'76 Blog

(Denver Post, Jan. 29) So now we’ve heard the State of the Union according to Obama and the State of the State according to Hickenlooper.  We’ve seen Gingrich’s debating prowess and Romney’s tax returns, Santorum’s sweaters and Ron Paul’s scowl.  But how much does that really tell us about the shape America is in? If we’re not the land of the free, we’re nothing, right? Economists James Gwartney, Robert Lawson, and Joshua Hall, like a team of doctors taking your vitals before surgery – the operation in this case being the potential removal of elected officials across the land – bring grim news that Americans’ freedom to better ourselves economically has slid drastically in this decade.  Hardly the change we hoped for.The authors’ “Economic Freedom of the World 2011,” a data-rich report from the Fraser Institute in Vancouver, BC, uses five indicators to rank 141 countries on how well they allow you and me to work toward affluence, keep what we earn, and use it as we choose, free from government interference.  Since 2000, our country fell down the scale faster than almost any nation on earth.Notice that this occurred under various combinations of unified and divided control in Washington.  The unrelenting trend, with bipartisan culpability, has been “liberty yielding and government gaining ground,” as Thomas Jefferson warned.  Notice too that the report’s data end in 2009.  The humongous deficits and health-care takeover since then have only worsened our score.America still ranks 10th in the Fraser global index (exactly where we place in another valuable economic-freedom scorecard just updated by the Heritage Foundation).  But look who’s ahead of us: Hong Kong, Singapore, New Zealand, Switzerland, Australia, Canada, Chile, the United Kingdom, and tiny Mauritius. Then blush to see the company we’re in among the getting-less-free-fastest club: only the Latin caudillo regimes of Venezuela and Argentina, and the North Atlantic basket cases of Iceland and Ireland, have regressed as badly as Uncle Sam did in recent years.  No wonder big majorities are now telling pollsters they believe we’re in decline and will leave our kids a narrower horizon of opportunity.But not all the tidings are bad.  Colorado as a state, when ranked against our 49 sisters and the 10 Canadian provinces by another team of Fraser Institute scholars in “Economic Freedom of North America 2011,” trails only Alberta (the oil-rich neighbor whom Obama spurned with his Keystone pipeline veto), Delaware, Texas, and Nevada.  We actually gained one place over the previous year, 2008 to 2009.This result again, paralleling the experience in Washington, has been achieved even as party control seesawed at the state capitol.  You can be sure that’s mostly because our Colorado constitution, unlike the federal constitution, has a Taxpayer’s Bill of Rights to restrain government growth.  And partisans on both sides shouldn’t forget that the North America scorecard (EFNA) has a two-year data lag exactly as the world rankings do.  Hence it doesn’t reflect the Democrats’ “dirty dozen” tax increases in 2010, nor the Republicans’ sad 2011 performance with a state enabling bill for Obamacare and no effort to repeal Bill Ritter’s car tax – er, fee.Fraser rates the 60 states and provinces on 10 criteria under the headings of size of government, takings and discriminatory taxation, and labor market freedom.  If Colorado had passed Right to Work in 2008, we’d rank even higher.  And that’s not just a bragging point.  EFNA includes statistical proof that living standards rise in a state with almost 1:1 correlation to the rise of economic freedom.  Occupying the best cabin on a sinking ship counts for little, however.  If the Canadians, Brits, and Aussies continue outdistancing the U.S. in that precious freedom Jeb Bush has called “the right to rise,” all of our red- and blue-state political cheering will be just so much white noise.      

