 Due to the incompetence of the Marxist-influenced administration in Washington, America’s job creation machine has stalled out. The most recent jobs report is but the icing on the cake. Are Americans even aware of just how bad conditions are in the job market? Last month, the economy managed to generate just 80,000 new jobs on non-farm payrolls. Momentum is consistently being lost with snail-paced growth extending month after tedious month.
How, with such a record, a sitting president can have the gall to suggest to Americans that he should have a second term in office beats me. The same president who has presided over the downgrading of America’s AAA credit rating, spent and borrowed America into a ditch, and perhaps stuck us with the monster that is Obamacare wants another term in office? It’s a bad dream, right? More and more Americans are waking up each day thinking that perhaps they have been drugged and that the Obama nightmare is only a bad dream. Unfortunately, it’s all frighteningly real.
Is there any hope of getting America’s jobs engine rolling again? Sure there is. And what’s required is so clear that all Americans can agree. Simply ask, who in America creates the real jobs? (See: Job growth engine sputters at small businesses) Who creates the productive jobs? The correct answer is America’s small business owners. So how do we help our country’s small business job creators? Get off their backs in the regulatory sense. Slash corporate taxes starting with a complete junking of the special-interest-favoring tax code. Pass a National Right to Work law. Wake up to what Wisconsin and Louisiana have done to get their states moving. Put out the WE ARE OPEN FOR BUSINESS banners, and great things can happen for America fast. The crowd that brought America to the insolvency party cannot be invited back for a second round of damage and destruction. This must be obvious to us all. Related Posts:
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Today we start our two-week countdown of the 10 Best and 10 Worst states for business based on our Open for Busienss Index. Come back each day for the next installment.
Best States for Business: #10
Florida
Open for Business Index Score: 82.5
Florida made high marks with a low tax burden, great infrastructure and low unionization. As a Right to Work state, Florida’s employees are protected from forced unionization. Grades for cost of living, income and health were average, while the state could use improvement in government as a percentage of the state’s GDP, education and tort reform.
Worst States for Business: #10
Minnesota
Open for Business Index Score: 66.35
Minnesota scored well for having a healthy, educated population. The Land of 10,000 Lakes also posted decent scores for infrastructure, and came in about average for tort reform. But that’s where the good news stops for Minnesota. The cost of living is high, government dominates the state’s economy and unions are powerful in this non-Right to Work state. The nail in the coffin is the state’s tax burden, which is one of the worst in the country.
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 What was your favorite summer job as a kid? Mine was working at the local creamery. Oxford Creamery was a staple where I grew up. It was best known for its ice cream, lobster rolls, fried clams, cheeseburgers, French fries, and coffee frappés. On a hot Friday in July, trays of food and gallons of ice cream were served. It would be an understatement to say it was “open for business.”
Serving the hungry public was no easy task. They weren’t there to make your day. But you learned that a smile could disarm them and can get the transaction off on the right track. At the end of the summer, you knew the score by how many repeat customers you served. And we had a lot of them.
Fridays were big. Once four o’clock rolled around, you had better have your game face on. You could get a sense of how busy the night was going to be by that first rush. This was the first wave of the beach crowd. Then there were the families out for dinner, followed later by the baseball teams and the daters out for sundaes. We’d shut the door at 10:30 p.m., turn up the music, grab some food, and begin cleaning up. At the end of the shift, you realized what it was like to be open for business. And because we were busy, the shifts flew by.
I feel bad in a way when I go out for ice cream with my family and the place isn’t hopping. I think it’s important that kids get to feel what it’s like to work through a Friday rush and the satisfaction of riding your bike home at 11:00 p.m., tired but awake. When I leave a tip now, I know the kids who are really busy appreciate it the most because at the end of a summer, nickels, dimes, quarters, and dollars are best when they’re compounding.
It’s hard to explain what it feels like to work for a successful business if you haven’t. You get funny looks when you tell someone that working with the line out the door is fun when you’re making minimum wage. But it’s a stepping stone. It’s an experience. And you can use that forever.
Chances are if you’re reading this you’ve been successful in your life. You probably know exactly what I’m talking about. You know how frustrating it can be to read about business today. You know, as I do, that it doesn’t have to be this way. We’re in this together. Thank you for fighting the good fight.
It’s time to bring the fight to the enemy. So we’ve compiled for you an index of states based on their business friendliness. We call it the “Open for Business Index.” Use it as a tool to see how your state compares on a number of fronts. Is your state one that we have deemed to be business friendly?
