have purchasing power and other factors that mitigate some of these worries, but small operations need to be nurtured, and not penalized. Unfortunately when we have a system that is operated by individuals that do not take into consideration the abilities of an operation and its place in the economy we tend to have a system that rewards the big box stores at the cost of the small operation. In my humble opinion that is the main illness that has taken root in our system of government.

What are the strengths Nevada has in the market place and what are the weaknesses?

The first question answered, Cut the red tape, cut the cost of fees, taxes, regulatory compliance, and speed up our ability to start a business along an economic scale, to allow small business to grow and give larger concerns more accountability. But what does Nevada have going for us and what are our detractions. Being a small business person for all these years I fully realize that there are two sides of the coin in everything. Our housing market is in terrible shape, yet that means we have a large inventory of homes that will be dropping in value. Inexpensive housing cost will give us a selling point in the region. Can we bring manufacturing into the area, Nevada has ore, Nevada has minerals, and we have the vacant land to build a manufacturing operation, we also have federal regulations stopping much of this asset from being used. We have the rail, and road system to deliver product to the coast, we have a large vacancy rate in our warehousing district, giving us a potential sales point to bring in business, but the vacancy rate does not give the area a vibrant appearance. The negatives are that we are losing population, thus we are losing local sales potential. So we have to lower cost to sweeten the pot to have someone take a gamble on this area. Yes this goes back to my first question. Our schools have been a large contention issue, for some stating that we do not have the educated workforce to bring in business. Our rankings and the quality and all are not large issues to me. For much of these arguments I find it is a justification to maintain or increase their budgets. The cost per student is only relative to the cost of living and the potential salaries that an area can expect. Our past dependence on Gaming has put a downward pressure on salaries and helped many college grads leave the area to find other work. The negative is also a positive. Gaming is greatly diminished, for many reasons we have to look outward to diversify and grow our economy in new and different ways. This should have a positive outcome on salaries and keeping more of our educated college students here in the area. Is our education expense too high, I say yes, we have given our universities a rate of growth that has greatly outpaced inflation? Hey I understand self preservation, I get it. But we need to lower rates to increase our volume of business activity; this will not only bring in the needed revenue but give the state a more stable economy that has fewer types of ebb and flows. Regionally we are lower than California, but I believe that we could lower our rates and bring

The argument from the left is that we are taking away needed revenue, I would argue that by building our economic engine and diversifying it we would achieve a more stable and long term revenue stream that would help us provide all these needed services. The problem is that we are out of balance. We have a big need for services yet we have burdened our economic jobs engine so that those of us that are working cannot provide the needed revenue that we need to generate. We need to reduce the need for these services, by reducing the cost of living by lower rates we achieve small business to feel confident enough to grow and expand, this will equate to new jobs, and this will reduce the need for services. It is all interrelated. I know that this means Government job loss, yet if the Goal is to reduce cost and shorten the time it takes to start up a business; this job loss would be minimized by new job growth.