Dear Mrs. Hillary Rodham Clinton,
I know you’re busy, so I will summarize my key points briefly. I do agree with you on most issues, but some of your positions are show stoppers for me. My entire focus in this presidential campaign is on jobs and the economy. I realize your website says you want to create good-paying jobs and stimulate small business growth. But most of us work for large businesses or government agencies and your policies regarding large businesses are at odds with your stated desire to create good jobs. To create and keep good jobs in America we must support businesses, both large and small, encouraging them to invest in the USA, and make the USA the best place in the world to start and grow a business. All of the money we have comes from businesses large and small, neither the government nor non-profits make any money.
Creating more jobs has multiple benefits. The employed are healthier, live longer, have more self-esteem, and commit fewer crimes. Further, their work adds to the economy as a whole.
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You have stated that you “want to increase the threshold for foreign ownership in an inversion calculation.” Further you want to levy an “exit tax on unrepatriated foreign earnings.” Taxing US businesses on their overseas income will always drive them out of the US. Even if they remain in the US it encourages them to invest overseas profits in the country of origin, rather than bringing the money back to the US. If they have to pay a tax penalty to invest in a US factory, a penalty they do not need to pay overseas, why invest in the US? It is cheaper to invest in America and hire Americans if a company inverts and goes overseas, thus preventing inversions creates fewer jobs in the US. The problem is taxing foreign earnings of US companies. Your plans defy common sense and puts US companies at a disadvantage to foreign companies on our own soil.
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You have proposed limiting executive compensation. The government should not be interfering with executive compensation. The better business managers will simply go overseas where they can make what they are worth. You have to pay for excellence. The government has no right to dictate what a business pays its employees.
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You state you want to “End wasteful tax subsidies for oil and gas companies.” If fossil fuel tax incentives are to be eliminated, all tax incentives should be eliminated. Government taxes should be fair and they should not favor one industry over another. The fossil fuel industry already receives less in tax incentives than almost every other industry. This includes tax incentives to alternative energy companies, banks, and pharmaceutical companies. Singling out a single industry for “punishment” is not only unprincipled and unfair, but will destroy an industry that is 8% of the US economy and supports over nine million jobs.
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You have proposed to subject oil imported from the Canadian Oil Sands to a special tax. Singling out our most loyal ally for a specific excise tax is not only dishonorable and disloyal, but probably illegal under NAFTA. What is the difference between Canadian Oil Sands heavy oil and heavy oil from Venezuela? Why punish a friend and reward a corrupt dictatorship? Why not regulate pollution, rather than a source of petroleum? This defies common sense.
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I don’t accept the assertion on your website that “climate change is an urgent threat.” More than 22 peer-reviewed papers and two IPCC reports (2nd and 5th) have shown clearly that “the impact of climate change is small relative to economic growth.” This means if we sacrifice economic growth by raising the cost of energy (all forms of “alternative energy” are more expensive than fossil fuels and this differential is hurting Germany, the UK and other European countries), it could very well cost the world more than simply adapting to the climate change. Professor Richard Tol, an IPCC lead author, notes: “A century of climate change is not worse than losing a decade of economic growth.”
