Topic Category: U.S.

We're all familiar with the book, The Grapes of Wrath, the depression tale of millions of desperate families during the 1930s that headed to California for promised jobs. I'm not suggesting we're at this stage yet, but for millions of unemployed Americans, they are finding that the local job market has dried up and they may need to relocate to more prosperous areas.

Broad immigration reform may have stalled but Rep. Goodlatte (R-VA), Chairman of the House Judiciary Committee, is considering reforming the asylum system. He recently said, “Our immigration system should be generous to those persecuted around the globe, but we must also ensure our compassion isn’t being abused by those seeking to game the system.” Goodlatte and others are on a fact-finding mission that will shortly lead to legislation.

When President Obama announced his Climate Action Plan, he essentially aimed the big guns of government at the Coal Industry. By directing the EPA to draft carbon emission standards for coal fired power plants, that is unattainable with current technology, many believe the President has set the table to legislate or flat out mandate the end of coal generated electricity.

What is the quickest way to increase the wealth of a nation? Increase the immigration of knowledgeable people. The current value of all of America’s physical capital, like factories and buildings, is about $45 trillion. But the value of all human capital is 16 times that — about $740 trillion. Immigration adds human capital to the United States in the cheapest way.

On December 19th, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke announced the decision to begin tapering monthly bond purchases indicating that “downside risks to growth have diminished.” However, as the United States appears to slowly recover from its worst recession since the Great Depression, many are questioning their level of confidence in American Capitalism. In fact, some emerging markets are beginning to view a Chinese-like model of state capitalism as favorable.

Many immigration opponents are focusing their ire on Republicans who support expanding legal immigration — an important part of immigration reform — to dissuade them from restarting the reform effort. Radio host Laura Ingraham recently wrote that Congressman Ted Poe, R-Humble, who supports an expanded guest worker visa program, “does not see what (immigration) does to U.S. wages.”

Even after the November 2012 election results were known, non-US-based companies looked forward to investing capital in U.S. facilities in 2013. And they did just that. This sentiment certainly was not shared by U.S. investors. Thus, a Site Selection survey of American corporate real estate executives was overwhelmingly pessimistic about a second Obama term.

The United States has been a tremendous magnet for attracting foreign direct investment. Roughly 17 percent of the world’s $22 trillion stock of FDI is deployed in the U.S. economy — triple that of the next largest destination. With the world’s biggest economy, a skilled workforce, an innovative culture, and deep and broad capital markets, the U.S. has enormous advantages to attract investment from the world’s best companies. But those advantages have been eroding.

The Business Roundtable, an association of chief executives, recently proposed that the United States is the world's innovation leader because of a commitment to basic research, a world-class workforce and a climate that rewards innovation. This sense of pride has been eclipsed by a feeling of economic pessimism manifesting itself in a perceived lack of innovation from our private sector, and especially by our entrepreneurs.