(Centennial Fellow) Class warfare is alive and healthy in elite parts of America today. Yes, elite. Only elites — a tiny fraction of a fraction of the American public — are able to camp in public parks denouncing businesses, while other elites in high government offices and the media discuss them. The rest of us have to work. So what do the elites want? From the repeated assertions of our president that the "rich" pay too little in taxes, to the anti-capitalism chorus of Occupy Wall Street, the echo chamber refrain seems to be that those who've earned less deserve what those who've earned more have. But in the idiom of Marxist political economy — the haves vs. have-nots — what do the haves, have? It's not money, simply. It's wealth, of which money is merely a measurement. Money and wealth are commonly confused, but their differences are important if we're to respond persuasively to the unjust demands of some for the property of others and explain why the creation of wealth solves, rather than creates, the problem of poverty. Imagine several people shipwrecked on an uninhabited island. Nothing survives the wreck, save only one item: a printing press filled with paper. As the people crawl to safety, they're exhausted. They stare in disbelief and shock. But soon they begin to realize that they're hungry, thirsty, cold, unprotected from the elements. They're in dire poverty. They must think and act, or die. What shall they do? Suppose one of them happens to be a member of the Obama economic team. He eyes the printing press and gets an idea: An economic stimulus plan of the kind he learned from his days in government. He quickly prints lots of dollar bills and distributes them (unevenly) to his fellow castaways. They now have more money than they did before, true. But has any wealth been created? No. They still have no food, no water, no heat, no shelter, no anything. They remain as poor as they were before receiving the dollars. The stimulus plan stimulated nothing. Suppose another castaway surveys the surroundings and figures out how to catch fish. By ingenuity and sweat, he catches lots of fish, more than he can eat. Another sets out on her own to find fresh drinking water, collecting and storing more than she needs, while someone else gathers firewood, and another designs a shelter while yet another builds it. Unlike the government economic advisor, these entrepreneurial castaways are not making, i.e. printing, money. Instead, they're creating new wealth by producing things that others find valuable. But how will the others obtain some of the valuable things being produced? Unless they resort to stealing, they must produce something of value themselves in order to engage in exchange. Production of wealth stimulates production of more wealth. Our motley crew of imaginary castaways began desperately poor, but now they are wealthy, relatively speaking. They prove an economic truth of human life: Production precedes consumption. Contra Keynesianism, it makes no more sense to "stimulate" consumption by printing more dollars than it does to hand a starving, dehydrated castaway a crisp new dollar bill. They also prove that the creation of new wealth is the solution to problem of poverty. The genesis of all new wealth is the mind, not money. Wealth is born as an idea, and made real through work, whether physical or intellectual. Wealth does not grow on trees — even apples remain worthless for human beings until someone thinks to pick them, eat them, and cultivate the growth of more. Wealth must be produced, and production requires work. But people are unlikely to work productively if they have good reason to believe they'll be punished for their work product (say, in the form of progressive taxation), or it will be taken away (whether by force or regulations). In world historical terms, the total amount of wealth on Earth remained relatively flat — and world poverty remained relatively constant — until the Enlightenment, when the global stock of wealth began to skyrocket. Why? Individual freedom, property rights that allow a person to keep what he acquires, the rule of knowable, fair, stable laws that provide equal protection for all who live under them, and minimal government interference in the economy led to increases in the production of new wealth, living standards, and levels of philanthropic aid for the poor unknown in the annals of history. Occupying Wall Street and envying the "rich" for not paying their "fair share" creates no wealth. It does not alleviate the plight of the poor. But we know what does: Let's restore the conditions that stimulate the creation of wealth and provide have-nots an opportunity to become haves. • Krannawitter teaches politics at Colorado Christian University and is a Centennial Institute Fellow. This article originally appeared in Investor's Business Daily.

