Posted: Thursday, February 16, 2012 1:00 PM
Help lacking for this species
Editorial
An Oregon farmer made more sense in her recent address to a local food gathering than we've heard in any one speech in a long time.
Karla Chambers, who with her husband owns Stahlbush Island Farms in the Willamette Valley, gave an enthusiastic discourse on entrepreneurship, job creation and the primary threat facing those businesses: crushing tax burdens.
She has the academic and real-world experience to back up her claims. Chambers has a graduate degree in ag economics and has served as director of the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco. She and her husband, Bill, have built Stahlbush Island Farms into a diverse operation that grows and processes fruit and vegetables from 5,000 acres, with 250 full-time workers and a substantial seasonal workforce.
The business pays 47 percent of its profits in federal and state income taxes. That leaves only 53 cents of every dollar to pay the owners and invest in opportunities to expand the operation and potentially hire more workers. And waiting in the wings for many small businesses, particularly farms and agri-businesses, are estate tax bills that can cripple or kill family concerns.
"Taxes and job creation go hand-in-hand," Chambers said. "There's more focus on eliminating jobs than in creating them in Oregon today."
The same can be said of Washington, California and, to a much lesser extent, Idaho. The federal and state governments increasingly look to balance their budgets on the backs of those who create economic activity.
Many Americans who draw a paycheck don't have an appreciation for the challenges that face business owners. Entrepreneurs assume all of the risks and share the rewards with employees, lenders and the ever more demanding, nonequity partners in government. In tough times, their hold is made more tenuous by onerous tax and regulatory policies.
The fact is, the owners of small- and medium-sized businesses who are casually described these days as "wealthy" are not a static segment of the population. Their fortunes rise and fall with the success of their businesses. Even the most astute entrepreneur can lose everything if business conditions change. Membership in the club is in near-constant flux.
In the Northwest, state governments pride themselves on the lengths they go to protect the habitat of endangered species. No effort is too great for salmon, spotted owls or wolves. No similar effort is expended, however, to protect the habitat of the golden goose: the family farms, markets, service businesses and small manufacturers that fuel the economy and constitute a large amount of the tax base.
These companies are every bit as endangered as any fish, fowl or four-legged predator. Given sensible tax and regulatory policies, small businesses can grow in size and number. As they recover, so will the economy.
Comments made about this article
Posted By: Bob Zybach On: 2/21/2012
Title: Endangered species and endangered communities
I think this article makes two very important points: 1) the best way to raise tax revenues (and possibly among the easiest, except for politics) is through the creation of new tax-producing jobs; and 2) the "habitat" arguments for so-called "endangered" species are destroying rural American industries, families, and communities are based upon some highly questionable assumptions and debatable scientific methods.
Why aren't the younger members of our families and communities getting work in the woods, on farms or ranches, or with local manufacturing facilities? Most of the land and resources in Oregon are owned ("managed") by the federal government; we are only one of five states in which this is true. They don't pay property taxes or keep the agreements with states and counties by which they obtained these resources. For the past 20 to 30 years mining claims, grazing rights, and timber sales (all of which have the potential to create thousands of jobs) have been eliminated from federal lands -- in complete defiance to the legal agreements by which this land was assembled. Politicians are "working on it."
The political uses and abuses of the ESA are finally coming to light, in which environmental industry lawyers and "nonprofits" are being paid hundreds of millions of dollars to shut down our logging, ranching, and mining operation-- by taxpayers. Common animals such as hoot owls, gray wolves, murrelets, and salmon are being listed as "endangered" by creative combinations of new definitions for "species," newly invented "sciences" (e.g., conservation biology), and new methods of measuring populations (e.g., "habitat"). None of these "new" developments has been scientifically tested, much less proved.
This stuff is not science, it's politics. There are far more differences in the physiology, coloration, dietary habits, vocalizations, preferred habitat, and body mass between a pygmy and a Swede than between a barred hoot owl and a spotted hoot owl -- yet our woods have been all but shut down for 20 years because of this nonsense. What to do?