That’s why one of my strongest ideas is to look at the tax code in both its complexity and its obvious bias toward the rich. Hedge fund and money managers are important for our pension funds and the 401(k) plans that help millions of Americans—but far less important than they think. But financial advisers should pay taxes at the highest levels when they’re earning money at those levels. Often, these financial engineers are “flipping” companies, laying people off, and making billions—yes, billions—of dollars by “downsizing” and destroying people’s lives and sometimes entire companies. Believe me, I know the value of a billion dollars—but I also know the importance of a single dollar.
The money I’ve earned was the result of my own work—projects I created, deals I made, companies I bought and turned around. I understand what it means for my employees to work in construction, one of the toughest and most dangerous jobs in the world.
Those who spend their days sweating at their job should not have to sweat about their lives at night.
I’ve never had the “security” of being on the government payroll. I was the guy who made out the payroll. It hasn’t always been so easy either. In the 1990s, the government changed the real estate tax laws and made those changes retroactive. It was very unfair, but I fought through it and thrived. It absolutely killed the construction industry. It put a lot of people out of business. The misguided passion of environmentalists today makes building anything much more difficult. Now we have crazy overregulation. You can barely buy a paper clip without being in violation of some governmental policy.
It’s no surprise that stress in our society is at an all-time high. Let good and fair-minded businessmen and businesswomen run their companies, especially small businesses, without so much interference. Then they can make more money, put more people to work—and not just part-timers forced in by Obamacare—and have happier lives for themselves.
Right now this country is in serious financial trouble. Our national debt is more than $19 trillion, and we’re on our way to $20 trillion. Even the most liberal economists warn that as we head past the $20+ trillion debt levels, we’ll be in big, big trouble. That’s when our financial system really starts to falter and diminish our borrowing capacity as well as drive up the interest costs on our debt.
That’s when we will lose a lot of credibility in the world markets. For the past year, the United States has been the one country that has maintained financial stability while Europe and Asia faltered. Our debt is a very dangerous burden to carry around. There are overwhelming numbers of Americans who have not participated in the economic growth of the past year, or of the past 20 years, for that matter. They are being forced to mortgage their dreams—their American dreams—just to maintain where they are—just to get by. They have little or no hope of getting ahead.
This is a case where our system is broken, and we need to fix it. We’ve got to do something to change the way we’re developing policy, and we’ve got to start right now. We need people who understand the scope of the problems and know how to turn the ship of state around.
We need leadership!
Some of the proposed solutions make no sense. There are politicians who think one way of reducing the national debt is to cut Social Security or other entitlement programs. We have to tread very carefully here. Since our “great” depression more than 80 years ago, America has always provided a social safety net for those who fall off the economic chart. Retired seniors in particular rely on pensions and Social Security, as well as Medicare.
We have to be very careful about changing the rules for those whose monthly checks make a big difference in their survival. A lot of people live from check to check. There’s no way I’m letting those payments be reduced. No way. This country made a deal with our citizens. That’s their money. They paid it into the system their whole working lives so that older people could get their monthly checks.
Now it’s their turn.
We should not touch Social Security. It’s off the table.
But you know what? There are a lot of wealthy people who don’t need it. So if the government offered me the opportunity to give it up, I would check that box. I’m sure there are other wealthy individuals who would do the same thing. Even so, the impact that would have on solving the financial crisis we face would be minimal.
Changing the tax code to be more fair for all income classes is a much better answer to this bigger problem.
There are certainly “entitlements” that can be reviewed for waste and misguided direction or wasteful execution. I discuss immigration policies elsewhere, but I question whether illegal immigrants—or their children—should be receiving the same benefits as bona fide citizens or those who are here lawfully.
At the same time, government largesse for many businesses and industries—“entitlements for the rich”—needs to be examined. I am very suspicious of income-supplement programs that seem to expand for industries with large lobbying teams or for companies run by major contributors to election campaigns.
To solve our overall economic problem, we have to start rebuilding our industries to meet the challenge from foreign competitors and create real jobs. Government statistics are made to look very positive, but in real life the situation is terrible.
When you look at the unemployment situation, there are two very significant variables. One is the percentage of people who give up and drop out of the labor market. They aren’t included in the unemployment sample. Our so-called labor participation rate—those who have stayed in the job market—is the lowest it’s been in almost 40 years. It hasn’t been this low since President Jimmy Carter was running the country, and he presided over an inflationary spiral in which interest rates exceeded 20 percent.
When you also take into account the large number of jobholders who are underemployed, the real unemployment rate soars to the high teens or even 20 percent. I know many wise financial heads question the government’s assessment of the job market and the statistics it puts out. In our daily lives, we see from our friends and neighbors that the job market is still very troubled, as downsizing continues to be a popular buzzword for corporations trying to hype their stock.
It’s not just jobs that are being lost to other countries. We are seeing whole industries vanish overseas.
Americans want to work. We have a great work ethic in this country. The problem is that when young people look for their first good jobs, or people who have lost their jobs look for new ones, they can’t find any.
The jobs aren’t there. They’ve vanished!
I’ve certainly done my part in my businesses. I know how to create jobs. I have created tens of thousands of jobs in my career. Thousands of people currently work for me and many thousands more are employed by my partnerships. I’m involved in literally hundreds of companies, almost all of which are working beautifully, and setting new standards and records.
They include everything from a bottled springwater company to a vineyard. We manage ice-skating rinks, we produce TV shows, we make leather goods, we create fragrances, and we own beautiful restaurants.
Of course, our bread-and-butter is in our bricks-and-mortar or real estate. We own, build, manage, and/or license many beautiful buildings of all types.
There is only one thing that every single one of my many different businesses have in common: They all help provide jobs for people. When I construct a building or develop a golf resort, it creates jobs for construction workers and for all the companies supplying the materials, from the flooring to the lighting fixtures.