BY DAN VALENTI

PLANET VALENTI NEWS AND COMMENTARY

(FORTRESS OF SOLITUDE, THE WEEKEND EDITION SEPT. 14-16, 2018) — What’s the surest, most-proven, practical, and time-tested way to drive economic improvement  for any size community by any governmental authority?

Tax cuts.

Once again, we have seen this nationally, with investors reaping huge profits, particularly from smaller publicly traded businesses. The tax cuts proposed by President Donald Trump and approved by Congress have worked their way through the economy, raising corporate profits nationwide. Grouse as you might like about this fact for any political reason, but this showing puts more money into private hands, keeping it out of the greedy, wasteful hands of government.

This helps not only the 1% but anyone in the 99% who has or wants to earn discretionary resources to invest. There’s “extra” money to be found in most budgets, even those on the bottom. If they’re not working, why not. Jobs are available. They could take advantage of programs designed to help people better themselves. They can quit cigarettes, cut down on drinking and drugs, and stop playing the lottery. Even a modest amount of money, set aside and invested wisely on a habitual basis, can make a difference.

Locally, a generation of ruinous taxes passed by a series of do-nothing politicians have depleted the middle class, driven out companies that provide jobs, and funded an entire dependent class of people who in most cases have no one but themselves to blame for their own impoverished state. Again, we come back to that loaded word, “victim.” There are no victims. There is only consequence, which is cause-and-effect disguised as coincidence. If a person can think, has physical mobility, shows determination,and musters a spot of ambition, self-improvement is achievable to the point of certainty.

If the “progressives” who run Pittsfield honestly care about citizens other than the dependent masses, they would at the earliest opportunity slash taxes for both homeowners and especially businesses. In other words, help the ones who are being held back by having to keep going the cradle-to-grave welfare model. Officials would also launch an audit of the much-abused “not-for-profit” going on in the city, which takes profit-making-and-taking businesses off the tax rolls crushes Mary Jane and Joe Kapanski, the bedraggled “little guys” who struggle so mightily to support the mess. While we’re auditing, how about a forensic audit of the one city department that easts up nearly three-fourths of the entire $160+ million budget. We won’t name names.

Boil it down. Where do you want your money to go: To government or into your own pockets? If the crooks in government get it, they will waste it. If you get it, you will, or at least can, provide for your needs and perhaps have some to save or, better yet, invest. Invest in what? THE PLANET shall limit our advice to what has worked for us: small-cap stocks, which have produced 35% return this year and look to keep growing because of the trade-war insecurities that have affected big-cap companies, particularly the big multinational corporations. That being said, large-cap stocks will rebound as trade tensions lessen, something else we foresee if only because the global economy can’t afford a protectionism that is too long, too steep, and pervasive. The two drivers of the world economy, China and the United States in that order, will see that any trade provincialism won’t give way to all-out trade wars.

Skeptics who say you can’t cut either Pittsfield’s budget or its taxes will have all sorts of objections, none of which can stand up to non-political thinking. Increasing city income and cash flow by exploiting new resources or landing new business would be ideal, but given the cast of characters now calling the shots, this approach would be pragmatically beyond the current abilities of the existing set of “usual political suspects.” A tax cut, however, is well within their reach.

If you can’t raise the bridge, lower the river. Similarly, if you can’t grow your income, cut your spending. That’s what households and businesses have to do when fiscal actualities don’t match anticipatory budgets. Tax cuts spell tax relief. The extra money will generally be spent wisely.

Households and businesses do this all the time. City government must do the same.

Have a great weekend, everybody.

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“The ‘Kingdom of God’ is within you” — Jesus,  as quoted in The New Testament.

“OPEN THE WINDOW, AUNT MILLIE.

LOVE TO ALL.

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