(CCU Faculty) President Obama’s proposal to increase taxes by 1.5 trillion over the next 10 years in the name of “fairness” is merely a smokescreen for increasing revenue to temporarily maintain what is ultimately unsustainable government spending.  As many conservatives have stated: “we don’t have a revenue problem; it’s a spending crisis.”  A massive tax increase is not the solution to this problem. President Obama is of the opinion that if he can just get some more money from America’s rich people, he can continue to spend at the record pace he directed from the beginning of his administration.  He is also of the opinion that the government has greater wisdom when it comes to people’s money, greater than the very people who earned it.   He is convinced that if government directs the economy, it will lead to a reduction in American unemployment.  There are three major problems with Obama’s view of economics and his plan to reduce the deficit: First, even if he could obtain all of the capital of America’s wealthy people, it would only temporarily suspend our deficit spending.  Andrew Stiles at National Review Online summarizes the limited impact that even a 100% tax on our nation’s millionaires or even a complete confiscation of the wealth of nation’s 400 wealthiest citizens would have: (1) The federal government will spend about $3.6 trillion this year (a rate of $300 billion per month), running an annual deficit of about $1.3 trillion. So, even if the IRS decided to confiscate every cent earned by millionaires in a given year, it would amount to less than half of the new debt we are taking on each year, and would barely be enough to fund the government for two months. (2) According to Forbes, the 400 wealthiest individuals in U.S. are worth a combined $1.37 trillion. Confiscating all their wealth (not just annual earnings) would buy us another 4.5 months. So even a tax scheme exaggerated beyond the levels proposed by President Obama and an even more unrealistic confiscation of wealth would do no more than keep us going at current spending levels for a few months! Second, President Obama continues to argue that our wealthiest citizens aren’t paying their “fair share.”  Fairness is a subjective standard.  Nevertheless, when you consider that between 47% and 51% of Americans are paying ZERO in federal income tax (depending on which measurement is being used), that the top 1% of earners pay 38% of all federal income taxes, and that the top 10% of earners pay 70%, there may indeed be a fairness issue, but is probably that the rich are paying too much as a percentage of total revenues. Finally, the issue must come back to who knows what best to do with money earned.  I doubt that Warren Buffet has always felt that he was taxed too little.   While he was an ambitious young businessman, seeking to turn small investments into large gains, Buffet, like most businessmen, must have known that with every dollar he possessed, there was an opportunity to make more.  And in the process of turning his thousands of dollars in investment into billions, he would be making possible new businesses: businesses that hired one, ten, one hundred or perhaps thousands of new employees.  With each of these employees having new spending power that would have generated new economic activity.  And in some cases moving people off of government assistance; and, yes, creating new taxpayers.  Warren Buffet used to know that this is the key to growing an economy, reducing unemployment, and creating new wealth.  Unfortunately his sidekick, President Obama, never did.  Combined, the two are a danger to American prosperity.  We don’t need new taxes and new government spending.  We need businessmen like the old Warren Buffett to use their talents and their entrepreneurial energy to grow the economy, in an environment with will minimal government interference.  

(Centennial Fellow) President Barack Obama, who has been working like the devil to wipe out jobs in America, finally said he was going to give us less government to help more, although he soon enough was pledging more government to help less. Union members cheered him while one of their bosses went a step further. "President Obama, this is your army," Teamsters President Jimmy Hoffa said in introducing the commander in chief at a Detroit rally on Labor Day. After asserting the Tea Party was waging a war on workers, he yelled, "We are ready to march. Let's take those sons of guns out and give America back to an America where we belong." He was not quoted as saying "guns," of course, and neither, in their more sober moments, have unions been saying how much they love all the president has been doing for them. Unions representing miners, electrical workers, mechanists and more were reported in one recent compilation as agonizing over various EPA regulations and other interventions that will cost them not just a few jobs, but tens of thousands. Have mercy, sir, they have pleaded. And suddenly, after news stories that unbelievable misery had just become worse, there Obama was, giving us at long last a more angelic, less leftist, reasonable persona, announcing he would stop his EPA's smog assault sure to cost the economy billions in employment opportunities. Environmentalists wailed that unconscionable pain and suffering would result. That's less likely than a drought-caused flood. The ozone in the smog is too itsy bitty to hurt, and convincing evidence proving otherwise is zero. But in Detroit, Obama transmogrified into Mr. Hyde again, talking about spending more to create more jobs with more infrastructure projects. You remember all the good that did us the last time - increasing debt and its threat while shovels weren't ready? Does he really want to repeat policies diminishing America? That's exactly what those policies have been doing, and if you think differently consider these few items taken from a longer list of Obama's failures by Peter Wehner of the Ethics and Public Policy Center: losing 2.2 million jobs; a 9.1 percent unemployment rate up from 7.7 percent; three years of trillion dollar deficits in a country that never had one before; a two-and-a-half year $4 trillion debt increase that is greater than what George W. Bush was able to give us in eight years -- and a record increase in poverty. This is what he meant by hope and change? None of this came easily. It first off required disbelieving the libertarian-preached truth that virtually all that borrowed money was less likely to help the economy than if left to free market decisions. It required juvenile anti-corporate cursing, negligent and worse energy policies, tax threats and growling at states trying to tame public union extravagance. It required the future-threatening encumbrance of already malfunctioning Obamacare, a National Labor Relations Board mistaking the United States for the expired Soviet Union and a vast, near despotic array of EPA and other regulations that were death to both existing jobs and entrepreneurial ambition to no discernible avail. This president, who is forever playing blame games while taking reckless, un-presidential pot shots at the opposition, has had opportunities for compromise, maybe the best being a plan from leaders of his own debt commission on both revenue-raising tax reforms and serious spending limits. But no, that would keep in place the old America he promised he would fundamentally transform. He kept thinking of big time redistribution, colossal projects, a country of, by and for the state, all those joys. Give it up and get real, Mr. President. You are setting the middle class back like it has only once has been set back before, and demolishing the working class. Get back on the deregulation track, quit the spending, start compromising, forget bold new adventures in Europeanizing us and offer up some competence and leadership.  