The free ride for states is over. The stock market returns of 25% per year are not going to walk through your front door and save your portfolio. Interest rates are not going lower, so forget about bonds coming to your rescue. The long-term secular decline in rates is gone. Do you remember when an 8% rate on a 30-year mortgage was considered good? The landscape you’re dealing with today is a mirage. So do your homework, like reading Richardcyoung.com, and help your friends get their heads out of the sand.
Can a state be open for business while promising 8% guaranteed rates of return to public pensions? Is your state’s government-spending-to-state-GDP ratio on the rise? If it is, it’s not acceptable. How about this? More than half the states in this great country are forced-union states. Union membership should be a choice. States continue to charge you high tax rates, for what? Funding pensions, building convention centers, and doing nothing about your children’s or grandchildren’s educations? Give me a break. Taking a look at some state balance sheets today gives you the idea that you’re looking at a pension fund that happens to run a state, not the other way around.
Use our index to fire up your friends. Get them involved. This election in November is too important not to. Now you have tools that you can point out to your elected officials so you can say with confidence, “Hey, elected official who I employ, why aren’t you doing this, or this, or that? Let’s go—we need to be open for business.” And you know what? If they don’t get what you’re saying, then they’ll never get what it feels like to be open for business.
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There is one senate candidate that Tea Partiers and constitutionalists everywhere must prevent from joining the Senate in January. That candidate is Elizabeth Warren. Forget for a moment about her dubious claims of Native American heritage and that Sen. Scott Brown is not a perfect conservative. None of that matters.
What matters is Warren’s wish to raise taxes and create new regulations. She has even staked a claim to the intellectual foundation of the socialist Occupy Wall Street movement. “I created much of the intellectual foundation for what they do. I support what they do.”
Warren doesn’t believe that America’s small business owners earned their success. A theme that has been picked up by President Obama in his campaign.
As Congressman Ron Paul points out in the video below, Elizabeth Warren is wrong for America.
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Best States for Business: #9
Kansas
Open for Business Index Score: 82.85
Kansas scored well for being a Right to Work state, having a low cost of living, a well educated population and ranked well in tort law reform. State government doesn’t play a disproportionate role in Kansas. The state scored near the averages for tax burden, unions as a percent of the population, incomes, and health. Overall Kansas is friendly to new business.
Worst States for Business: #9
Maine
Open for Business Index Score: 65.45
Maine excelled in education and health, followed by average scores in infrastructure and tort law. But after that things get ugly. Maine had terrible scores for the size of government compared to its economy, cost of employees, cost of living, taxes, percentage of the workforce represented by unions and for a failure to protect employees with a Right to Work law.
See #10 in each category by clicking here.
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Best States for Business: #8
Mississippi
Open for Business Index Score: 82.95
Mississippi excelled in costs for employing workers, having a small government footprint, low percentage of the workforce represented by unions, protecting employees with a Right to Work law. Average scores were recorded for Mississippi in tax burden, cost of living, education and tort law. Infrastructure in Mississippi could use some improvement, and the state’s worst category is health, where it scored dead last.
Worst States for Business: #8
Hawaii
Open for Business Index Score: 64.9
Hawaii shined in three categories of our index, including government footprint as a percent of state GDP, the effects of tort law, and health of its citizens. For reasons that are not entirely comparable, Hawaii scored worst of all in costs of living. But it also scored poorly in education, infrastructure, union representation, and cost of employees—problems its government can work on. Worst of all, Hawaii does not afford its citizens the protection of a Right to Work law.
See #9 in each category by clicking here.
See #10 in each category by clicking here.
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Dick, what a shame. Here we are in the land of Thomas Jefferson and this guy can get the slack-jawed fools to cheer at his every word. It’s good to know that the government was there to help me when we were starting the company. I left Connecticut in no small part because of the barriers they set up in the form of high taxes and pro-union politics. If this guy gets back in office, we are (%^$&$#).
Oh well, off to Montana….
Dave
Related: National Federation of Independent Business CEO Dan Danner responds to President Obama in defense of America’s small business owners and entrepreneurs.
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Best States for Business: #7
Idaho
Open for Business Index Score: 84.05
Idaho scored near the top for cost of hiring employees, and put up excellent scores in tort law, cost of living, and percentage of the workplace represented by unions. Idaho also protects employees from forced unionization with a Right to Work law. The state turned in average scores for health, education, government footprint, and tax burden. One area ripe for improvement in Idaho is infrastructure, where the state scored low.
Worst States for Business: #7
Maryland
Open for Business Index Score: 62.8
What really tore down Maryland’s score was the cost of employing labor. Combined with high taxes, high cost of living, poor infrastructure, and education, Maryland’s business climate leaves something to be desired. The state scored near average in our categories for citizen health, and tort law. One bright spot for the state was government as a portion of the state’s economy. Maryland does not protect employees from forced unionization.
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