Jim Blasingame

Business futurist, award-winning author, speaker and columnist

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Government / Politics

On Veteran’s Day, We Should Recognize All Who Served

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Veterans Day, as we know it, has its origins in Armistice Day.

“To us in America, the reflections of Armistice Day will be filled with solemn pride in the heroism of those who died in the country’s service and with gratitude for the victory.”

That was the 1919 acknowledgment by President Wilson on the first anniversary of the signing of the Treaty of Versailles, which ended WWI “in the eleventh hour of the eleventh day of the eleventh month.”

Congress made Armistice Day a federal holiday on November 11, 1938.

But after World War II, Alvin King, a small business owner in Emporia, Kansas, had a problem with the narrowness of those honored on Armistice Day. [Continue Reading]

America celebrates liberty and the world is the beneficiary

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Seven score and nineteen years ago, in his inspired speech at the 1863 dedication of the Gettysburg Cemetery, President Lincoln delivered these immortal words: “…our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation, conceived in liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.”

Four score and seven years earlier, one of those “fathers,” an inspired Thomas Jefferson (with suggestions from no less an able editor than Ben Franklin), authored what is arguably the most momentous secular document in history. The second paragraph of America’s Declaration of Independence begins with this passionate passage:  [Continue Reading]

Beware The High Price Of Free Information

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Stone Age humans had about 2.5 million years to prepare for the Bronze Age, followed by 2,000 years to transition to the Iron Age, which lasted about 800 years. Meanwhile, modern humans, barely in the third decade of the 21st century, are dealing with the 50-something Digital Age transmogrifying into the Information Age at the speed of light, literally in front of our eyes.

No other human generation in history has ever had to make this kind of shift.

A wise person once said that the most powerful force in civilization is information. Well, today, humans are awash in that power in the form of digital records of everything from “Breaking News!” to virtually everything that’s ever been said, written, or happened since Og and Gog invented the wheel in the Stone Age. And the following points represent the two sides of the Information Age Paradox:  [Continue Reading]

It’s Never Smart To Raise Taxes On Small Businesses

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During the 2020 presidential campaign, Joe Biden regularly promised to raise taxes. Here are quotes candidate Biden made between his convention acceptance speech and election day on how and why he would raise taxes if he became president.

“I will raise taxes for anybody making over $400,000,” Biden said. “It’s about time the very wealthy should pay a fair share … corporations should pay a fair share.”

He continued, “It’s smart to tax businesses … making excessive amounts of money … and paying no taxes.”

And when asked about taxing small businesses and individuals, without any sense of shame for being so obtuse about the sector representing half of the U.S. economy and signing the front of 100 million paychecks, Biden said: “No one would have a tax increase who earns less than $400,000 annually.”

When Joe Biden made those promises last year, small business owners believed him. Three days before the election, our November 3, 2020 survey of Main Street operators revealed more than three-fourths of our respondents were not going to vote for Biden. And now, barely two months into his first term, the new president is making plans to make good on his “tax the rich” promise. 

But there’s a giant defect in Biden’s plan: His metric for where to start taxing the very wealthy and corporations lands hard on small business families.

[Continue Reading]

Ten Reasons The $15 Minimum Wage Is A Harmful Blunt Instrument

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Arguably our first primordial tool, humans owe a lot to blunt instruments. Indeed, the world could not have been built without hammers and such.

But thousands of years ago, even Og and Gog knew a boulder wasn’t an appropriate tool to stake a hide to dry. Alas, in the 21st century, that “appropriate” concept is still lost on the largest and most unwieldy blunt instrument in history: the U.S. government, which has a sad history of inappropriately hammering square policy pegs into round resolution holes. Remember these two legislative pile drivers?

[Continue Reading]

Will America And The World Survive The Climate Change Church?

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If a company quadrupled sales while simultaneously reducing all expenses to levels from 30 years ago, it would be celebrated from Main Street to Wall Street. Books would be written about such performance and that model would be taught in schools as a clinic on operating excellence.

Well, that story is the metaphor for how the U.S. has balanced economic production and carbon emissions. But instead of celebrating and building on that success story, the Biden administration has embarked on a quixotic agenda that in one policy motion will punish the U.S. economy for its unmatched performance, and in perverse irony, likely do harm to the climate.

And the lost opportunity and increased energy cost will disproportionately hurt America’s small businesses. Recently in an online poll, we asked small business owners, “How will the climate plans of the Biden administration impact your business?” Almost 80% rejected the new president’s energy agenda as damaging to their business.

[Continue Reading]

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