('76 Contributor) The definition of insanity is doing the same thing repeatedly, and expecting a different result. Are the President and his administration insane to repeat their failed policies? * Grants to states to prevent the layoff of public employees is no more than the Democrats taking care of a key constituency: not stimulative! Government jobs don't count. * Continually extending the unemployment benefits only incentivizes people to not look for work and increases the deficit. Not stimulative! * Infrastructure work was supposed to be underway by now from that last "stimulus"! Where is it? Why would another tranche now be any different?  Even so, infrastructure work is done by contractors with few employees and lots of machinery. They descend on a community for a few weeks and then they are gone, leaving a fresh bridge or a newly paved stretch of highway. Nothing sustainable about that! * Repairing public schools, building community centers, etc, are not simulative: they produce no sustainable demand for goods and services. Once the work is done, the economic activity dwindles to its former stagnated level. The only result of the last "stimulus" I see in my own life is a repaired barb wire fence around Roxborough State Park. The fence looks good.  But now that it's up, it's just sitting there. Yet I see more empty store fronts in my local Roxborough Village shopping mall, the result of more government taxes and regulation. The Administration ideologically can't face the option of cutting taxes (it would be rewarding "fat cats") or cutting regulations ("leaving the people and the environment unprotected from evil greedy businessmen!") and encouraging people to build their own businesses!  When a business starts, it creates an ongoing self-sustainable demand for goods and services, and jobs! Government jobs, on the other hand, can only be sustained by confiscating resources from more productive areas of the economy or by printing money.  Both are detrimental and unsustainable.  To pay half a million morons to rake leaves in National Parks isn't job creation! It's a temporary redirection of welfare money, affecting no change whatsoever in the GNP! The reason the government persists in these failed policies is that the Progressive Marxist-Leninists in the White House want the money (and the power that goes with it) to flow through their hands in Washington!  They  apparently don't care if the economy suffers! (Better to rule in hell than serve in heaven!) And it's telling that when the President has a "job summit" he sits down with the CEO's of BIG BUSINESS (who for the most part are laying off and closing plants in the US owing to burdensome regulation and taxes and opening plants and hiring employees in China or India!)  The President seems to despise small business, the real engine of job creation, because he can't have one of his Czars sit down at a table with thousands of small businessmen and tell them what to do like he can Big Bank CEO's!  To close, I don't believe the President and his administration are insane.  But apparently, their long term plan for disaster is to eliminate small business with taxes and regulation, and to leave to remain only controllable big business.    

