Leaving New Jersey is part 2 of “Why is New Jersey losing business and people?” and now I will go point by point on the basic problems with my solution(s).
To recap the list of basic problems are:
- ) High property taxes.
- ) Unfriendly business climate.
- ) High cost of real estate.
- ) Out of control government.
- ) Over regulation.
First on my list and hopefully yours is our extremely high property tax. I have talked about my solutions before on this subject in “My New Jersey Property Tax Solution” and “My New Jersey Property Tax Solution Part 2” with many suggestions which I will recap now.
Firstly no more than twenty percent of your property tax should go toward funding your local school system with the rest funded by the state. To fund the state payments a sales tax would be collected on any products that are for children and a surcharge would be assessed for each child you have in school. Thus, only those who have children in school would bear the burden of paying for education with only a small (lets say fair) amount for everyone else.
Secondly I would abolish the State and Municipal Pension system for unionized workers. Let their union(s) run a privately held pension system for their members with the State/Local government putting a small amount of money in the pot, lets say about five percent (it could be more or less) of the employees salary. For non-union workers they could have a 401k plan with a small contribution from the government, local or state.
Now on to the second item on my list the unfriendly business climate. I am not talking just about the mega corporations, but about the mom and pop operations that are not the enemy of the people; small businesses are backbone of our economy. Not the huge corporations as many people think of being the great employers and economy generators.
So what can our legislators and government officials do? Well they can start by lowering the tax burden put upon those doing business in New Jersey. Next a simplification of regulations, both business and environmental, would go a long way toward making this state more business friendly. I do not see a great need for tax incentives to help them stay if we lower the taxes that are now way too high down to reasonable levels. After all this state is situated as the perfect geographical local for distribution and travel for the Eastern Seaboard, perfect for business.
Third on my list is the high cost of real estate and that is a tough one to fix. With this state so densely packed and very little land open to develop without causing environmental problems. I really think that there are too many people who are asking too much money for their properties without any real justification. The people coming in from other states where taxes and property costs are higher do not seem to understand that they are paying too much money for what they are purchasing. One of the good things that is happening is the migration back to the cities. This should help lower the demand for housing in the suburbs which in turn will result in lower house prices.
Addressing the fourth item on my list, out of control government, is the result of not having limited the number of terms a person can serve in an elected office. There are many mayors who have been in office for a very long time and they treat their electorate as though they do not exist. That is right, they ignore the people who elected them and do only what they perceive as the only way to go about getting to the desired result. Many times people have been like sheep that just keep reelecting these dictators and the only way to stop this is term limits for every elected office. Another problem is that the state and municipal workers unions have undue influence over our elected officials. My answer to that is to ban them from contributing to campaigns and from serving in elected office.
The last item on my list is over regulation. We must make it clear to our elected officials and those who serve them; that the regulations that we operate under are conflicting and confusing. It will take a number of experts and years to fix this problem, but it is in our best interest to address this problem now! It can not be ignored. Some regulations do not make sense and many others are very burdensome to obey.
I could go on and on about the problems I have addressed in this blog. Maybe someday I will again.
That is my opinion- Jumpin Jersey Mike
