Jobs for Kentucky
The Kentucky Freedom Plan
“Kentucky's status of ranking low in household incomes is unacceptable to me. We need to create more jobs in Kentucky; and we need to support projects like Otis Hensley’s proposed park in Eastern Kentucky. His park project will spark a job-creation boom like Eastern Kentuckians have never seen. Now is the time for Eastern Kentuckians to rally behind him and help make his project a reality.” – Roger Thoney
The Kentucky Freedom Plan is designed to increase household incomes throughout Kentucky and slow the “brain drain” by creating hundreds of thousands more jobs. It will establish a business-friendly environment in Kentucky that will help not only Otis Hensley’s proposed park project but also any other business project within Kentucky. Also, for those in Northern Kentucky, Louisville, and Lexington concerned about the fairness of the funding formulas for roads and schools, the more jobs we create outside the Golden Triangle the more "fair" these formulas will become.
The Kentucky Freedom Plan
1. Eliminate taxes on business activity and reduce the cost of regulation, litigation, health care, and workers’ compensation costs to reduce the cost of operating a business in Kentucky. In particular, eliminate the Alternative Minimum Calculation (AMC). The AMC forces a business that shows a loss to borrow money to pay taxes. This is insane; and it prevents businesses from moving to Kentucky. We also need to reform our workers’ compensation system. The current one works well only for lawyers.
2. Implement the Kentucky Small Business Investment Program to stimulate job creation in Kentucky. This is the jobs program that Otis Hensley promoted in his 2007 gubernatorial campaign (HB 725).
3. Recruit more businesses from outside Kentucky. Areas to target include corporate headquarters, investment banking, tourism, service companies, manufacturing plants, and entrepreneurs looking for funding. In particular, we should be focusing our recruitment efforts on businesses located in high-cost areas such as New York City, Chicago, San Francisco, Los Angeles, etc. Kentucky could become a new center of finance.
4. Develop entrepreneurs within Kentucky.
5. Reduce state government spending and taxes to put more money into the pockets of Kentuckians to spend on the products and services provided by the new businesses. In particular, reduce the cost of education. We need to improve both the efficiency and effectiveness of our education spending. We should be able to get better results for less money.
6. Change welfare from a system of grants to a system of loans to provide a smooth transition from welfare to work for those who need a helping hand.
7. Control the abuse of power (corruption). Corruption and poverty go hand in hand. Corruption prevents jobs from being created because it increases the cost and risk of doing business.
The War on Poverty. Low-income households struggle because prices at the grocery store and elsewhere are too high and they pay too much in taxes. They pay higher prices for groceries and other items because of the cost imposed on businesses by taxation, regulation, litigation, health care, and workers’ compensation costs. If they own a car, they pay car sales and use taxes, property taxes, insurance taxes, the gasoline tax, and annual registration fees. If they own a house, they pay property taxes, insurance taxes, and taxes on water, electric, heat, and telephone bills. They also pay sales taxes on most purchases and excise taxes on purchases of cigarettes and alcohol.
Big Government is the cause of much of the poverty we have today. Politicians’ and bureaucrats’ lust for power, control, and domination, by increasing the cost of doing business, causes unemployment and the cost of living to be higher and wages to be lower than they would be otherwise. Poverty will grow as government grows. Less government = More Jobs, Lower Cost of Living, and Lower Taxes.