(CCU Faculty) We often hear from President Obama that “the rich should give back.”  But what have they taken?  Nothing!What have they given?  ** Jobs: if you have a job, thank an entrepreneur.  ** Goods and services: things we all need to survive are provided by these entrepreneurs.  ** More than their fair share of taxes: the richest 20% of Americans pay over 86% of the taxes, while the poorest half of Americans pay no income taxes at all.(Heritage Foundation) ** Charitable Giving: the richgive the lion’s share to charity, while Liberals have a poor record of giving to charity, believing it is the government’s job.(NicholasKristof, N.Y. Times) Take Steven Jobs, for example. What has he taken from the rest of us?  Nothing.  What has he given? Tens of thousands of jobs, an expanded tax-base, the latest high-tech innovations making all of us more efficient and driving down prices. Yet President Obama said recently that Steven Jobs has not adequately“given back”.What has Steven Jobs taken that he should “give back”?  The jobs Steven Jobs provided are not the unproductive ones Obama claims he will provide in his many speeches.  In fact,these “jobs” have not even been produced, as unemployment continues to rise. Who are those who have taken?  ** Government takes from the paychecks of the productive to fund theirunproductive schemes. ** Politicians take from tax payers to fund their pork projects, which buy them votes for reelection. ** The indolent take “entitlements” from the government. What “entitles” them to take from the rest of us who produce?  “Entitlement” means getting what you deserve. What did they do to deserve the money others earned?  Call it government enforced charity, not “entitlement”. On Thursday night President Obama will tell us his plans to provide more jobs.  Can he really create jobs?  When the government hires someone, where does the money to pay these new government employees come from?  From taxing the rest of us, from government borrowing more and driving us deeper in debt, or from printing up more paper money causing inflation down the road.  Each job saved or created by the Obama administration has cost us $533,000. (Dan Farber, CBS News)  Jobs created by the private sector cost us nothing.  In fact, for each unproductive job the government creates, two productive jobs in the private sector are destroyed. (Rick Santorum) The best jobs program would be for the government to get out of the way of those who really produce jobs, by no longer punishing the productive to reward the unproductive, by lessening the regulatory burden on the productive, by providing the economic stability so that the real job-creators can anticipate future costs, plan the expansion of their companies, and hire more people. If a government continually tries to soak the rich, they lose the very people who made their country productive. Millions in recent centuries came to America for opportunity.  If our government now limits this opportunity, people will leave in droves.  Millions fled the Socialist experiments of the 20th century to seek freedom and opportunity in the West.  Why abandon what has proven successful, only to copy the failed policies of failed regimes which we thought were on the ash heap of history?

(Centennial Fellow) Here's what I want readers to do. Put your hands together with fingers interlaced and pointing downwards next to your palms and bring the heels of the palms together. Then stick your two index fingers and thumbs up until the next to last paragraph while I talk to you about corporations, Republican Mitt Romney and a widespread misconception. It's that corporations are reptiles. Recently, when presidential candidate Romney was confronted by Democratic demonstrators, he said taxing corporations is taxing people, that corporations are people. Though he happens to have made millions as a corporate whiz, many responded with derision, including a TV reporter who committed a gaffe by calling it a gaffe. Please. Someone or something has to own those corporations, run them and work in them. The only creatures we know of with enough brainpower are people, unless there is such a thing as corporate-caused Darwinian devolution, leaving these souls with rough, green skin, long tails, sharp teeth and barely more alertness than TV reporters. I don't think so. I do think I can identify two sources of the confusion. One is the legal fiction that a corporation is a person with an accountability of its own. While this device accomplishes vital purposes -- for instance, by making purchases of corporate shares more likely through non-liability for debts -- it's a fraction of the reality, like defining a marriage as only legal advantages instead of the uniting of two people. The bigger picture is that when corporations go broke and close down, lots of everyday Americans (aka, people) find themselves unemployed. Shareholders (aka, people) also lose. When the firms do well in a non-scary economy, they will often expand and hire more workers (aka, people) while stock values go up, giving succor among others to retired baby boomers (aka, people) relying on invested savings. People are absolutely affected by corporation taxes (including those known as consumers). It's also the case that people continue to be full-fledged citizens in an association. Many corporations are small, non-profit and sometimes organized as a means of people having their rightful say in public affairs. Even people in corporations out to make a buck -- thank God for them -- are similarly entitled to free speech and other liberties sometimes undermined by judges and politicians. That thought brings us to the next reason for saying corporations are not people -- the political objective of dehumanizing them, of making it seem that while government is by, of and for the people, corporations are sly, alien and against the people, commonly led by CEOs with marginal homo sapiens ratings. Let's concede some CEOs behave atrociously while adding that you can also find villains among legislators, TV reporters, columnists, you name it. I'll agree, too, that campaign donations can cause corrupt politicians to bow deeply. But you really don't understand American politics if you don't get it that pleasing voters is a more significant determinant of action, that the government delivers considerable pain to corporations and that the main reason for cronyism is intrusiveness. Control too much as an institution vastly more powerful than all corporations put together, and those who are controlled try to influence you back. Corporations are primarily friends, providing us with such desirables as food, clothing, shelter, the highest productivity of any nation in the world and wages (aka, money). Government coercively takes much of that money to spend wastefully. Fiscal recklessness now has us in one of the most threatening predicaments of recent times. Now, let's come back to those two hands of yours, saying first off that some may think of churches as just buildings. Not so. Recall the childhood rhyme, saying, "Here's the church, here's the steeple," and then turn your hands upside down with the fingers sticking in the air and conclude, "open the doors and see all the people." People -- good people, people you know, maybe you yourself, definitely the errant TV reporter -- also constitute corporations.     

