MINNESOTA EDITORIAL FORUM
By Beverly Caruso
There’s heated debate over whether to extend the Bush-era tax cuts for families with incomes over $250,000.We’re hearing the argument that letting the high-end tax cuts expire will hurt business. Yet I’ve seen first-hand how well-designed tax policy is critical for spurring innovation and business development. It plays a very different role than the anti-tax crowd leads us to believe.
CyberOptics, a leading high-tech company in the area of electronic inspection, was founded by my husband, Steve Case, in 1984, and now employs 180 people in Minnesota and around the globe. How this business came about tells a very different story about the role of our tax dollars – and the public investments they support - in job creation. This is an important story to tell if we want to recreate the fertile ground that allows new companies to start up and become successful, sustainable job creators.
Steve was a physicist and entrepreneur, whose education was financed totally by National Science Foundation grants and scholarships. Later, as a young professor he would again gain our government’s support through a Fulbright Scholarship. The scholarship led us to Germany where Steve deepened his scientific knowledge and met executives in Europe who would become major clients of his new business. Steve always said that fellowship year had a profound impact on his creativity, confidence, and skills. As a professor at the University of Minnesota, his partnership with a government contractor made it possible to conceive of and establish CyberOptics.
Every step of the way, programs funded by our tax dollars paved the way for Steve and CyberOptics’ success. The return on our tax dollars through these investments has been high.
While it’s easy to think that companies like Google and Sun Microsystems are the result of one or two people with the intelligence, creativity, and entrepreneurial spirit to take a risk and win big, the truth is more complex.
Like CyberOptics, these businesses rely on the court systems that enforce patent and copyright laws, roads, railroads and bridges that bring raw materials and deliver finished product, as well as the research and development grants to institutions of higher education, the high-quality primary and secondary public schools that educated generations of American students, and the grants and scholarships to those students during college and graduate school.
I would argue that the reason the United States has been so economically successful since the 1940s, is the combination of regulated capital markets and thoughtful, well-funded public institutions and structures. Steve’s story, like the story of so many American entrepreneurs, illuminates the role that public investment and public institutions play in creating the small companies that are the job engines we so desperately need.
Our country’s problems are large and complex, and we must attend to them now and cease putting them off. According to a report by Wealth for the Common Good, between 2001-2008, tax cuts for the wealthy cost the U.S. Treasury $700 billion, directly adding to the national debt. Retaining these tax cuts will likely cost another $700 billion over the next decade.
One thing we can do is to tell Congress to let the Bush-era tax cuts on the wealthy expire this year. The rise in incremental tax rates on people like me would be modest but the $700 billion in savings over 10 years would be a wonderful investment in the next generation. For those who have benefited enormously from our country’s investment, it’s time to share that opportunity with others. Letting tax cuts for the wealthy expire at the end of 2010 is a good and necessary first step.
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Caruso is a psychotherapist, community volunteer and civic leader in the Twin Cities. Her late husband, Dr. Steven Case, is the founder of CyberOptics, a high tech firm in Minnesota. Dr. Case was killed in a plane crash in June 2009.
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Copyright © 2010 by Minnesota Editorial Forum. 10/10
Showing posts with label comprehensive financial reform. Show all posts
Showing posts with label comprehensive financial reform. Show all posts
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Monday, May 24, 2010
LOUISIANA FORUM
By Camille Moran
Wall Street’s collapsing house of cards brought us a time of economic turmoil that most of us have not seen in our lifetimes. Patching the house of cards back together, though, will not bring us lasting recovery.
When will Washington realize that Main Street needs true financial reform and not just piecemeal crumbs dubbed as reform by Big Business and Wall Street? When will Washington realize it is small business that drives our nation’s economy – that without that entrepreneurial spirit, the wheels of our country’s economic system would no longer turn?
Had there been adequate rules in the past, there is a good chance the Great Recession would not have occurred, or at the least, have been less severe. This would have meant less pain for small business owners, with far fewer business failures, home foreclosures and job losses.
Small businesses didn’t have the luxury of being bailed out by the government as the big financial institutions did. While America waits for comprehensive reform, more families face home mortgage foreclosures, and more small businesses are unable to borrow money, crippled by self-serving Wall Street gamblers, who, enabled by bonuses and Washington bailouts, push aside anyone who gets in their way in order to satisfy their insatiable greed.
As a small business owner, I see the need for comprehensive financial reform that would bring about strong transparency, oversight and accountability to Wall Street. Most importantly, financial reform must include the establishment of a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) with independent rule-making authority and enforcement powers -- not a branch of the Federal Reserve influenced by the Wall Street “fat cats,” whose total disregard for the needs of Main Street catapulted our economy into chaos in the first place.
