Unshackle businesses

Gary Crooks’ April 27 commentary “Taxing the cheapskate state,” implies that the only way to raise more revenue for the state is to raise tax rates. That’s classic, simplistic, liberal, one-step thinking. Another way to grow revenues is for government to stop impeding the growth of the economy with European-style socialistic, restrictive policies and unshackle American-style free enterprise, especially small businesses. Multitudes of individual businesses and consumers making myriad decisions are much more effective in allocating capital than government bureaucrats.

We’ve suffered the consequences of the Democrats’ European-style government manipulation of business for six years: We are still in a deep jobs recession even though the economy has sluggishly recovered. It’s past time to unleash American enterprise and entrepreneurs. An accelerating economy would result in accelerating tax revenues. That’s the major reason tax revenues increased so much in the 1990s that we went from budget deficits to budget surpluses.

It should be obvious that allowing businesses to keep more of their profits as seed grain to plow into growing their businesses, hire more people and expand their operations would result in more tax revenue. But that takes being able to understand more than one simple step.

Bob Strong

Spokane