(Centennial Fellow) So what example should America follow, that of deficit-slaughtering, budget-cutting, seriously limited government in Texas, which has added 730,000 jobs in the past decade, or that of regulation-happy, spend-mercilessly, owe-everything, flee-this-place-quickly California, which has lost 600,000 jobs during the same period? While not a hard question in a nation where unemployment recently shot up over 9 percent again and is dramatically expanding its unfunded entitlement promises on top of its accumulating debt, let's continue to look at some astounding facts about Texas after noting a much-repeated analysis of how it got there. It has no state income tax, low corporate taxes, does just enough regulating to get the job done, cares for the environment without making a fetish of it, lets its legislature meet for a relatively short period just once every two years, keeps the executive branch slim and trim and is a right-to-work state where unions don't get to grab dues through governmental coercion. Businesses love all that, varied researchers tell us. A number point out that, in 2008, Texas accounted for fully 70 percent of all new jobs created in America, and if you think that's great, which it is, don't suppose this was a one-shot deal. Businesses are reported to rate Texas the single best state in which to operate. Give them a chance and many will pull up stakes from yonder plunder-and-abuse venue and follow the Lone Star to high profits, sharing prosperity and opportunity as they resettle. Meanwhile, what glitters is definitely not the Golden State. California is faced with a $26 billion deficit, cripples businesses with unconscionable taxes and rules and hits individuals just as hard. State leaders have dreamt up environmental objectives that in effect are combat tactics against the common good. Citizens are faced with a cost of living that is only part of the reason why they are deserting the place like the hoards that once upon a time rushed to enjoy its splendor. Recently, even Governor Jerry Brown was quoted as describing his state as "fantasy land," and he wasn't talking about movies issuing from Hollywood. He was talking about the sort of thing various publications have documented -- The Washington Examiner, The Weekly Standard, The Economist, The National Review, Newsweek and more -- such as public employee pensions there is no way to honor. There are liberals who hate the mention of any of this, especially when conservatives point how the two states are so much alike in population and demographic mix, and to be sure, there are some non-political factors at play. Liberals vastly overreach, though, with some making a major point earlier this year about how Texas was faced with a budget it couldn't handle and others bemoaning weak services. Texas, with a vastly increasing inflow population that makes it even tougher to deal with employment and governmental growth, has nevertheless been fighting back successfully against budgetary expansion. It has used some gimmicks but mainly necessary program reductions to keep taxes down to a level instigating entrepreneurship. Services there are hardly in as much jeopardy as in California, whose overcrowded prisons the Supreme Court refuses to tolerate, and nothing helps the poor like jobs. Texas does not shine in public education, but outdoes California in national testing, it's reported. The Texas example is basically the way America has to go, the way Republicans in the House of Representatives insist we go, and the way too many Senate Democrats and President Barack Obama resist. Their clear preference is the California model of spend yourself into misery, soak-the-upper-middle-class and businesses with tax hikes, tie the businesses up with so many regulations they can't compete anymore and offer no remedy but mush and demagoguery on anything truly serious in scope. It won't work in part because, as a new USA Today report shows, the government's entitlement pledges (mainly to Medicare and Social Security) grew so much last year that they now exceed anticipated revenues by $61.6 trillion, or $534,000 per household. Does anyone actually believe that, even if some tax increases done through reform might help, we can tax our way out of this?

