Economic Truths
- Free enterprise growth creates more jobs.
- More jobs create more salaries.
- More salaries create more tax revenues.
- More tax revenues mean more government revenues.
This “multiplier effect” of the growth in free enterprise is even more dynamic. With job growth comes:
- Demand for homes.
- Demand for more office space.
Eventually, property values increase, which creates more property taxation to support municipal and state revenues.
By the Numbers
- Colorado’s unemployment rate rose from below 4 percent in May 2007, to 8 percent in May 2010.1
- Colorado’s economy shed a record number of jobs in 2009 — the highest number on a percentage basis than at any time since 1944.2
- 85,000 fewer Coloradans have jobs since passage of the federal “stimulus” bill.3
- Over the last two years, we saw personal incomes in Colorado decline more sharply than at any time since 1958.4
- Colorado went from being the 10th best state for personal income growth in 2008 to an abysmal 35th in 2009.5 The decline was the first in Colorado since 2002.6
- In 2009 alone, 106,000 Coloradans lost their jobs.7
“A simple fact: Higher taxes take capital away from growing business and prevent job creation.”
- Incentivize large-scale business investment in manufacturing, aerospace and other high-wage sectors by revisiting the Business Personal Property Tax.
- Ensure a world-class workforce by prioritizing investment in our higher education system with an emphasis on research and trades programs.
- Constructing and maintaining a cutting edge multi-modal transportation system is essential to a thriving economy. Policymakers must create an infrastructure strategy for the state, seeking lower cost solutions and opportunities for public-private partnerships.
- Improve the state commitment to biotechnology and biosciences by building on a 2008 package that provided some $26 million assistance for Colorado start-up companies8 and research institutions seeking to commercialize new technology.
- Work with Colorado’s universities in technology transfer opportunities, to create new Colorado jobs and companies. Identify reasonable solutions to obstacles which stop cooperation between academic research institutions and free enterprise.
- N. Mullis, “Focus Colorado: Economic and Revenue Forecast,” Colorado Legislative Council, Jun. 21, 2010
- A. Svaldi, “Colorado job losses worst in 65 years,” The Denver Post, Jul. 24, 2009
- Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://data.bls.gov/PDQ/servlet/SurveyOutputServlet?data_tool=latest_numbers&series_id=LASST08000003 – as of August 2010.
- A. Svaldi, “Hard times getting harder for Coloradans,” The Denver Post, Jul. 19, 2009
- Ibid
- N. Mullis, “Focus Colorado: Economic and Revenue Forecast,” Colorado Legislative Council, Jun. 21, 2010
- Colorado Economic Development Databook, 2010-2011
- Colorado Economic Development Databook, 2010-2011