Our local Chambers of Commerce claim to represent the needs of small business owners, when they in fact, are often under the umbrella of larger associations, such as the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), who actually serve as mouthpieces for Big Business. It is these types of organizations across the country that aggressively fight to kill proposals aimed to create a new CFPA, deceptively claiming it to be in the best interests of their small business owner members – all the while knowing that a CFPA would help stabilize the economy, but being too afraid to stop protecting the Big Business interests who pad their pockets.
But we small business owners know the truth – the CFPA would provide protection against unfair “tricks and traps” lending. Small business owners -- who regularly rely on credit card financing and take out home equity lines of credit to get started or stay afloat -- would benefit enormously from these reforms and from the increased stability that would come from meaningful oversight of the credit markets.
Our elected officials should resist the efforts of Wall Street and other special interests to water down consumer protection through amendments that strip crucial power from states and attorneys general to enforce or enact consumer protection laws, and carve out special exemptions for auto dealers and other businesses. Business owners and consumers need full and fair disclosure of the costs and risks of ALL financial products, services and lending.
According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, about two-thirds of Americans support tighter regulations on the way banks and other institutions conduct their business. Bipartisan support is especially high for greater federal oversight of the way banks and other financial companies that make consumer loans such as credit cards, auto loans and mortgages.
Most of the nation’s new jobs are created by small businesses, and effective financial reform will enable businesses to fill this role as they secure fair credit, hire new employees and build our communities and our economy.
It’s important that our elected officials act expediently on behalf of all small business owners. We can’t let our hard-working small business owners down by protecting the big banks and Wall Street. Instead, we need comprehensive financial reform that includes a Consumer Financial Protection Agency powerful enough to prevent the predatory lending that proved so catastrophic for our economy.
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Moran is the owner and CEO of Caramor Industries, LLC, in Natchitoches.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the Louisiana Forum 5/10
When will Washington realize that Main Street needs true financial reform and not just piecemeal crumbs dubbed as reform by Big Business and Wall Street? When will Washington realize it is small business that drives our nation’s economy – that without that entrepreneurial spirit, the wheels of our country’s economic system would no longer turn?
Had there been adequate rules in the past, there is a good chance the Great Recession would not have occurred, or at the least, have been less severe. This would have meant less pain for small business owners, with far fewer business failures, home foreclosures and job losses.
Small businesses didn’t have the luxury of being bailed out by the government as the big financial institutions did. While America waits for comprehensive reform, more families face home mortgage foreclosures, and more small businesses are unable to borrow money, crippled by self-serving Wall Street gamblers, who, enabled by bonuses and Washington bailouts, push aside anyone who gets in their way in order to satisfy their insatiable greed.
As a small business owner, I see the need for comprehensive financial reform that would bring about strong transparency, oversight and accountability to Wall Street. Most importantly, financial reform must include the establishment of a strong Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA) with independent rule-making authority and enforcement powers -- not a branch of the Federal Reserve influenced by the Wall Street “fat cats,” whose total disregard for the needs of Main Street catapulted our economy into chaos in the first place.
Our local Chambers of Commerce claim to represent the needs of small business owners, when they in fact, are often under the umbrella of larger associations, such as the Louisiana Association of Business and Industry (LABI), who actually serve as mouthpieces for Big Business. It is these types of organizations across the country that aggressively fight to kill proposals aimed to create a new CFPA, deceptively claiming it to be in the best interests of their small business owner members – all the while knowing that a CFPA would help stabilize the economy, but being too afraid to stop protecting the Big Business interests who pad their pockets.
But we small business owners know the truth – the CFPA would provide protection against unfair “tricks and traps” lending. Small business owners -- who regularly rely on credit card financing and take out home equity lines of credit to get started or stay afloat -- would benefit enormously from these reforms and from the increased stability that would come from meaningful oversight of the credit markets.
Our elected officials should resist the efforts of Wall Street and other special interests to water down consumer protection through amendments that strip crucial power from states and attorneys general to enforce or enact consumer protection laws, and carve out special exemptions for auto dealers and other businesses. Business owners and consumers need full and fair disclosure of the costs and risks of ALL financial products, services and lending.
According to a recent Washington Post-ABC News poll, about two-thirds of Americans support tighter regulations on the way banks and other institutions conduct their business. Bipartisan support is especially high for greater federal oversight of the way banks and other financial companies that make consumer loans such as credit cards, auto loans and mortgages.
Most of the nation’s new jobs are created by small businesses, and effective financial reform will enable businesses to fill this role as they secure fair credit, hire new employees and build our communities and our economy.
It’s important that our elected officials act expediently on behalf of all small business owners. We can’t let our hard-working small business owners down by protecting the big banks and Wall Street. Instead, we need comprehensive financial reform that includes a Consumer Financial Protection Agency powerful enough to prevent the predatory lending that proved so catastrophic for our economy.
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Moran is the owner and CEO of Caramor Industries, LLC, in Natchitoches.
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Copyright (C) 2010 by the Louisiana Forum 5/10
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