An in-depth analysis by a nationally known economist shows that a tax increase proposed by State Sen. Rollie Heath (D-Boulder) that is aiming for the 2011 ballot would reduce 119,000 jobs over the five years the higher rates on sales and income taxes are to be in effect. The study was conducted by Dr. Eric Fruits of Economics International for the Common Sense Policy Roundtable to measure the likely effects of possible ballot initiatives on the Colorado economy. The study examines the effect of the prospective tax increases on job growth in the state as well as the migration of taxpayers and their income. As shown in the table below, the tax increases under Sen. Heath’s proposal would have a negative impact on employment in Colorado and slow the state’s recovery from the recent recession. The study indicates that Sen. Heath’s proposal would reduce employment by 5,500 in the first full year, and that the reduction in growth rates over time will reduce employment by 30,500 by 2017, with a cumulative impact of 119,700 fewer working Coloradans. IMPACT OF HEATH MEASURES ON COLORADO EMPLOYMENT Year               Reduction in Employment   Cumulative  Reduction in Employment 1st: 2012        5,500                               5,5002nd: 2013      14,300                              19,8003rd: 2014       19,300                              39,1004th: 2015       23,200                              62,3005th: 2016       26,900                              89,2006th: 2017       30,500                              119,700 In addition to the harmful impact on employment, the study also shows that Sen. Heath’s proposal would substantially slow the migration of taxpayers to Colorado by 3,610 a year. “Our study concludes that Sen. Heath’s initiative will be a step backward for Colorado’s economic recovery. While Sen. Heath touts his initiative as a way to make up for cuts in education spending, the fact of the matter is, nobody can guarantee that the new revenue will go to education”, said CSPR Spokesman Dustin Zvonek. “Appropriation of General Fund revenue is determined by the legislature, and with the composition of the legislature changing every two years nobody can guarantee what Sen. Heath is promising”, added Zvonek. To view the full study, go to www.commonsensepolicyroundtable.com Common Sense Policy Roundtable is a non-profit free-enterprise think tank dedicated to the protection and promotion of Colorado’s economy. CSPR actively follows tax- and budget-related legislation and initiatives. To learn more visit www.commonsensepolicyroundtable.com or call Dustin Zvonek at 303.518.1663

(CCU Student) Valentines weekend treated the economically inclined individuals very well this past weekend with the release of a movie trailer that has excited all the believers of supply side economics. On April 15, 2011, or "tax day", many individuals will be placing their full efforts towards mailing in the controversial 'income tax' mandated by the federal government. This year, director Paul Johansson introduces a film adaption to one of the most powerful novels of all time, Atlas Shrugged, which displays mere irony to the significance of its release date. The awareness of this novel is a gem in the advocacy of expanding your free market ideology; in addition, this movie will deeply challenge each and every individual in their understanding of history and political economy. Written in 1957 by author Ayn Rand, Atlas Shrugged tells the story of Dagny Taggart, a railroad heiress that attempts to maintain the integrity and profitability of her family business in a politically corrupt era of government intervention. Dagny feels the forces of government and society pressuring her to abandon her free enterprise, and she faces the daunting task of making sense of the disappearance of fellow private industrialists one by one. As free choice and competition begin to slowly decay, Daphne seeks revelations that will ultimately challenge her views, and force her to decide between fighting in her world for economic freedom, or leaving behind everything she has ever valued. Many economists notion the writing of this novel as a foreshadowing of modern United States economics in a world that is currently portraying similar attributes of those displayed of government in Atlas Shrugged. While this movie has been broken down into two parts (Most print versions consist of over 1,300 pages), Part 1 will without doubt leave its audience on the edge of their seat for the final Part; to be released undoubtedly in the near future. For any student that is looking for a movie that will challenge the very basis of your understanding paradoxical relationship between the government and the market, I could not recommend your viewership any higher. Through this on screen adaption of Rand's free market principles, you will see capitalism in a new light, and comprehend the immediate dangers of a socialistic society. This is an excellent opportunity to expose yourself to arguably the most influential economic wonder of all time coming to theaters on April 15, 2011.